Is It Wrong To Like Mike Oldfield?

"moonlight shadow" is my fuckin jam!!!

Best pop song ever.

Also, "Innocent" from 1989 is a song that hardly gets mentioned. The 12" mix is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMq1gdu8AiE

Crystal Gazing is ace
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XI1devNicQ

Hergest Ridge has been rocking my world of late – I’ve never understood how anyone could compare it to Tubular Bells. To me, they’re night and day.

The opening section of this is so exquisitely arranged – the melody has such a great melancholy series of turns you never want or to end. It’s almost hard to believe that the trumpet (cornet?) part on the original mix in 1974 was played an octave lower with none of the urgency and desperation that makes it so affecting.

The arrangements and production are also special. The echo of the organ and guitar melody in the opening section is disorienting and organic. I’d almost say it’s hard to believe Oldfield was only 21 at the time but then of course there’s the section on side 2 with the dozens of head banging overdubbed guitars – it’s a very 21 year-old moment, indeed.

But really, I love it all. What a record.

My favorite as well.

This last week I’ve bought two copies of Hergest Ridge – the 2010 deluxe issue because I wanted to hear it in surround (it’s great) and now the 2000 CD issue because Milton’s passionate posting has convinced me I needed to hear the 1976 Boxed mix – so I popped for a cheap copy off Discogs.

His solo on Kevin Ayers' Whatevershebringswesing is one of the most sublime moments in all of recorded music.

I watched the BBC documentary on the making of Tubular Bells last night ... pretty enjoyable. Oldfield is clearly some kind of prodigy – comping ably along through all the parts as the multitracks play, shifting from bass to guitar to keyboard with ease, not missing a beat. Seeing this sixty year-old in questionable mental health part discuss undergoing Exegesis and the high wearing off after a few years is particularly heartbreaking. It’s hard to hear the rest of his work as much more than various states of depression.

It makes one wonder what would’ve become of him had TB not been so sui generis or been released under less ramshackle circumstances.

How amazing is this video - floral fucking shoppe or what

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7K-pr9ZinY

The bonus tracks on the newest edition of Tubular Bells seem to go on forever

the album tracks too

I'm enjoying the album but those newer bonus tracks aren't doing much for me, I'm just not feeling a pleasing structure with them and the style isn't that compelling except the bit that sounds like Zelda

This 2023 reissue includes the abandoned "Tubular Bells 4", which is pretty bad in both conception and execution. Oldfield apparently said he had been struck by inspiration after a long time pondering how to mimic the original record, but the results just take the opening bars and change a few notes around. I'd be embarrassed on behalf of an AI program if it tried to pass this off as a new piece of music.
It's sad that he would feel compelled to (continue to) ape past successes, and sadder that he would do it so badly, and saddest that this is apparently his final musical statement. I guess the only good thing about the whole business is that he abandoned it after only recording 8 minutes.

Is it really that upsetting?

I mean, I love him but Oldfield has been aping Tubular Bells for fifty years – and I’m not sure that 8 minute segment is any more or less inspired than any of the two sequels, orchestrations, live performances, edits, or repackagings (I’m not a particularly big fan of the original). Which I guess is a way of saying, they all kind of sound like AI, particularly with their inversions/reversals/and retrogrades of the main theme.

If anything, I’d say TB4 is kind of an appropriate way to end things …

Convoluted though his career path was, I think he was always pushing towards trying something new until he got free of Virgin, even when he was revisiting prior works. The live "Tubular Bells" on Exposed is quite a bold rhythmic revision of a record that was only six years old at that point. After Tubular Bells II (which I've only experienced watching the show on TV, not on record) he obviously became a little obsessive about revisiting his earlier work, (whether in search of commercial success or as some private aesthetic quest I don't know), but this situation really feels like he's been defeated - by his music, by his muse, by his public (assuming that a large section of his audience only pay attention when there's a bell on his album covers).

Oldfield is still only 71 – is this really the last thing he’ll ever do?

Apropos of nothing, this Incantations performance from the Exposed live album is just terrific: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF3YWq2w42g

His last album was seven years ago, and his label announced his retirement, which I suppose isn't definitive.

I thought his post-Incantations pop records were pretty good - QE2, File Miles Out, and Crises make up a nice trilogy in my mind. it deteriorated pretty quickly after that.

Amarok from 1990 is probably on par with his classic records; it's close in approach to Tubular Bells, but a lot more sarcastic and weird. I think that's the point where he got fed up with the business and just went his own way...which is pretty exciting, until it became clear that "his own way" was mostly just re-doing Tubular Bells a bunch and leaning hard into New Age. I've heard some of his post-Amarok albums, not really interested in hearing any of them again. But the Ommadawn sequel from 2017 was quite decent. If that's his last one, so be it.

Exposed is a fantastic record

I got one for £2 a couple weeks ago.

Not played yet...

his solo on "May I?" on that Kevin Ayers-Nico-John Cale-Eno June 1, 1974 live album is one of my very favorite moments in all music

Fourteen years late, but that appears to be played by Ollie Halsall, not Oldfield.

(which tracks -- I don't think it sounds much like MO, it's much more fluid and busier)