Oldfield, Mike

Artist: Mark Jenkins
P: 2023
"TUBULAR BELLS FOR THE MOOG SYNTHESIZER" has been updated and expanded for the 50 Year anniversary of Mike Oldfield's original instrumental rock classic.MARK JENKINS covers the whole of the original classic with a huge variety of sounds from Moog and other hardware and software synths, plus piano, voice and percussion. The Hornpipes section is extended with themes from Blue Peter and Captain Pugwash, STEVE JOLLIFFE (ex-Tangerine Dream) is MC, while DAVE GATE from Hyberus is the Caveman.

Artist: Mike Oldfield
P: 1990
After the execrable Earth Moving, Mike Oldfield conceived the project Amarok as a sort of Ommadawn II, and produced an album that is probably his best since the original Ommadawn. Utilizing his multi-instrumental talent, Oldfield plays an extraordinary variety of instruments, as well as numerous ordinary items such as a toothbrush, chairs and a toy dog. The whole thing is contained in a single sixty-minute track of undulating music.
Amarok continues the world music style of Ommadawn, exploring a larger portion of the globe for new sounds. Of course, the term "world music" didn't exist in 1975, but if it did it would probably have meant Uillean pipes, Arabic drums, perhaps a shawm or oud, and a sitar. These days, despite being criticized as being "ethnic music without the tricky bits," world music has at least discovered Sub-Saharan Africa, and Oldfield uses some Zulu-inspired chanting very effectively late on this album. Another highlight is the flamenco-inspired music about twenty minutes in, with its insistent clapped beat and unresolved tension.
On the topic of the sound effects here most are superfluous. The fake firecrackers are probably the most effective, but they still sound a little too fake. The sound of Mike Oldfield brushing his teeth as a rhythm does absolutely nothing for me. The Margaret Thatcher impersonator was almost certainly funny at the time, but grows tiresome on successive listenings.
Musically, Mike Oldfield does little dispel the "ethnic music without the tricky bits" criticism, as he only really scratches the surface of other musical cultures. He usually takes the superficial elements such as a rhythm and melody, plays them on an appropriate instrument, then builds up the track to turn it into pure Mike Oldfield. Which is as good a reason as any to buy this album. This album abounds with ideas, borrowed and otherwise, and is executed with a great deal of skill, despite the occasional gratuitous sound effect, or silly jumping from speaker to speaker.
The Mike Oldfield trademarks of heavy, thoughtful multi-tracking and fluid guitar work are both present, and as good here as they are anywhere. There seems to be a renewed enthusiasm for the possibilities of a recorded album that brings Amarok to the same level of quality as Oldfield's earliest albums.
This is a must-have for Mike Oldfield fans.

2005. Conrad Leviston

Artist: Mike Oldfield
P: 2004
Best of...

Artist: Mike Oldfield
P: 2004
All of his Virgin single promo films are included on the package along with the very rare 2nd House BBC TV performance of "Tubular Bells Part 1", which featured Steve Hillage and Mick Taylor amongst others. The bonus material includes "Wind Chimes" which is the virtual reality video album of the "Islands LP" featuring the tracks "The Wind Chimes", "North Point", "Islands", "The Time Has Come", "Flying Star"t and "Magic Touch". "Space Movie" shows "Incantations Part 1" set to archive footage of N.A.S.A. and Soviet rocket flights. Also included is the original EPK for the first edition of CD best of "Elements".

Here the last copy!

Artist: Mike Oldfield
P: 1999
This 1999 album--appropriately titled, as it happens--offers nothing less than a showcase for that facility and for Oldfield's two distinctive styles of playing: his very clean, heavily compressed Stratocaster sound and his busier, more contemplative acoustic work, where his technique (flawless as ever) betrays the influence of classical guitar, English folk and flamenco.
Overdubbing madly, Oldfield creates his usual array of sketches and longer pieces--though modesty forbids him from claiming true axe-hero status: "It's dead easy," he's demurred, "because it's all just hammering. If you learn a basic claw-hammer technique from folk picking, you can do all the stuff I do."

Artist: Mike Oldfield
P: 2014
Man On The Rocks was produced by Stephen Lipson together with Oldfield. The album features bassist Leland Sklar, drummer John Robinson, keyboardist Matt Rollings, guitarist Michael Thompson and singer Luke Spiller together with Oldfield himself on guitar. The backing tracks were recorded during June 2013 in Studio D of Village Studios, Los Angeles with Lipson. Oldfield has also recorded part of the album in his home studio in the Bahamas.
This is the 2 CD Deluxe Edition with new versions of the tracks on the 2nd CD.

This is the last copy! Second hand! CDs are mint, Cover has signs of wear.

Artist: Mike Oldfield
P: 2008
Mike Oldfield has always been famed for his unconventional approach to music. Throughout his career he has consistently broken musical boundaries, and with Music of the Spheres he continues to do so. Taking influences from Holst and Rachmaninov as much as Steve Reich or William Orbit, this piece is classical in nature, but yet is also immediately identifiable as classic Mike Oldfield. Using a full concert orchestra and choir, and with solo parts from Mike himself on guitar, legendary soprano Hayley Westenra and renowned pianist Lang Lang, this is a work with huge emotional and musical scope. The title of the piece is a reference to something that Mike feels strongly: that all music should aim to represent the spriritual, or otherworldly elements of life: something beyond the mundane and everyday. In this he has clearly succeeded. Music of the Spheres is by turns epic, tender, mournful and triumphant. It is the work of a composer who above all can make beautiful and substantial music, regardless of genre or instrumentation.

Artist: Mike Oldfield
P: 2017
Back to the roots, Mike Oldfield plays all the instruments alone again.
 

Artist: Mike Oldfield
P: 1984 / 2016
The Killing Fields was a powerful movie of this place and time, made just 5 years or so after the actual fall of the Khmer Rouge. The movie tells the story of Dith Pran (played to perfection by the late Haing S. Ngor, a doctor who also had lived through the real events), his friendship with an American journalist, and his attempts to navigate and survive through the brutal reality surrounding him. The soundtrack to the film was composed by Mike Oldfield. Composing music that can sufficiently and appropriately match up with such raw content must be an exhausting task, and I have to say I respect Oldfield just for rising to the challenge. As it turns out, the process of composing this soundtrack would prove difficult for him in other ways, particularly in having to meet the needs of director Roland Joffé.

Artist: Mike Oldfield
P: 1999
Berlin welcomes the new millennium with the world's most spectacular light show, set to the timeless music of Mike Oldfield performing live in concert. The sky above Berlin turns into a unique pyramid of light, with more than half a million spectators experiencing this superlative show at the foot of Berlin's beautiful Victory Column. Oldfield performs several of his legendary classics, including "Tubular Bells," "Moonlight Shadow" and "Shadow on the Wall," as well as the premiere of his album, The Millennium Bell, climaxing in the special "Art in Heaven." Also featuring the State Orchestra and the Glinka State Choir of St. Petersburg, this amazing event of art, culture and music commemorates the start of the new millennium in spectacular style!