Herbie Tony Hancock

There are not many bits of music that come with a leaflet describing a good walk these days but of course Hergest Ridge is different from most pieces of music. HR is the immediate successor to the phenomenally successful Tubular Bells and is a complete change of direction. It's mellower feel is due to its composer rushing off to escape the pressures of being a hit maker and living in a leaky hut in Herefordshire/Wales - maybe it wasn't a leaky hut but it was long way from Chelsea. Of course I have been manipulated into buying yet another version of something I already had several copies of - tape - vinyl - low-level CD first issue etc but even to my increasingly poor ears, these new copies of Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn have a sparkly quality that overrides anything that went before.

I listened to the new Hergest Ridge Remix last night and was having trouble recognising it as the same recording that I knew - there were instruments that were not just low in the mix in the original that were now bashing away over the top but some that I am sure were not there at all first time around. There was a nicely modern-sounding bit of discordant echo over the top of the ethereal tin-whistles and drones that starts the piece which had me reeling with the unfamiliarity of it all. I was in the chaotic cusp between loving it and dismissing it as an imposter. However, in the end its wonderful clarity was beautiful and I was sold.

So next there I was ripping it to mp3, studying the wealth of extra material and deciding to give the included "Original Mix" a go. Strange - it seemed the same as the new mix - maybe a little less strident but all those strange echoes and things were there at various levels. What's up here. To cut out a lot of Googling, it turns out that the familiar mix I was comparing it to is not the original but instead the version from Boxed which Mike Oldfield had decreed was the definitive mix to use on all releases subsequently. He has only bowed to the bootleg pressure on this release and given us back what was on the original vinyl all those years ago. And now I have a three way - split - the new mix is sparkling (with some glaring over-emphasised elements) - the boxed mix is ambient - everything way down in a strange ocean of sound - and the original mix is new to me - a completely new take that was sitting around on Internet bootlegs for years already.

Oh - and there is Ommadawn as well.