Cavalier (Lost Version)
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Joined: Nov. 2010 |
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Posted: May 03 2013, 20:42 |
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Here follows the text of the booklet. No reading any further if you are planning on a purchase and want to discover things for yourself. Its another nicely-designed affair, but it's not without its hiccups. That is the law for MO re-releases... 
MIKE OLDFIELD MOONLIGHT SHADOW
WHEN MIKE OLDFIELD skipped out on stage at the Olympic Park in Stratford, on 27th July 2012, it marked his first major live concert performance in his home country for over a decade. However, this was no ordinary show: Oldfield's music had been personally selected by Danny Boyle to play a central part in Isles of Wonder, his specially created work for the Opening Ceremony of the 30th Olympic Games.
In front of an estimated global audience of a billion (not to mention the 80,000 in the stadium), Oldfield opened with the legendary Tubular Bells before he and his band lifted off into the incredible 'Tubular Bells Swing' section which, as many will recall, accompanied the staff and patients of Great Ormond Street Hospital doing some remarkable choreography. Add into that a newly-composed material to signal the arrival of the flying Mary Poppins, a spirited rendition of his 1975 Top Five single 'In Dulci Jubilo', and the beautifully wistful closing coda, and the world heard eleven-and-a-half minutes of premium Oldfield. It was an extroadinary night to begin an extraordinary Olympics, and it was a marvelous overview of a career of extraordinary music.
Mike Oldfield is one of the most significant and influential figures in popular music. His multi-instrumental skills and delicate, intricate compostions have endeared him to fans the world over. His 1973 debut album, Tubular Bells is among the very best-selling suites of music of all time, and each of his following 24 albums in a 40 year career take a similar, singular innovative path.
It all began, of course, with Tubular Bells, his world-renowned calling card. At once complex, deft, attacking and soothing, Oldfield's music seemed to appear as if from nowhere and, in a era where the long-playing album was king, offered listeners a glimpse of some higher melodic plain. The album became a phenomenon especially after William Friedkin adopted the opening theme and used it with it with great effect in his 1973 film The Exorcist.
Like all overnight successes, Oldfield, for one so young, already had history. Born in Reading in 1953, Oldfield had learned to play his guitar by the age of ten, and subsequently appeared on the local folk circuit. With his older sister, Sally, he signed to Transatlantic Records as the Sallyangie and recorded the album Children Of The Sun when he was 14. This in turn led to his association with the mercurial Kevin Ayers, who invited Oldfield to join his band, The Whole World.
After playing bass and occasionally lead guitar with Ayers, Oldfield met 22-year-old Richard Branson, while he was visiting the Manor Recording Studios in Oxfordshire; Branson offered him a chance to record and eventually release the music he had been working on on Branson's new record label, Virgin. It was a magical experience. "Everything on Tubular Bells was done on the first take," Oldfield was to say. "It was lovely, so spontaneous. I had such a long time to prepare it, and just one little chance to do it, and now I listen to it and it has a lovely spontaneous energy. It's got mistakes, and I could easily have cut them out, but I left them on." For a piece of music so discrete, so spiritual and ethereal, Tubular Bells (originally entitled Opus One) grew out of nights of gigging in venues around the UK, taxi rides home from London's Liverpool Street station and time spent in his family home on the fringes of London's suburbs.
Tubular Bells became a cultural event; it started with the underground, and then, over the course of a year, became a talking point, and then a phenomenon. It was as ubiquitious in 70s living rooms as Parker Knoll reclining chairs and Artex ceilings. Influential DJ John Peel, for one, loved it, saying "Without borrowing anything from established classics or descending into the discords, squeals and burps of the determinedly avant-garde, Mike Oldfield has produced music which combines logic with surprise, sunshine with rain." Tubular Bells won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Compostion and, at that point, Oldfield could have done anything he wanted to. He did.
He retreated to the English/Welsh borders and made two further suites of pastoral British music: Hergest Ridge (which replaced Tubular Bells at No. 1 in the UK album charts in 1974), and one of his personal favourites, the world music influenced Ommadawn. The Guardian was to the point in its praise for him. He was, without question: "The most important popular composer of the decade."
After the Incantations and Platinum albums, as the 70s turned into the 80s, Oldfield was working with a band, blending his longer, complex works with effortless, effervescent folk-tinged pop songs. Oldfield left Virgin in the early 90s and had a successful spell with Warner Brothers where he delivered a long-awaited sequel to Tubular Bells to enormous acclaim. Signing subsequently to Mercury, he recorded 2005's Light + Shade, and a double album that was divided into trance-based upbeat tracks, and shimmering, ethereal downtempo pieces. In 2008 he recorded Music Of The Spheres, his first fully-fledged classical work.
Oldfield was, by now, living, in his own words, a Robinson Crusoe-like existence in the Bahamas, taking great care curating his back catalogue which was being released in installments on Mercury. It was then he received the call form Danny Boyle. And so, in July 2012, Oldfield returned to the UK after years of semi-retirement to play his significant role in Isles of Wonder, the remarkable and much-loved opening ceremony to the London Olympic Games. Oldfield's personally-selected compilation, Two Sides accompanied and celebrated his performance.
At the time of writing, Oldfield is working on his first new album since Music Of The Spheres; early listens suggest a blazing new addition to his catalogue; short sharp rock songs and beautiful ballads, all adding more depth and texture to his remarkable legacy.
Mike Oldfield has always followed his heart with his music; whether it be his groundbreaking suites (such as one of his very favourite works, 1989's Amarok); snappy pop songs (his Top 4 UK hit, 'Moonlight Shadow' for one) or even his fun asides. ('In Dulci Jubilo,' the JS Bach tune so strikingly arranged that it has become a perennial Christmas favourite). It is all or nothing: it has always been about the music and its beauty.
This 16-track overview serves as a compelling introduction to Mike Oldfield's work - from the still-breathtaking introduction of Tubular Bells to 'Aurora' from Music Of The Spheres. Moonlight Shadow: The Collection contains some of the most remarkable and timeless compostions to emerge from the UK.
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