TUBULAR BELLS

Tubular Bells is a masterpiece - a raw project drafted and recorded within record time by a young genius; launched in a formed-for-the-purpose recording company, itself genially led by another ambitious young man. Mike Oldfield and Richard Branson pulled their heads together and the result is an album that competes with itself on two grounds, that of historical importance and musical quality - there are those who state the victory of one factor over the other, but to me, they are both perfectly justified: Tubular Bells is a five- star record, both for quality and influence. Influence even on Mike Oldfield subsequent albums: you cannot cease to hear Tubular Bells in albums so further apart as Hergest Ridge and The Songs of Distant Earth or Ommadawn and Crises (not to mention the whole array of T-Bells derivatives). Sure, that is nothing special about the use of the instrumentation, nothing groundbreaking. But it's the arrangement that matters here (and boy, is Mike good at that - take Voyager, for instance). It's not easy to make a complex, quality piece of music using simple chords and rhythms. Thank God this one worked out great.

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