Tubular.net :: Mike Oldfield Forums Discussion, news, reviews, fan music, and more.
	Search :: Members :: Help :: Guidelines

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Dec. 13 2002, 19:28 Hello. Yesternight a very heated debate arose in the #mike_oldfield IRC chatroom between me and Jørgen Brauti over the following question: is TB 2003 (or whatever Mike is going to call it) really a new album? I don't really think so, for two reasons: 1) The music itself is old. I may be saying some blasphemy now , but I think that TB is firmly rooted in its own time, i.e. 1973, or generally the 1970s, with all its time signature shiftings, the overlaying of sounds and the 'long instrumental' concept itself... all things that sound very 70s-ish to me. It's not at all a 'timeless' work IMHO. 2) Okay, Mike and Co. are recording everything from scratch, that's fine. But they aren't really doing any new music. 3) If Bond (the female string quartet) recorded an album with their version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, it'd indeed be a new album even if the music is 500 years old, because Vivaldi, like most classical music, is eternal, timeless, while IMHO TB is simply not. [See 1 for the reasons why I think this. ] Please tell me what do you people out there think of this. If you agree or disagree with me, please tell me also why. -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

raven4x4x Group: Members Posts: 1535 Joined: Jan. 2002 Posted: Dec. 13 2002, 20:09 I would disagree that the concept of a "long instrumental" is a very 70's thing. Sure, it started in the seventies, but Mike has been doing them all through the 80's and even into the 90's with Amarok, TBII and TSODE. It's just like the bands which are doing a lot of 60s style rock stuff nowadays (I forget the names... ), the style may be old but the music is still new. TB may sound old, but that is because it had old instruments, old recording techniques etc. The way that Mike seems to be doing this is like rebuilding an antique car: he is making it look, sound and feel new again, even though we all know it is quite old. -------------- Thank-you for helping us help you help us all. Back to top

Korgscrew Group: Super Admins Posts: 3511 Joined: Dec. 1999 Posted: Dec. 14 2002, 17:08 The long instrumental format has also been adopted by the makers of dance music, which is a phenomena fairly far removed from the 1970s (but not entirely discoonected from them)... Shifting time signatures and overlaying sounds have been around for ages, so I'd not associate either of those with the 70s either. I think that whether it's a new album or not lies entirely in our perception. New recordings of old pieces of music by long dead composers are thought of as new because they weren't originally released as recordings - they came into our knowledge by being passed down through the years and being part of the classical repertoire (this can be true of new music as well). I would tend to call CDs of particular classical works as 'recordings' rather than 'albums'...if Bond recorded The Four Seasons more than once, I'd call their second version a new performance or maybe a new recording rather than a new album. Tubular Bells was presented to the world as an album - the definitive version which people would tend to hear in their heads (if at all) would be the 1973 recording. The actual recording is bound up with the music in people's heads, so it's seen as an album rather than a piece of music. Technially, though, it's a new recording and therefore a different album to the original, making it a new album...but because it's the same piece of music, which we associate with the original recording and therefore bind together with the original album...it's also not quite a new album...is everything clear? Tubular Bells not being timeless because it shows evidence of being from the time period it was written in, though...could Vivaldi be mistaken for modern music? I'd not say so myself, his music may have endured and still sound fresh, but I think that it still shows clear signs of having come from the time it was written in (and if there's modern music which sounds like it, it's because the writers are deliberately trying to recreate a Vivaldi type sound). I personally think that Tubular Bells is too new for us to be able to judge how timeless it is in comparison to the work of Vivaldi - it needs to be left at least 100 years before we can tell that properly. Back to top

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Dec. 14 2002, 18:54 Thanx, Raven and Korgscrew. Your answers have been really illuminating to me, especially with regards to how little I know about 1970s music. -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

Forums | Links | Instruments | Discography | Tours | Articles | FAQ | Artwork | Wallpapers
Biography | Gallery | Videos | MIDI / Ringtones | Tabs | Lyrics | Books | Sitemap | Contact


Mike Oldfield Tubular.net