Mike Oldfield

Six years after the classical Music of the Spheres, Mike Oldfield returns to his version of rock. Man on the Rocks is a slick production that recalls the AOR sounds of the late '70s and early '80s. He plays many instruments here but concentrates mainly on guitar…

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.

Mike Oldfield is a bit of an enigma. On the one hand is the artist who almost single-handedly ushered in the genre of new age music with his epic masterpiece Tubular Bells, and then followed that with several albums, Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn, and even Tubular Bells II and III, all with tracks that invariable meandered for half an hour or more through various musical ideas and soundscapes – and no doubt would have gone on a lot longer had it not been for the constraints of vinyl and the restrictions on the length of musical compositions that would physically fit on two sides of a piece of plastic with micro grooves…

Mike Oldfield's 1973 classic Tubular Bells set a new precedent for soundtrack music, and walked so many different stylistic lines that it appealed to an enormous cross section of the record-buying public. If the original album flirted with prog rock, new age, neo-classical, and what would become ambient music, it only makes sense that 40 years later Tubular Bells and other early Oldfield material (including "Ommadawn") could be re-imagined as beat-driven electronica with Tubular Beats…

Elements represents the many sides of Mike Oldfield, and is a short but interesting journey through some of this multi-instrumentalist's best efforts. Sixteen of his albums are spoken for, with the same number of tracks making up this assortment…

The Essential Mike Oldfield is a good overview of highlights from Mike Oldfield's Virgin and Warner recordings. Some of the tracks are included in their original form, while others – including, inexplicably, "Tubular Bells III" – are present in edited or remixed versions…