Mike Oldfield, ranked

 

I am taking a break from serious topics to reflect on Mike Oldfield's discography. Since he is retired, and he seems to mean it this time, here are my reviews of all of his albums.

 

 

Mike Oldfield's music career took off in 1973. Since then he has been a prolific musician in multiple genres, such as new age, classical, celtic and progressive rock. Album by album tells the life story of a progressive man as well.

1973 Tubular Bells: Mike's first release that launched the Virgin record company and practically created the progressive rock genre. It defies description; TB is one of those benchmark albums people compare other albums to. Tubular Bells doesn't sound like anything else. Everything after it sounds like Tubular Bells.

1974 Hergest Ridge: Mike intended it to sound completely different from his first album to prove to the world that he wasn't a flash in the pan. It's a pastoral album, meant to conjure up images of the quiet countryside he was living in at the time, and as a way to escape from the chaos his life had become since the success of Tubular Bells. It's my favorite album of his 70's years.

1975 Ommadawn: Mike makes a progressive folk rock album. Many consider this the best of the three "Manor" albums, but I disagree. It's not bad music, definitely not. I love On Horseback. But I'm glad Mike didn't do very many like this.

1978 Incantations: Mike Oldfield does Philip Glass. Progressively! It's an album of repetition, variations of a note pattern for 73 minutes, but unlike Glass's work, Mike's music progresses in different directions. Part IV is my favorite--that long, wonderful, complex percussion segment is enough to bring anyone to tears.

1979 Platinum: This piece was released in a rush to erase debt accumulated from his Exposed tour, and it shows. Side A is a nice rock piece with a powerful "cover version" of Glass' North Star, but side B is empty. Other than Airborne, North Star and Sally, it's a minor, forgettable album. Although if you replace "Sally (Into Wonderland)" with the original "Sally (I'm Just a Gorilla)," it's much more interesting.

1980 Q.E.2.: The 80's were a strange time for music, and for Mike. He kicks off the decade with a bizarre recording, making extensive use of a new toy, the vocorder. Not just voices, but every instrument sounds like it's vocorded, producing a weird sound which reminds me of circus music. I expect to hear a calliope somewhere in here! It's a very happy album, and it has its charm, but it left a lot of fans wondering "what the *@%# is this?"

1982 Five Miles Out: One of his most memorable works, inspired by his experiences flying private planes. Taurus 2 is a long, complex, unpredictable instrumental--finally, Mike returns to his progressive rock roots. It's uninhibited brilliance! Orabidoo, with its indecipherable lyrics, is eerie and atmospheric, creating the feeling of flying over gentle mountainscapes. And the flaw that makes the masterpiece: the ending. Bzzzzzzzzzz…fade out...

1983 Crises: The album relies heavily on synthesizers. Too heavily. In fact, the majority of this album is played with synthesizers, and the heavy synth sound is not becoming to Mike. To me, it sounds like he wasn't writing music, he was just playing around with the new equipment, trying to figure out how to use it. The only standout is Moonlight Shadow, but otherwise the album is forgettable. And what happened to Foreign Affair? The first verse repeats six times! Was this a demo and Mike just didn't feel like finishing it, so he printed it? In an interview conducted in 1983, Mike said he felt this was the best he had done since Tubular Bells.

1984 Discovery: On the advice of Virgin, his record company, Mike made an album comprised of mostly vocal songs in an effort to sound more commercial and try to increase sales. The result is exactly what you'd expect: an album with a few good songs (To France, for example), and the rest are only so-so. The instrumental track, The Lake, feels like it was tossed in as an afterthought.

1984 The Killing Fields: Mike tried his hand at a movie soundtrack, and it's clear he was not comfortable. Most of the movie is silent, and what little music there is stands out and does not match what happens on screen. Evacuation and Etude are about the only good pieces. Mike realized scoring films was simply not his thing. Still, Mike was glad for the experience, he delivered something serviceable for the film, and everyone seems to have parted ways on good terms.

1987 Islands: In my opinion it's his best work from the 80's. The Wind Chimes is another long, complex and totally different instrumental piece. The sound is nothing like Mike had ever done before. You can't call it progressive rock. It's progressive something, but what is it? It features very little of that classic Oldfield sound, but all the songs are memorable in their own way. The self-made music videos are some of the best ever made for his music (even if they are dated). At the time, audiences and critics had no idea what to make of it.

1989 Earth Moving: After the lukewarm sales of Islands, Mike's record company insisted he make an album with no instrumental track to appeal to a wider audience. Holy, Blue Night, Earth Moving and Innocent are some of the catchiest songs Mike ever wrote, but they could've been done by anybody. It's not his most memorable, but for what it is, it's decent.

1990 Amarok: Mike was angry at his record company at this point. His music sold even worse when he made more commercial recordings, and fans complained albums like Earth Moving were not the kind of music they expected from Mike. On top of this, Mike felt he was doing everything Virgin had asked for years, making music the way they wanted him to, and they still weren't promoting it. So he hammered out a raw, angry album. It's one, 60-minute, unbroken and chaotic piece of music. Fans consider it his best work. This album--not Tubular Bells--should be the textbook example of what progressive rock can be.

1991 Heaven's Open: The musical equivalent of the middle finger. Mike made it in a rush to finish out his contract so he could leave Virgin. Make Make reveals quite a bit about what the fight between him and the record company was about. I'm also partial to Mister Shame because of the background vocals. It sounds so unlike Mike it's great! The only other track worth mentioning isn't even on the CD release: the single version of Heaven's Open. Mike was glad to leave Virgin, hopefully for a record company that would let him make music the way he wanted.

1992 Tubular Bells II: Mike quickly joined up with Warner and began working on a secret project. This was the payoff! The best Mike has ever done! Mike does what Mike does best: the entire album is one, long instrumental piece blending progressive rock, atmospheric and folk. You can't pick a track out of this and call it a standout because the entire album is one piece of music. Remove any one part and it's not interesting anymore. He even performed it live for the premier, and it sounds even better! (Tubular Bells II & II)

1994 Songs of Distant Earth: Mike goes Enigma-style in his first "new age" recording. It's another long, complex instrumental, just like TB2, but spacey and alien. He does a remarkable job recreating the atmosphere of the Authur C. Clarke novel that inspired it. Though it alienated fans of his older, progressive rock albums, it attracted a new group of fans to his progressive new age sound.

1996 Voyager: A Celtic-style album of mostly traditional songs. As one reviewer put it, Mike could make an album like this in his sleep. Mike himself admitted he was so burnt out from The Songs of Distant Earth that he didn't have it in him for another release so quickly, and this sleeper album was the result.

1998 Tubular Bells 3: Critics at the time noticed that Mike only sells albums when he calls them Tubular Bells, and figured he was trying to cash in on this. I agree, because other than the opening theme, TB3 couldn't have less to do with Tubular Bells. Maybe "Man in The Rain" would've been a better title. Jewel in the Crown is a wonderful, atmospheric piece, Serpent Dream is a nice callback to the days of Amarok, and Far Above the Clouds is an awe-inspiring finale. The problem is the songs don't go together as a whole. Unlike Tubular Bells 2, which is one piece of music in two movements and themes are intertwined throughout the whole album, Tubular Bells 3 is independent tracks. One ends, the next begins, and they have little to do with each other. They aren't very memorable, and together don't make up a larger piece of music. Thinking back on it, it's obvious when Mike writes an album specifically to be performed live. Albums such as Platinum and TB3 tend to lack texture and have only a foreground track and a backing track. TB3 is such an album. It's decent on its own, but it shouldn't have been called Tubular Bells.

1999 Guitars: Mike wanted to see if he could make an entire album using nothing but guitars. All sounds on this album are guitar sounds, including the drums, and there's surprising variety. Mike took a bunch of tunes he cut out of previous works and salvaged them here. There are some nice tracks, such as Muse, Summit Day, and Out of Mind, but overall it feels like an album of afterthoughts.

1999 Millennium Bell: An attempt to capture the last 2,000 years in music. Mike tried...and failed. The main problem with this album is at the time, the world was tired of hearing about millennium this and Y2K that. Everyone was doing some sort of celebration of the new millennium, and we were sick of it. It tries to be dramatic, but at 45 minutes, it's too short, does not build up any energy for a finale, and ends up being completely passive.

2002 Tres Lunas: Since the 80's Mike wanted to do an interactive music project. He took the first step with Islands when he made his own music videos. His next step was in the interactive program that came with The Songs of Distant Earth, but he didn't feel it was interactive enough. Enter the homemade computer game Music VR, and the companion studio album Tres Lunas. It's a chillout-style album, and like with The Songs of Distant Earth, it alienated his diehard fans but was a major hit with fans of his more new-age music. No Man's Land, Viper and Turtle Island are three of the standouts. The flaw that makes the masterpiece, and my favorite album from the 2000s: the guitar-sax. Some tracks it sounds good (Return to the Origin and Turtle Island), other tracks it ruins (Misty and Thou Art in Heaven). The game no longer works on current PCs, and I can't find any patches to allow it to work. I played it for a month straight, and I would like to return to it. Glad we have an unofficial soundtrack because much of this music is original to the game and cannot be heard any other way.

2003 Tubular Bells 2003: Mike wanted to rerecord Tubular Bells for years. He was never satisfied with it, feeling it was full of flaws because he had to make it in such a rush and there was no time to tune instruments or even keep the music in time. He joked this was going to be called "Tubular Bells In Tune/In Time." The result? Well, the music is in tune, it's in time, but there's no mood. No feeling. It's a literal note-for-note rerecording of the original Tubular Bells, and it sounds like a weak cover version done by some other band. Although John Cleese does a great job as the new MC, and the new Piltdown Man has a refreshing twist, it's not enough.

2005 Light and Shade: It could be retitled "Mike Oldfield: Bite Sized!" Little nuggets of Oldfield brilliance, like Angelique and Our Father, Resolution and Ringscape. He used mostly computer programs and plugins for this album (exactly the kind of method he protested and fought against for so many years), and as a result it sounds like everything else out there. I've downloaded fan-made tracks that sound just like the music on this album, and it's shameful how amateurs (some of whom can't actually play an instrument themselves) using nothing but a computer can make music just as good as a professional, seasoned musician these days. Mike himself later admitted that everyone can and is making music this way, so this album is nothing special.

2007 Music Of The Spheres: After L+S, Mike wanted to do something that couldn't be done with computer plug-ins, and a classical album seemed the logical choice. Laughable title aside, the music feels like it wants to take off and soar above the clouds, but is stuck doing touch-and-goes at the airport. Weak, uninspired and boring.

2014 Man on the Rocks: Is this a Mike Oldfield album, or a Luke Spiller album?  Like Earth Moving, it's all vocal tracks and no instrumental, but unlike EM, I don't hear Mike in this album at all.  He pretty much plays backup guitar the whole time.  "Sailing" is the only song that sounds truly inspired.  The others try hard, and a few are catchy, but overall they're pretty generic and forgettable.  Luke Spiller doesn't have a bad voice, but I would have been down for an ensemble of voice talent instead of the same voice for a solid hour.  In short: I was *hoping* for Earth Moving 2.  As a twist, Mike also released instrumental versions of the songs in the deluxe edition.  He had the chance to give these songs a whole new life--to take the backing tracks and his brief guitar solos and let them grow and evolve in exciting new directions.  But no.  They are merely the songs without the lyrics, and most of them sound like repetitive backing tracks with a giant hole where the vocals should be.  Some of the songs sound better sans vocals (i.e. "Minutes" and "Following the Angles"), but even these lack development.  None of the songs are bad, but MotR is forgettable.  When I listen to it, I also hear a lot of unrealized potential.

2017 Return to Ommadawn: No strong melodies.  No consistent theme.  No texture or depth.  Just aimless folksy rhythms that aren’t even catchy, and don’t work together to produce a coherent whole. It’s nice to hear Mike’s guitar-playing in the foreground again, as opposed to the backing track role he took in his previous album, Man on the Rocks, but... RtO has more in common with Music of the Spheres in that it is bland, devoid of inspiration, and lacks direction. RtO has the same critical problem as Music of the Spheres: there are no strong melodies.  None.  It has rhythms reminiscent of folk music throughout, but nothing interesting enough to make RtO unique.  It is completely forgettable. Return to Ommadawn is not worthy of the title.  it doesn’t even come close to sounding like its namesake.  I agree with the dissenting opinions: Mike has run out of things to say.  He can’t even capture the spirit of his old style.  Not that I expected him to.  After all, how do you compose an album calling back to countryside sentiments while living in the Bahamas? I forgave Music of the Spheres as a creative misfire.  Man on the Rocks was weak, but it did have a few good songs and some strong melodies.  RtO is just thoughtless strumming on top of generic folk rhythms.

I do not count Opus One as an album as it had already been released as a bonus track for a rerelease of Tubular Bells. It's the demo tape he recorded in the early 70s which he later polished up and released as TB. It's worth listening to, and it has some themes I wish Mike had kept in the final release. Fitting that his final album is the first draft of his debut.

Given the preview of Tubular Bells 4 he was working on, I think Mike realized he has nothing left to say musically, and that's ok. He's made so much he doesn't need to do anything else.

Thanks for the music, Mike. Enjoy retirement. You've earned it.