#9.....

OK I have struggled here: the thing is, in the ongoing sedate mid-life crisis that Minty & I are sharing like two teenagers who have just bought a tape-to-tape deck, I have a problem.  My biggest musical influence, indeed the 'spiritual food' that held me up until I found real Bread and real Water, was the impractically long sound-paintings of Mike Oldfield.  And that's the problem:  given we listen to these albums in snatches on Spotify, an hour-long track is a push.

So I have cheated here - I'm giving two albums BUT only one of them counts: it's your choice.  Here's the one I wanted to choose but is probably impossible to listen to in a week because it is an hour-long track - which means Spotify can't interrupt with adverts, but neither can you listen to a bit, log out and come back later and carry on.

Amarok was Oldfield's penultimate album for Virgin, before he got his life back.  And he managed to persuade them to let him do his own thing, rather than what Virgin had been demanding for some time.  The first really long, real-instrument work for years.  The problem is he does seem to have wanted to fit it into an hour: and with all those years of pent-up ideas ready to flow, he shouldn't have edited down to an hour, but let the themes develop.  However, I love it.  it is very silly - but exuberant: a return to classic Oldfield, but sadly possibly the last time it would really happen.  After this the long slow sale of his instruments and the slide into electronica began.  By the way, some of the odd bits are clues:  there was a prize buried somewhere in Britain, and the album sleeve and the music contained the directions.  Sadly, Virgin never bothered to tell anyone...

In some ways, Amarok was a future echo of Ommadawn (the cover is a giveaway).  And here is the alternative if one hour long track is too much: Tubular Bells 3, which is TB reimagined.  So reimagined that many critics said it was only the name that had anything to do with the original.  Not so:  we anoraks will tell you it's all here - from the shout of Piltdown man, to the frantic bass-work from the end of TB1 reappearing in the closing sequence of this one.  And it's split into smaller tracks.  I wasn't looking forward to TB via Ibiza, but actually I think he did pretty well (even if Man in the rain is shamelessly Moonlight Shadow with different words).