Mr Oldfield has had yet another go at Tubular Bells, this time with the "definitive" remix of the original. And I have to say it's beefed up in the extreme, lovely and crisp with emphasis on all the right places .... EXCEPT ... the bells themselves. On the original, they had such power, power derived from using the biggest hammer possible to whack them with (supposedly denting them in the process). But now they sound like ... well how Tubular Bells really do sound - a bit weedy and totally at odds with the expectation built up by Vivian Stanshall's breathy and passionate introduction. B+ is the overall score - the ideal version would be this mix but with the bells from the original. Buy it of course.
To be honest I only got this because I'd finally read Changeling after finding it at the library and as this new set comes with the original demos of TB I thought it would be nice to link the description of their creation with the sounds of the tracks themselves. I'd avoided the book for sometime because I had a sneaking suspicion that Mike Oldfield is actually a bit of a dork and I am sorry to say I was right. However, the description of the recordings was in nice detail and quirky enough to make me finish the whole thing. I would have liked similar detail about Amarok or some of the other later albums but as seems usual with any biography of this sort, there was a lot more about the early years. And, while I applaud Oldfield's involvement with various mental health charities, his self-analysis could have been left out without any consequent loss of interest. He needs a good lesson on Lamarckian Genetics as well but that's another story. Beg, Steal or Borrow* but do not buy.
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