Swedish reviews

September, 1998

Aftonbladet (Swedish newspaper)


Voyager - lowest grade, reviewer: Ronny Olovsson
Sounds like filmmusic to "Braveheart" or "Rob Roy". Synthesizers and twiddling guitars in a wide Celtic atmosphere. Works great as waitingmusic in a telephone exchange or as a soundcoulisse to the testpicture on TV. It feels to anaemic to instantly stick in memory. To polished and sexless. And the picture of Mike stripped to the waist is just to much...

XXV - lowest grade, reviewer Anders Hvidfeldt
The most important "Mike Oldfield" has done is and forever will be the debute "Tubular Bells" from 1973, the album that layed ground for recordcompanyking Richard Bransons Virgin empire. Here new listeners only get to take a short listen to a four minute excerpt. Even "Heregest Ridge", "Ommadawn" and "Incantations" fades out. Same thing with the awful taster of the coming Tubular Bells III where Oldfield obviously makes some sort of B-techno and monkmuzak of his maidenwork. And people are expected to spend money on this ? Boycott "XXV"!!!

Tubular Bells III - lowest grade
There's something tragic over men that when aging searches for the love of their youth and gives it another try. I wish I could tell that to Mr. Oldfield. Some small variations of the old main theme from Tubular Bells ("The source of Secrets" and "Secrets") is mixed with Enya-smelling ambientpop and absolutely hopeless pretentious rock-buildups. GET OVER IT!


Mike Oldfield Tubular.net
Mike Oldfield Tubular.net