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Topic: Most Complete Album ?< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
tarquincat Offline




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Posted: Mar. 10 2017, 11:41

Quiet on the board lately after the Return to Ommadawn flurry.

My point for discussion:

Whilst the full long form, more acoustic albums are his career defining albums, is Crisis Mike Oldfield's most complete album ?

1 - It has a long form instrumental
2 - It has pop/rock songs including probably his biggest hit single complete with video
3 - It has strong collaborations
4 - Album line up is pretty well the line up for his main touring years
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larstangmark Offline




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Posted: Mar. 11 2017, 04:21

You have a point, and I probably would agree if it wasn't for the inclusion of two IMO sub-par songs; Taurus III and Shadow on the Wall.
Taurus III is like the definition of b-side material and Shadow on the Wall is cartoonish in a way that I'm not cool with at all. Mike stepped into this territory on Discovery too, but in a more sensible way (love the hard rocking video clip too!;).

Apart from that, you could be right. The title track is well crafted and almost like a bookend over ten years of instrumental compositions. Foreign Affair, Moonlight Shadow and High Places are succesful pop-songs with elaborate guitar solos, vibraphones and incantation-ish repetition. Mike takes his instrumental music and moulds it into short form in a good way (better than what he did with QE2 IMO).

Theoretically Islands does the same thing, but the writing is weak.


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"There are twelve people in the world, the rest are paste"
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First_Excursion Offline




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Posted: Mar. 12 2017, 06:58

Quote (larstangmark @ Mar. 11 2017, 04:21)
Foreign Affair, Moonlight Shadow and High Places are succesful pop-songs with elaborate guitar solos, vibraphones and incantation-ish repetition.

Agreed. Moonlight Shadow was especially great for Mike, I'm not a huge fan but it got an 80's audience to buy the album on it's strength and surely lots of those buyers actually gave the long instrumental a good listen.

In High Places and Foreign Affair really do it for me.

I remember being optimistic about the move to a side-long instrumental balanced by shorter pieces on the other side; some of which, with the right amount of strong collaboration could potentially be appealing to the masses.

I wanted it to be worthwhile for Mike to keep making great music and for the publishers to keep sending it to this backwater and that seemed like an elegant compromise.

Personally I'll gladly take a double album with four sides of manic, indulgent, uninhibited exploration; but by 1980 it obviously wasn't going to be sustainable forever; riding the ripples of the LSD revolution like that.

Think Discovery could have been a contender for "most complete" in the sense we are considering, had it stuck closer to the evolving format. Islands did revisit that approach but I agree with larstangmark, that nothing on it is really that strong.

In the end, Platinum, FMO and Crises arguably fit best into this discussion. I lean towards the dangerous rocks of FMO, but I love the brash experimentation of Platinum and the air conditioned cool of Crises.   :p
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dazzler Offline




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Posted: Jan. 19 2018, 08:25

Good discussion.

And I agree with most of the arguments so far.

I think Discovery did slightly better on the song-side.
Five outstanding tracks with vocal sharing of Barry and Maggie.
Synthesizers, guitars and drums are completely in balance.

Maybe if Mike had eloborated The lake into a full side composition,
Discovery could have been his most complete album.

Remember that b-side In the Pool also plays with the water theme.

I think Saved by the Bell was the weakest link on Discovery.
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