Charts: UK #1, AUS #12, AUT #4, GER #7, NL #15, SPA #1, SWE #18, SWI #19. GER: Gold; UK: 2x Platinum; Spain: 5x Platinum.
And here it is: Mike Oldfield phase three, all fresh and shiny and with a new record company ready to promote him. Ironically, Virgin had hounded him for more than a decade to produce a sequel to ‘Tubular Bells’, but he held out, having become increasingly angry at their treatment of him. WEA were the happy recipients of what must have been a marketer’s dream. For once the buying public got it exactly right, for this is even better than the stellar original.
Every note here is crafted with loving care: unlike 1973, Mike Oldfield had the time and the money to make it sound exactly the way he wanted. And even before ‘Sentinel’, his reworking of the famous opening theme, is half-finished, you know he’s got it exactly right. Smooth as cream, deep as a well, cool as cavewater. His guitars never sounded so good. The timbre of his acoustic makes me want to weep, and his crying electric fills each track with pathos. Trevor Horn helped produce the album, and his legendary behind-the-desk ability makes this an audiophile’s treat.
This is not a copy of the original. He finally did that in 2003. This is a free reinterpretation, with each piece reflecting the mood of the original, but the tunes and rhythms altered or even completely different. Here we have a decade’s worth of creativity sandwiched into one album. Individual tracks are given names here, giving the various parts a personality, and he’s polished each one until it shines. ‘Sentinel’ begins with nice but nondescript piano – a tease, everyone’s expecting the famous notes – and here they come. But the track is much more than just the piano theme. He drenches it in the most beautiful liquid guitar, with ominous chords filling the background. Female vocalists – just the right side of cheesy – guide us through the track, along with bass with a vibrato sound straight out of CHRIS SQUIRE’S notebook. We even have our first sighting of the famous bells, underlining the climax to the track. Oh yes. This is real music, not just a money-making exercise.
(full version: classicrockreview.wordpress.com/2021/06/27/mike-oldfield-tubular-bells-2/)