Mike Odlfield Hergest

Mike Oldfield, the self-taught guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and producer, is chiefly remembered for his album-length "Tubular Bells" composition, an eerie, fascinating, and conceptual piece that did so much to set the tone for the movie The Exorcist. Oldfield played most of the instruments himself on "Tubular Bells" and it remains, and undoubtedly always will remain, his signature piece, but he's done a lot more than that, exploring styles and musical forms from progressive rock and folk to jazz, ambient, world, pop, and even disco and beyond throughout his maverick recording career. This two-disc set, selected and sequenced by Oldfield himself, provides a nice survey of his shifts and turns, and illustrates the restless and often brilliant way he produces a sound and style that manages to be expansive and insular, popular and eccentric, and sometimes all of these at once…

Oldfield’s ninth studio album Discovery has been newly remastered and will be reissued as an expanded 2CD+DVD deluxe set. The first disc will add five bonus tracks including an extended version of To France, along with B-sides and extra tracks from a 12-inch single…

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…

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…

Following the death of Paul Young and the departure of Paul Carrack, Mike + the Mechanics' only original member, Mike Rutherford, returns with a brand-new lineup for The Road, their first studio album since 2004's Rewired. Perhaps indicative of the talents of their two former vocalists, the former Genesis guitarist has brought in three different frontmen to fill their shoes: Canadian performer Tim Howar, who played Rod Stewart in the musical Tonight's the Night; South African singer/songwriter Arno Carstens, who left during its recording to pursue his solo career; and, most famously, Andrew Roachford, who scored several hits in the late '80s/early '90s with his funk-rock band namesake…

With 1984's Discovery, Mike Oldfield seems to be back on track, utilizing the vocal power of Maggie Reilly and the drum playing of Simon Phillips to create some rather appealing selections. "The Lake" is a simply gorgeous instrumental inspired by Switzerland's Lake Geneva, the location in which the album was recorded, while "To France" is a powerful pop/rock tune based on the life of Mary, Queen of Scots. Both Reilly and Barry Palmer share the vocal duties throughout the tracks, signifying Oldfield's subtle emergence into a more pop-infused atmosphere. "Tricks of the Light" is a wonderful instrumental that relies on the keyboard to give it energy, while even so-so efforts like the title track and "Poison Arrows" come off as upbeat and inspired.