Sentinel_NZ
Group: Members
Posts: 219
Joined: June 2021 |
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Posted: Aug. 06 2024, 03:29 |
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| Quote (Milamber @ Aug. 05 2024, 23:38) | Thanks for the assessment Sentinal!!
Whilst I wont argue anyone's point on taste I will argue on time.
The sheer length of years this catalogue represents covers many periods of our lives and at some points during an album release I may off not had time to give it the justice it deserved.
Earthmoving for example is by no means remarkable (except for the solo in Far Country perhaps) but it takes me back to a fond time during my salad days and the link seems to not diminish even though the album is dated and it was Mike on Button pushing autopilot :-) |
Fair comment about Earth Moving - I totally get what you're saying and I have to correct myself as well, the album is not all bad - Innocent is actually a very good song with a classical 80s, ABBA-esque kitschy sound (not a bad thing...) and it could have been a serious hit for any number of acts such as T'Pau, Roxette, and so on. Somehow I completely forgot about it, which I feel a bit ashamed about.
Anyhow you raise an interesting point which is common, but has an almost unique significance in the context of Oldfield, given that his career has been so incredibly long, his output so enormous, and having covered such a vast range of styles and genres, and the quality throughout has remained so consistently excellent - something virtually unmatched by any modern composer (or classical or ancient for that matter). Only Jean Michel Jarre can really compare in this regard, out of artists I can think of. Other acts such as Tangerine Dream can point to a much more massive catalog of official releases, over 100, over an even longer time period, but there is no comparison in terms of consistent quality. So it's natural to have the kind of favoritism you mention. This is why I started the first post with "The most controversial, difficult, and fraught exercise in the world, ranking all 25 (or 26, 27 or even 28, 29 or even 30 depending on how you collate them) Mike Oldfield albums!"
To approach the Oldfieldian oevre from a fresh and non-biased perspective, with an equal appreciation for all the different genres and styles, all the way from 70s "prog rock & new age" to disco, pure 80s pop, avant garde experimentation, comedy, blues, country and western, 90s/2000s Eurodance, ambient/chill, house/trance, to classical and back again - and so much more in between, nearly 50 years worth of music and styles - is very difficult. The best analogy I can think of is probably the career of Alfred Hitchcock which spans the pre-talky era of the 1920s right through to the gritty crime/exploitation craze of the early and mid 70s. Most people especially if they grew up with his more popular classics of the 50s and 60s such as Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window and the likes, probably wouldn't rate "Frenzy" very highly, even though you could make a case that it's among his most effective works, especially if you had grown up with Dirty Harry, Charles Bronson, Roger Moore as James Bond, or even Rambo. In a similar way, depending on when you were born and exposure to what media, you might think of Paul McCartney as a solo artist and collaborator with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder first and foremost, then the leader of Wings, and only after that as a member of The Beatles; and even within Beatles fans, there are those who depending on their personal circumstances only enjoy their pre 1966/pre-psychedelic incarnation, for whom, for example, The White Album is completely unlistenable, or vice versa.
In any case, it's a shame that Tres Lunas and Light + Shade aren't more appreciated. Of the latter, the tracks Rocky and especially Sunset are among Oldfield's most beautiful and stunning compositions. There are many other extraordinarily wonderful pieces besides, on both discs. From Tr3s Lunas, Turtle Island is a glorious tune, as is the title track, and To Be Free and in fact almost the entire set. It's when we delve deeply into these albums and especially the bonus material found within the Music VR games that we can perhaps truly realize the full extent of the man's true musical genius as pioneer, innovator, master of a spectacularly, overwhelmingly broad and brilliant range of genres, soundscapes and production and recording techniques, which all too often gets summarised as "oh yeah, I know all about Mike Oldfield, he's the guy who did Tubular Bells and Moonlight Shadow".
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