Sentinel_NZ
Group: Members
Posts: 168
Joined: June 2021 |
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Posted: Oct. 01 2023, 19:28 |
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| Quote (larstangmark @ Sep. 30 2023, 05:14) | | Quote (Sentinel_NZ @ Sep. 29 2023, 23:56) | | The only thing more remarkable is that 2 years later, Oldfield produced an even better album with Tubular Bells 2, and then almost outdid that yet again with The Songs of Distant Earth; and then produced yet another work of peerless mastery in Tubular Bells 3 and was also able to produce two more masterpieces (Voyager and The Millennium Bell) all within the same decade. |
I have a hard time understanding why anyone likes those albums, but apparently there are plenty of people who do.
The "early stages" demo showed promise, but TB2 is probably the most disappoint record I have ever bought. It's car commercial music from start to finnish ("sentinel" is good car commercial music though). It's a better composition than Amarok of course, but then of course it's based on an older album. If the first side is dull, the second side is worse. Generic library music and musical jokes that seem aimed at you grandma. The whole album sounds like TB2 re-imagined by coke-fueled marketing executives.
TSODE was the first Mike Oldfield record I bought and immediately sold. If the overly breathy "chanting" was grating on the ears on TB2, the ethnokitch of TSODE is shocking. Is this the same man who once used ethnic instrumentation to create inventive rock music, that is now basing sounds around jojk samples. This is Mike at the same creative low that Tangerine Dream visited with "Goblin's Club" a year later.
Let's not mention the amount of reverb that is using on his guitar at this point, which makes it sounds like he's doubting his own playing abilities.
TB3? I haven't listened that closely, but from what I've heard it sounds like music made specifically for a mid late 90s inauguration event - made to impress and create awe in the moment - and instantly forgettable. Add the fact that Mike didn't seem to have the balls to release and all instrumental album and stand by it - so he tried to embed a Moonlight Shadow-clone in the suite, while pretending that it was an essential part of the composition. It's like replacing the middle section of "Close to the Edge" with a "owner of a lonely heart"-soundalike, and claim that it's what meant to be like that to begin with.
NP:
David Bedford - instructions for angels |
Tubular Bells II is comfortably the greatest popular/rock era album of any genre,by anyone - utterly sublime, a profound and unparalleled masterpiece from the opening note to the last. It makes the original TB, good as it is, sound like a child scraping their nails on a blackboard. Comparing Tubular Bells 1 to Tubular Bells II is like comparing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, said to have been composed by Mozart aged 4 (an apocryphal story, no doubt), to his magisterial 40th Symphony.
The Songs of Distant Earth is only slightly behind Tubular Bells II. 5 minutes of The Songs of Distant Earth - still by far the best of its kind - is worth a million hours of the kitchy, faux-ethno 90s world fusion music such as Enigma (albeit they did produce a few stunning and brilliant tracks such as The Return to Innocence), Deep Forest etc. And Mike worked with Michael Cretu way back in the 80s meaning they were on the same page since day one. Just because Enigma released Cross of Changes a year before Songs of Distant Earth doesn't mean a thing. Oldfield had been building up to that particular style since his very earliest days, as can be heard (and seen in the video) on The Wind Chimes, released a full three years before Enigma's debut album, and also arguably on The Killing Fields soundtrack. The African chanting heard at the end of Amarok was also produced and released 6 months before Enigma's first album (MCMXC a.D.) (Amarok released May 28 1990, MCMXC a.D. released December 3 1990 - thus Oldfield beat them to it by a clear 6 months and that's even disregarding The Wind Chimes from 1987. Therefore those who complain that Mike Oldfield was imitating world music pioneers with The Songs of Distant Earth are quite mistaken - he himself is/was the real pioneer of the genre, at least on a par with Michael Cretu, working together as they did on the song The Time Has Come, from Islands in 1987). In short, The Songs of Distant Earth is an exhilarating, organic, stunning, original, unsurpassed cosmic sonic journey, the absolute first and last word in the world music/fusion genre, easily among the greatest albums of all time by anyone, any genre, in the popular era, never mind just in the 90s electronic/ambient house genre to which it also belongs.
And lest we forget, Tubular Bells III is also, for its own part, one of the greatest albums of all time, by anyone, an unforgettable triumph. The premiere concert at Horse Guard Parade is also among the great concert films (alongside the premiere of Tubular Bells II - both of which make "Stop Making Sense" or "The Last Waltz" look and sound amateurish) Man in the Rain is one the greatest and most beautiful rock/pop songs of the 90s (even though it was composed in the early 80s, around the same time as Moonlight Shadow or a couple of years after), a bonafide slice of ethereal heaven, as good as any pop/rock record produced by anyone of that era or any other. Don't even utter the name of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" - workmanlike rocker that it is - in the same breath as the exquisite "Man in the Rain"...! And I'm not just saying so out of bias. My personal record collection consists of over 2000 CD and vinyl albums , 50,000 digital tracks both legally purchased from iTunes and picked up in various places, and assorted other discs and files spanning every genre, century and decade from classical to the present day.
And yet you want to judge a record like Tubular Bells III while openly admitting that you haven't even having listened to it. Lol...what more needs to be said? You describe something as "forgettable", having not even (properly) listened to it. But how can you forget something that you've never heard?
The fact that Oldfield could also produce Voyager, The Millennium Bell, and Amarok - as well as Guitars, which is also a very fine album - all in the one decade of the 90s makes it without doubt his finest decade and arguably the greatest single decade of musical output by one artist ever, with possible rivalry from say The Beatles (although there is great doubt that they composed all or even half or even a fraction of the music attributed to them), Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall all in the space of 6 short years).
As for Yes, I should take this opportunity to plug their finest work - the epic "Lift Me Up" from 1991 (the full 6 minute version especially) - which is among the most criminally underrated rock anthems of the ages. Most people even many Yes fans aren't familiar with that track.
Of course, Mike knew well in advance that not everyone is capable of appreciating his singular genius. Hence the note found in the packaging for Amarok which read "HEALTH WARNING – This record could be hazardous to the health of cloth-eared nincompoops. If you suffer from this condition, consult your doctor immediately". This warning could, evidently, equally apply to Tubular Bells II & III, The Songs of Distant Earth, and so on, just as much as to Amarok.
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