Ambient Guitars

Ever the sonic experimentalist, Mike Oldfield uses guitars exclusively (strummed, plucked, struck, sampled, etc.) to create every sound on Guitars. Perhaps an intentional response to the composer's previous assortment of electronic recordings, the album suffers from its form-over-substance concept…

Mike Oldfield's groundbreaking album Tubular Bells is arguably the finest conglomeration of off-centered instruments concerted together to form a single unique piece…

The third volume in Virgin's Ambient series doesn't change the game much; there are a few newer acts sprinkled amongst the two-disc set (FSOL, William Orbit, Bark Psychosis) but the main focus here is on classic ambient masters (Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, David Sylvian, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Harold Budd) and quieter selections from Virgin artists who wouldn't normally be classified this way (Prince Far I, Holger Czukay, Shu-De, Bill Laswell, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan). The result is another fine collection, a must have album for any eclectic music lover.

Terra Ambient create a vibrant collection of themes, setting from approaches near to Ambient Tribal, and exploring various melodic and symphonic in a very imaginative manner. Some of the melodies present in the album have a suggestive epic air typical of a swords and sorcery story. To this magic, mysterious touch specially contributes the very successful combination among unearthly atmospheres generated by the synthesizers and the acoustic textures with an archaic taste such as those present in the percussion. In fact, for some of the sampled sounds the artist has counted on the help of Michael Stearns. Another additional collaboration is the one by Jeff Pearce, who has participated with additional guitars in the theme "The Ghost in Me".