Alan D
Group: Members
Posts: 3670
Joined: Aug. 2004 |
 |
Posted: Jan. 19 2007, 15:12 |
 |
I haven't listened to Light and Shade for ages - months. I'd tried hard with it, but found less and less depth the more I listened, and gave up.
But about a week ago I wasn't sure what I wanted to listen to, and pulled out Light and Shade. I really surprised myself, because I found myself enjoying almost all the 'Light' disc. So, suddenly curious, I put on 'Shade'. I struggled a bit more here, because those trancey-dancey rhythmic loops are not my cup of tea, but again I found myself enjoying it, and in some cases (Tears of An Angel', 'Ringscape' ) getting little shivers - always a good sign. Since then I've played both discs every day, and I'm delighted to discover that I was mostly wrong, all those months ago, and had dismissed it too readily.
I think up to this point I'd found it very difficult to see past the techno-orientation of so much of it; and for some reason that now seems less of a barrier than it did. Perhaps my expectations of it are now naturally lower than they were. But here's the shocking truth. I would rather listen to Light and Shade, warts and all, than any of those pop-song LP album B-sides he made in the 80s. (I never thought of the second side of an album as a B-side until Mike invented the concept, back then.)
There are little strokes of Oldfield magic in pretty well every track on Light and Shade, and really, for me, it's those things that count more than anything. So - a few details. I'm not very happy with the synthetic vocals - but then I'm not happy with most of the human vocals on Mike's albums. The male vocalists he chose, in particular, always did set my teeth on edge. I think I like the synthetic vocals at least as much, and probably more, than the vocals by those 80s singers.
I'm still troubled by what I'd call the 'prepackaged' feel of a lot of the background to Light and Shade. A lot of it is formulaic, and for me there is a feeling (perhaps inaccurate, but still a feeling) that he was content to let the computer just repeat stuff in the background over and over with small variations but very little in the way of life. But even so, riding over all this, and succeeding in spite of it, there are some passionate pieces of quitar playing, and some lovely tunes. The good bits are good enough to carry the dull bits. In fact, there are aspects of the album that really do represent Mike at his best - the guitar break in Tears of an Angel is as good as anything I'm ever likely to hear, for instance. And as for Ringscape... well, I'm going to give it a paragraph of its own.
Now OK. I'm biased. I have flown along that snow cavern so many times, alone and with friends, that I can't estimate the number. I'll never be able to listen to the music without being transported to that magical place. But the odd thing is that when I first heard Ringscape on Light and Shade, it seemed a letdown. I think I'd expected him to make it not just magnificent, but astoundingly, transcendentally magnificent - and he didn't. He just made it magnificent, and that didn't seem enough at the time. Well, it seems enough now. One thing I particularly love - listen to that cry at about 2 minutes in - it sounds like a saxotar, or something very like it. Is it actually a saxotar - that most reviled of Oldfield gimmicks (though I've never reviled it myself)? Well whatever it is, it is absolutely the right thing, there, at that moment, that the music needs. A real saxophone would have missed the mark completely. This weeping sound seems so perfectly evocative of the simultaneous grandeur and poignancy of the snowy owl's existence, forever sweeping, weeping, through the night, and into the snow cavern. It was worth Mike discovering the saxotar for this piece of music alone. It's absolutely, artistically, the most right, the most perfect thing to do: to place it here, at the perfect moment.
It seems to me that this is one of the glories of art - or at least, good art. You think you've got it sorted - maybe dismissed; then all it takes is a new insight, a new way of looking or listening, and bang - out of the window go all your preconceptions, and in fly a host of new, life-enriching experiences. It's also a lesson in humility. I was so sure that Light and Shade was one of the worst albums Mike's ever done. But I think I was wrong. I don't think it's one of his greatest - there's too much computer-generated formula for that - but now I can accept it for what it is, I can see there's a lot to enjoy in it. This is one of those occasions when it's just great to discover I was wrong.
|
