Tubular Bells: Mike Oldfield.

Reviewed by Ken George.

First, a bit of background info. Mike Old-field is to us out here in Enzed a relatively unknown personage, seems to have done a fair bit of studio work, and playing on other people's albums, (Kevin Ayres — Whatevershebringswe-sing), but apart from that and associations with some of the earlier English bands like Soft Machine and others of similar ilk, that seems to be all that is known of him.

From what I have heard Tubular Bells was something he did off his own bat, without getting a record company to back him and set the recording up and all the rest, and when he had finished recording it. (almost every instrument played by Mike Oldfield himself), he took the tapes around a large number of record companies who it seems had never heard of him and didn't want to know about it.

Finally the guy who owns the chain of discount record shops in England by the name of Virgin Records must have either heard about it or been approached, and hey presto — Tubular Bells on the Virgin Records label (the label's first release I believe).

If you've been reading your Melody Maker you'll know the rest. The album rocketed up the charts scattering the most incredible reviews of it as it went — this was it, this was the big one, that was THE album everybody had been waiting for, the album of the decade, a true work of art, pure classicism in rock, and all the rest of the fervour that went with it. On its being released in the States, more or less the same thing happened, even now it is still No 1 in the American album charts.

Anyway, the album.

Well, it's certainly different. One of those "spacey" ones that will sound bloody incredible if you are in that "certain state".

It's one long piece, just Tubular Bells side one and two, and almost entirely instrumental, the only vocal being Viv (Bunzo Dog) Stanshall introducing a scries of instruments on side one, and Mike Oldfield making quote "Piltdown Man" noises on the second side, plus the odd choral bits here and there.

On the first listening it sounds familiar, the reason being that it sounds as if he has taken really gopd sections of melody from hundreds of old singles, albums, and classical pieces, and put them all together. There is a large number of faintly recognisable pieces in it, I'd even swear there is a bit of that hymn "Glorious Things Of Thee Are Spoken" m there. Maybe it's just my imagination.

Incidentally, I have an ugly black sticker on the front of my American copy which says "Now the Original Theme from the Warner Bros Movie 'The Exorcist' ". Thought you might like to know.

It's a hell of a nice LP, but I certainly wouldn't describe it as the "album of the decade" etc. It takes quite a few listens to get used to, and even more to get to like it, there is in many ways no real melody in it, just a series of instruments continually faded in and out, each playing a very simple piece, but in combination and interrelation with others giving overall a very complex sound-picture. Interesting stuff, and if you dug "Lord of the Rings" (the album), you'll get into this in a very big way. It's not exactly free-form, because it's obviously planned; flowing is about the best way to describe it.

In fact the album is really too elusive to write a review of, because it's going to be so much a matter of personal taste; I think most people will like it, because it's nice and pleasant and "airy" not nearly as heavy as Bo Hansson's "Lord of the Rings", which is about the closest thing that I've heard to it, and even then they're quite different.

A sad note to end on — the album was released nearly a year ago in England, but because Virgin Records is such a new label, none of the local companies here obtained the contract to release the record in this country. And since production time for a new LP is about three months, you won't be seeing "Tubular Bells" in your local record shop before August at the earliest.