Hergest Mike Oldfield

Released as another lengthy composition, Hergest Ridge was the album that followed Mike Oldfield's momentous Tubular Bells release, with many of the same instrumental elements and methods employed throughout its two sections. Because of the time of its release, Hergest Ridge was overshadowed by the effects of Oldfield's first album for Virgin, but even so he manages to invoke some interesting patches of music by using instruments like the glockenspiel, sleigh bells, the Lowrey organ, oboes, and a variety of mandolins and guitars to maintain the same type of diversity as Tubular Bells. Symphonic throughout most of the album's two parts, the highlight of Hergest Ridge is Oldfield's use of 90 multi-tracked guitars clustered together to create one of the most unique sounds ever to surface on his albums…

Released as another lengthy composition, Hergest Ridge was the album that followed Mike Oldfield's momentous Tubular Bells release, with many of the same instrumental elements and methods employed throughout its two sections. Because of the time of its release, Hergest Ridge was overshadowed by the effects of Oldfield's first album for Virgin, but even so he manages to invoke some interesting patches of music by using instruments like the glockenspiel, sleigh bells, the Lowrey organ, oboes, and a variety of mandolins and guitars to maintain the same type of diversity as Tubular Bells. Symphonic throughout most of the album's two parts, the highlight of Hergest Ridge is Oldfield's use of 90 multi-tracked guitars clustered together to create one of the most unique sounds ever to surface on his albums…

A curious four-LP set consisting of the original version of Ommadawn, a vastly remixed version of Hergest Ridge, a remixed/remodeled version of Tubular Bells, and a platter called Collaborations in which Oldfield's bits on the recordings of others were excerpted, often with the result that sans context, the excerpts made little sense (certainly the case with Oldfield's work alongside David Bedford)…

A few years back Gonzo released the original soundtrack for Tony Palmer's "The Space Movie" 1979 documentary by Mike Oldfield. It consisted of consists of the un-edited sountrack (movie commentaries and all) which includes pieces from Oldfield's released "Tubular Bells", "Hergest Ridge", "Ommadawn" and "Portsmouth" and also excerpts from what was Oldfield's then-new album, "Incantations". The film also made use of the orchestral arrangements of Oldfield's first two albums, "The Orchestral Tubular Bells" and notably "The Orchestral Hergest Ridge" (with the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra), which has never been released before. And now… The demos.

In 1973, Mike Oldfield burst onto the British music scene with his debut album Tubular Bells, two long instrumental suites in which Oldfield stitched together a series of melodies into a grandly scaled work in which he played the many instruments himself. The album was an audacious beginning to a career than saw him become one of the most respected artists in progressive rock, as well as a successful film composer. The Complete Mike Oldfield is a collection released in 1985 which features selections from his first ten solo albums, as well as highlights from his score for the film The Killing Fields.

Michael Gordon Oldfield (born 15 May 1953) is a British musician, songwriter, and producer best known for his debut studio album Tubular Bells (1973), which became an unexpected critical and commercial success. He is regarded as one of the greatest multi-instrumentalists of all time. Though primarily a guitarist, Oldfield plays a range of instruments, which includes keyboards, percussion, and vocals. He has adopted a range of musical styles throughout his career, including progressive rock, world, folk, classical, electronic, ambient, and new age music.

In 1973, Mike Oldfield burst onto the British music scene with his debut album Tubular Bells, two long instrumental suites in which Oldfield stitched together a series of melodies into a grandly scaled work in which he played the many instruments himself. The album was an audacious beginning to a career than saw him become one of the most respected artists in progressive rock, as well as a successful film composer. The Complete Mike Oldfield is a collection released in 1985 which features selections from his first ten solo albums, as well as highlights from his score for the film The Killing Fields.

Mike Oldfield was back into the extended composition game with Five Miles Out, continuing the "Taurus" series with the mammoth "Taurus II," an entertaining enough romp with references to Irish music, brass bands and Oldfield's beloved Morris. The true standout, though, was the title track, a paean to flying in bad weather that could easily double for Oldfield's feelings about the sort of monumental critical drubbing he was accustomed to receiving. "Family Man" became a huge worldwide hit for Hall & Oates.

After a two-year pause following the release of Boxed, Mike Oldfield returned with a new epic project, this one spread over four vinyl sides and devoted to Native American themes rather than hewing once more toward the Celtic end of the spectrum. Included was Oldfield's musical adaptation of "The Song of Hiawatha," grandiose but empty; there was a nice sense of the dramatic when it came to dynamic range, but no sense of time – the piece ran far too long as Oldfield searched for enough musical ideas to prop the whole thing up. After this, Oldfield avoided album-length concepts for quite some time.

Although it features the beautiful recorder of Leslie Penny and the Chieftains' Paddy Maloney playing the uilean pipe, Ommadawn didn't gain Mike Oldfield the success he was looking for. The album was released in the same year as the David Bedford-arranged Orchestral Tubular Bells and nine months after Oldfield picked up a Grammy award for the original Tubular Bells album. The most pleasing attribute of Ommadawn is its incorporation of both African and Irish music in its symphonic rock & roll mainframe. Boosted by a hearty amount of different horns, piano, cello, trumpet, and synthesizer, the album has its moments of rising action, but the whole of Ommadawn fails to keep its lovely segments around long enough, and there are some rather lengthy instances that include bland runs of unvaried music…