Sentinel_NZ
Group: Members
Posts: 210
Joined: June 2021 |
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Posted: June 08 2024, 17:42 |
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Quote (hergest fridge @ June 08 2024, 13:37) | Wow there's a lot to unpack from that , but I'm more offended by Earth Moving than anything else Mike has released , to call that music in any shape or form is blasphemous to be honest. I do agree with you on Amorok though. |
Yes, Earth Moving is a truly appalling album, not just by Oldfield standards, not even by late 80s MOR rock/pop standards (when Rick Astley was in charge of things, and mainstream traditional guitar music was heading towards Nirvana*) but by any measure at all. It's even worse than Man on the Rocks; only "Innocent" has any musical virtue at all, and even then, it's not a particularly great song. At least it (Innocent) is listenable and I wouldn't scramble to through the radio/media player out the out a 10th storey window if it came on, unlike the rest of the album. Possibly his marriage (to Anita Hegerland) was in trouble at the time; and he was under pressure to produce an album of purely 3 1/2 minute pop songs. Even the cover art is uncharacteristically awkward, ungainly, and the portrait quite ugly. Possibly there were other factors, which I am sure have been already discussed in these pages, which resulted in that genuinely terrible album being released. Or perhaps it was all a calculated plan on his part, to surprise us all with, and highlight, the supernatural brilliance that was Amarok only a year later.
With Let there Be Light, I find myself in a dilemma, because on the one hand I want to introduce, say, my "boomer" parents to Oldfield's genius, but I also don't want to reinforce the lies of the fake Moon landings and so on, so I am uncomfortable playing or gifting The Songs of Distant Earth to the likes of them. Still...white people's problems and all that.
*Sorry for the dad pun
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