TimHighfield
Group: Members
Posts: 543
Joined: Oct. 2000 |
 |
Posted: Dec. 27 2000, 09:09 |
 |
Right then, I'll be the first one to reply. I suppose this means I've got to stay now 
When you look back at Mike's discography, it seems rather strange as some of the albums are extremely mainstream music for that time in history, whilst things like Tubular Bells where radically different for their time.
The first point, as often said by Archangel Foster, is Guilty. In the late 1970s, in the UK at least, the "new wave" of artists and music began, as did the era of disco. Guilty is an early disco tune, and pointed (I think) to what was going to happen to early 80s music and Platinum. I hope this is true, because unfortunately I've never heard Platinum, just Guilty and the live part on Complete Mike Oldfield.
Following on from this is the pair of long instrumental and short piece albums Crises and Five Miles Out, as well as QE2. The lack of album space devoted to instrumental pieces, when compared to TB, Ommadawn etc, shows that Mike was in transistion, from instrumentals to songs, as proven later on by Earth Moving, although he did then move back to instrumentals with Amarok (which is great, not his greatest but among his best, I've listened to it 6 times over the past 2 days along with HR). However, I feel that Amarok was more to do with a chance action that caused Mike to do this, ie Virgin and him disagreeing. If Mike had not had disagreements with Virgin but had continued writing songs, maybe he would never have come up with Amarok. And if he hadn't done the interview on the radio where he played a bit of TB by hand.
Then we move onto the last few albums. The Millennium Bell in particular. Over the past few years (in Western music anyway), music has become more electronic, with less actual instrument playing and more computers. In TMB, most of the album is electronic, showing that Mike is following the trail of today's music. Also, the extensive use of computers points towards Sonic VR.
Dance music has become popular over the past few years too. TBIII was apparently Mike's attempt at dance (but IMHO it isn't dance), but TMB is more dance-like, especially the title track. Like Guilty, which was a dance-disco track, TMB shows Mike's modernisation of his music.
Going back a bit, in the mid 80s, singles artists were more popular than album artists, so pop songs were more popular than the albums. This coincided with the advent of CDs. Thus, one-hit wonders were very common then, artists who had a hit song but then faded. With all this opportunity in the singles market, perhaps this is why Mike Oldfield continued to write songs (although Virgin did also want this thanks to the success of Moonlight Shadow).
There are many other points to be made which I am looking forward to reading. Hopefully Mike Oldfield will not completely follow todays mainstream music though. I would not buy an album of his where the pieces are all songs performed with a boy/girl band.
-Tim-
|
.
) are bad, I feel that Tubular Bells III is exceptional, and the music of TMB isn't overly bad, but the concept was a bit far-fetched and the cover and notes...AAARGH. The only album I don't overly like is Earth Moving, because, although most of Mike's songs I don't mind, most of them don't get me hooked.
. Earth moving was not his best album, but still good, while Amarok was an album done, IMO, almost perfectly. If Heaven's Open had, in my view, one of his weaker instrumentals (in places), Tubular Bells II was perfect in just about every way I could think of. Songs of Distant Earth was slightly repetitive after the first 30 minutes, and the Celtic stuff on Voyager was too droning for my taste. Tubular Bells III was also perfect, with as many styles of music is you could fit onto an album, and just the right amount of Techno. Guitars was OK (Muse Rocks!!) while the Millennium Bell is one of his most misunderstood albums, and I enjoy listening to it a lot. 
