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Topic: Saxophone ruins "Misty"< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
smillsoid Offline




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Posted: April 14 2009, 14:41

Yes - let's keep this thing going!!!

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New Incantation Offline




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Posted: Mar. 10 2010, 03:02

After repeated plays over the years I have come to appreciate the "sax" sounds in Misty. It is no longer a distraction, but just adds to the overall depth & energy within the piece.

It's always worth persevering with any new sound that Mike offers us in his music: some sounds capture the mind straight away for some, while other sounds initially grate & distract and can turn a person right off the album completely.

But its always worth giving Mike a second, third or even forth chance to appreciate what he is trying to convey through musical experimentation
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HR lover Offline




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Posted: Feb. 14 2011, 16:49

Lol the sax is the only thing I actually like about misty  :D

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Cavalier (Lost Version) Offline




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Posted: April 30 2011, 11:49

When the likes of the Daily Mail and Daily Express are reaching for their stock phrases for outrage at some misdemeanour or expense incurred by a UK broadcaster, their commentators and columnists are rarely troubled if they use descriptions not current for a decade or more, that their readers may share their disgust and declaim "that's typical of the BBC/ITV/Channel 4" etc.

So it is for Channel 5, which for current occasional visitors to our shores would seem to be largely filled with Australian soaps, populist documentaries, overnight roulette, and most prominently American crime dramas: all the variations of Law & Order and C.S.I. as well as my favourite, NCIS.  But in its dark and seedy past, late Friday evenings (and some others) were filled with erotic content :O, which is what the aforementioned hacks hope is what you'll still instantly associate the channel with.

Accordingly, I give you my memories of the Daily Express review of Tr3s Lunas, from a time when such programming was being fazed out.  I've not found this review on the internet yet, and I don't have it to hand.  It might be that I still have the paper or the page somewhere; it's more likely that I just remember reading it (like the same chronicle's so-so review of Islands - she did think that The Wind Chimes built up to a satisfyingly epic ending, or something like that).  This reviewer was also not entirely convinced by Mike's efforts and Misty's sax effect was one aspect that drew a comment.  I regret to say that they considered that it made it all sound like a Channel 5 soft-porn film.

Now I was as male and straight then as I am now, so I can certainly tell you that of some of the evenings that I was in to catch these programmes, their saxophone observation holds true.  Not necessarily for the showings of British "sex comedies" from the seventies, where its emphasis was largely for comic effect (I really ought to make that "alleged" comic effect, should anyone reading expect to crack a smile watching some of them).  But in the seemingly endless supply of largely American films (I do remember one had South African accents) where scenes of exposed flesh were not necessarily curtailed for artisitc reasons.  I haven't (and this is not a plea to start them again!;) seen any for years but I can't imagine that one foreign broadcaster not buying rights to show these films has stopped them being made.  So countless good-looking people with flash houses and nice cars are still losing sleep over "The Account", and distracting themselves futher by murdering or solving murders, and by retiring to various palatial properties with views of the Californian coast, accompanied by other good-looking, murdering/investigating individuals, where they find more excuses to lose sleep.  And to help keep us awake as well, the director's musical instrument of choice is the sax - tenors and altos, I always presumed - sometimes in a romantic, loving sense but oh-so-often as a  "she's a good-looking murderer!  Or is she...?" device.  My sentence constuction will get me a longer term than murder if I'm not careful...

Misty doesn't conjure up these images for me, but sometimes the review comes to mind and I remember what they were getting at.  I don't think it's a bad artificial sound, and it's as strong an opener to an album as Angelique is.  For me, both tracks would be more highly regarded if they were fanfares to lots of other brillant tracks, instead of just a few.  And no absolute barnstormers. :/


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"That was Venger - the force of Evil!  I am Dungeon Master - your guide in the realm of Dungeons & Dragons!"
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nightspore Offline




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Posted: April 30 2011, 18:54

Quote (Cavalier (Lost Version) @ April 30 2011, 11:49)
 I regret to say that they considered that it made it all sound like a Channel 5 soft-porn film.

And "The Spirit is Watching"  :laugh:
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Delfín Offline




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Posted: June 07 2011, 20:19

That chant is Maggie Reilly singing with a lot of processes and effects on her voice, and dubbedtwice or three times. Not a sample or the Fairlight. It also has lyrics (nonsense ones, as he liked to do at that period).

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HR lover Offline




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Posted: Feb. 25 2012, 23:30

Quote
I regret to say that they considered that it made it all sound like a Channel 5 soft-porn film.


You know I have that same feeling. I engorged myself :D in one of those pornos myself and to my amazement it sounded quite like Mike Oldfield, it even had this statue on the background that felt like it was out of Tres Lunas the game.


Life is funny.

I like Misty though I think it's one of the better tracks of Tres Lunas. Although the sax doesn't quite fit in I really do like the sound. So what if it sounds like MIDI, that is not necessarily a bad thing. Early video game music can be fantastic, and sometimes a crude sound can even make it sound better.

Some other tracks on Tres Lunas can be a little bit too much and cheap. The woman's voice sometimes sounds like cheap like those anthemic euro-trance songs.


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nightspore Offline




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Posted: Feb. 26 2012, 01:10

Quote (HR lover @ Feb. 25 2012, 23:30)
You know I have that same feeling. I engorged myself :D in one of those pornos myself and to my amazement it sounded quite like Mike Oldfield, it even had this statue on the background that felt like it was out of Tres Lunas the game.

A friend of mine (  :laugh: ) has a gay porno called Hot Tears (it's German), and there's one piano melody in it that reminds me very much of MO - full of that sense of beautiful, transcendent loss.

Just checked - it's available from Excalibur films  :O  :laugh:
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larstangmark Offline




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Posted: Feb. 26 2012, 06:05

What is it about Mike Oldfield and porn? I'm thinking of the MO lookalike that starred in a mid 70s porn film set to the soundtrack of Ommadawn.
:laugh:


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nightspore Offline




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Posted: Feb. 26 2012, 06:56

What was it called, Lars? Presumably not Ommaporn...  :D

... And how was "On Horseback" managed?  ;)
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Scatterplot Offline




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Posted: Mar. 02 2012, 23:07

Misty was the name of a squadron of F100f two seater jets during the vietnam war. These guys would fly further north than the O2's looking for enemy and equipment moving south on the ho chi minh trail. Then they would mark their targets with phoshorus tipped rockets and coordinate bomb strikes with F105 Thunderchiefs among others to slow down the traffic. Needless to say, a lot of them got shot down. Glad I was in the USA learning to use fractions at the time. They were some brave sons of bitches.

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Sir Mustapha Offline




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Posted: Mar. 03 2012, 00:03

Quote (HR lover @ Feb. 25 2012, 23:30)
I like Misty though I think it's one of the better tracks of Tres Lunas. Although the sax doesn't quite fit in I really do like the sound. So what if it sounds like MIDI, that is not necessarily a bad thing. Early video game music can be fantastic, and sometimes a crude sound can even make it sound better.

That's a solid point.

Personally, I've sort of managed to pin down exactly my problem with that sound, and it's basically that it seems to me like the addition of sax was not an aesthetic and/or artistic decision, but a mere technological gimmick. I think that, if Mike was really looking for a good sound to use, he would have picked something else -- perhaps a sound that was synthetic but not artificial.


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nightspore Offline




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Posted: Mar. 03 2012, 02:17

If they ever do a remake of Play Misty for Me, they could use Mike's piece instead of the song that Ray Stevens covered.  :cool:
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