This is Tubular.net, an open website dedicated to Mike Oldfield.
Ingredients: organic fan input, a touch of fresh official news.
Warning: may contain slightly distorted comments.

The new Covering Mike Oldfield's Covers blog is meticulously documenting the making of Mike's most iconic covers.

Wednesday, 7 December 2011 20 comments

BASCA, PRS and others have been reported that David Bedford passed away aged 74 on Saturday 1st October 2011 following a short illness.

A prolific composer and musician, David is well known to the Mike Oldfield community for his involvement in a number of Mikes works including orchestrating and arranging the Orchestral Tubular Bells and Orchestral Hergest Ridge. He arranged and conducted orchestrations on a number of Mikes albums including Hergest Ridge, Incantations and The Killing Fields. David also played and provided vocals for a couple of Mikes singles - Don Alfonso and Speak (Tho' You Only Say Farewell).

This news passed to us by Tati and Chris

Tuesday, 4 October 2011 34 comments

In the late '60s Mike recorded a number of tracks with his sister Sally as folk duo The Sallyangie. Their album Children Of The Sun is being reissued by Esoteric Records on 26th September 2011. Track listings and preorder information are available online for instance at amazon.co.uk. The reissue includes two tracks not previously available on CD - Child of Allah and Lady go Lightly.

Thanks Vojtech

Wednesday, 21 September 2011 11 comments

Michael Stanton transcribed the Incantations Part 3 solo starting at 3:30 and made it available as a PDF. He also posted a video of him playing it.

Thanks for sharing, Michael!

Friday, 19 August 2011 20 comments

According to their facebook and twitter posts dating back to November 2010, Mike has been collaborating with German electronica music duo York on tracks for their forthcoming album. The comments suggest Mike features on at least one chillout track on the album which is due to be released later in 2011.

Kudos to Tati for spotting this!

Tuesday, 16 August 2011 46 comments

On Monday, 25 July, between 13:00-16:00, BBC 6 Music's Radcliffe & Maconie show will feature Mike Oldfield discussing with Stuart Maconie the reissue of Incantations.

Thanks, Andrew Taylor!

Friday, 22 July 2011 119 comments

Universal says they will release the new issues of Incantations on July 25, 2011. Signed, deluxe (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk), and standard (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk) editions are available for pre-order.

Tracklist of the deluxe edition:

Disc 1
1. Incantations Part One Remastered Stereo Mix
2. Incantations Part Two Remastered Stereo Mix
3. Incantations Part Three Remastered Stereo Mix
4. Incantations Part Four Remastered Stereo Mix
5. Guilty 7" Single Version

Disc 2
1. Diana 2011 Stereo Mix
2. Northumbrian 2011 Stereo Mix
3. Piano Improvisation 2011 Stereo Mix
4. Hiawatha 2011 Stereo Mix
5. Canon For Two Vibraphones 2011 Stereo Mix
6. William Tell Overture
7. Cuckoo Song
8. Pipe Tune
9. Wrekorder Wrondo
10. Guilty 2011 Stereo Mix
11. Diana - Desiderata 2011 Stereo Mix

Disc 3 (DVD)
1. Diana 5.1 Surround Sound Version
2. Northumbrian 5.1 Surround Sound Version
3. Piano Improvisation 5.1 Surround Sound Version
4. Hiawatha 5.1 Surround Sound Version
5. Canon For Two Vibraphones 5.1 Surround Sound Version
6. Guilty 5.1 Surround Sound Version
7. William Tell Overture Promotional Video, 1977
8. Incantations Parts One & Two Live At Wembley Conference Centre, 1979
9. Incantations Parts Three & Four Live At Wembley Conference Centre, 1979
10. Guilty Promotional Video, 1979

Wednesday, 1 June 2011 778 comments

It is reported that the actress Janet Brown, famous for her impersonations of Margaret Thatcher, died peacefully earlier today 27th May 2011 aged 87. Janet worked with Mike in 1990 providing her imporsonation of Thatcher for the voiceover in the last section of the album Amarok.

Thanks to Andrew and Robert for the alerts

Friday, 27 May 2011 5 comments

Mike is 58 today, happy birthday!

A number of forum members at Tubular.net have been putting together an album of their songs and remixes of Mike's music as a tribute. Details of their work and a link to download the albums can be found at thetubularnetgroup.weebly.com.

Enjoy!

Sunday, 15 May 2011 20 comments

We've updated the tubular.net Forums Guidelines with this item:

All comments are submitted to Mike and his family for approval before publication. Mike also has the opportunity to tweak them as much as he wants until he is fully satisfied with them. Please be patient and respect Mike's time, your remixed comment will eventually be published.

We are very excited about this innovative new feature, we call it comment::RemiX. We're going to turn it on next week.

Thursday, 31 March 2011 14 comments