TimHighfield
Group: Members
Posts: 543
Joined: Oct. 2000 |
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Posted: Oct. 20 2001, 07:12 |
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Hello everyone.
Of course, as we all know...
I don't think I need to expand on that  .
Ommadawn is a good example of endings and beginnings. The ending of Part One, with the various instrumentation under the fantastic 'screaming' guitar solo, features some melodies that originally appeared at the start of the piece. For example, the main theme that opens Part One is played again on electric guitar just before the finale at 11'08, and again, only slightly altered, on (glockenspiel? xylophone? something like that anyway) at 16'54. This is one of the reasons that I think Ommadawn Part One is brilliant- in addition to the bits at the start, the whole finale, and the bits in the middle.
Ommadawn Part Two is also like this- although perhaps not so obviously. The many guitars in the intro have some quite moving (to me anyway- and more moving than I remembered) passages. This is echoed in the quite fantastic, extremely moving section just before the (bodhran?- I seem to remember this part being called "Bodhran" on the Amarok Player Tracklist) comes in to lead Ommadawn Part Two to a close. Just head straight to about 11'00 in Ommadawn Part Two, and listen on from there. Brilliant stuff- and don't forget the fantastic guitar solo that brings the piece to a close. You can't compare the two finales on Ommadawn (not including On Horseback at the moment), as they are so different, and yet so mindblowing brilliant. I suppose that's why Ommadawn is my number one Mike Oldfield album.
Another Mike-related example would be TB3. tubularbills mentioned the second part, from the Top of the Morning to Far Above the Clouds, but a more obvious point is with the first part, from the Source of Secrets until the Inner Child. At the beginning of the Source of Secrets, you can hear the 'wind' sound that leads into the 'Ibiza'-version of the TB opening theme. Following on, after Rosa Cedron and Mike's guitar work have ended on the Inner Child, a reprise of the wind is heard, sort of, as tubularbills mentioned in another point, ending the section where it began.
This ending=beginning is not just limited to Mike Oldfield. I think one of the most obvious examples would be (the essentially always fantastic) Pink Floyd and the album Dark Side of the Moon. The first track on the album, Speak to Me/Breathe in the Air, starts off with a heartbeat, before a short collection of sounds from several other tracks on the album (including some of the effects from the intro to Money)- not unlike, but then again not overly like the final track on the Millennium Bell. The final track on Dark Side of the Moon, Eclipse, features, after the band has finished playing, the heartbeat once more (along with a quiet voice saying "There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark."). However, the heartbeat isn't the only example of 'going round in circles', as it were, ending at the beginning. On the album sleeve, there is the instantly recognisable artwork with the prism and the ray of light being split into the spectrum. If you look carefully (as in, check the reverse of the sleeve), you should see that the spectrum and the ray of light continue to an inverted prism. This basically means that the prism on the front is connected to the prism on the back by a ray of light and the spectrum, and vice versa (apologies for probable use of incorrect terms, but you should realise what I'm getting at here). Other Pink Floyd examples (very quickly, without going in depth) would be both "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" tracks on Wish You Were Here and the use of two "Pigs on the Wing" tracks, sandwiching the rest of the album, on Animals.
Other pieces of Mike's work have great endings too. While I'm not overly keen on the intro to Amarok (until the solo a few minutes in starts), the finale is great- as is the finale-like passage before the Africa sections begin. Especially with the "Happy?" slipped in there.
The Millennium Bell? Um...the title track has grown on me...the way that the selections from some of the previous tracks ("Doges' Palace", "Sunlight...", "Amber Light" etc) are included in the piece. Although the section that really gets me excited is the wild guitar playing when the music starts going again after the "bell".
However, I think that Mike's best beginnings and endings, especially when looked at in a "return to the start" way, are in the side-long pieces, or in the albums made up of one/two/three/four tracks- i.e. TB, HR, Ommadawn, Incantations, Amarok. TB2 and TB3 work as well because of the way that they are structured, and when looked at in the same way that people look at TB, with both albums only having 2 tracks rather than 14 and 11 tracks respectively. Other albums don't work quite as well as these ones- and I can't check Incantations as I don't have my own copy.
I think that's enough, don't you?
-Tim-
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forgive me. I've forgottent to delete the wrong part in capital letters. Oh, forgive me please. It´s such a shame for me and I tell you that I'm red in this very moment. Oh, what can I do. 
!!!!