AMAROK

I started reviewing on Prog Archives because as both a prog fan and a musician, I want to study and analyze this genre carefully to see what works and what doesn't. In keeping with this aim--and the Prog Archives rating guidelines which urge people to write extreme reviews sparingly--I've written my last two reviews about albums by all-time favorite artists (namely Dream Theater and Mike Oldfield) to see why I didn't feel they worked musically and learn from those missteps for my own music. But having done that, I want to turn now to one of my favorite albums of all time and outline why I think it's a complete masterpiece of prog rock, New Age, and the Mike Oldfield formula.

I was introduced to Mike Oldfield by my dad at a very young age, and I've always been heavily influenced by his experimental drive and energy as well as his ear for crafting and reinterpreting melodies throughout a 40-80 minute opus. Some say this album tries too hard to rip off Mike Oldfield's former glory from the Tubular Bells and Ommadawn days, and I don't agree at all. Now, Tubular Bells II--THAT was unquestionably a self-ripoff (perhaps deliberately so, in keeping with his frustrations toward Virgin). But while Amarok certainly feels like a return to form, Oldfield doesn't just rehash the formula--he expands upon it, developing parts of the formula that never fully congealed in the classic works and developing his melodic themes more than ever across the 60-minute track.

It's true that this album represents arguably the most prog rock we've gotten from Oldfield since Ommadawn, maybe even Tubular Bells. Not that Oldfield hasn't been prog--but this is the first time in a while that he has genuinely rocked. Between the repetitive New Age drift of Incantations and Crises, the electronica bent of QE2 and Five Miles Out, and the pop leanings of Islands and Earth Moving, it's hard to recall a time when Oldfield's compositions have had so much energy. Here Oldfield achieves a harder rock edge by leaning on his strengths as a multi-instrumentalist, keeping a rawer sound while allowing synths and orchestral hits to provide additional bursts of energy.

The frenetic 19/16 guitar riff in the opening beautifully exemplifies both the instrumental virtuosity of prog and the primal energy of rock. Longtime listeners accustomed to Oldfield's more mellow sounds on Hergest Ridge or Incantations will be shocked by the sudden loud orchestral hits here and on the next section. Me, I find myself head banging to them every time--which is exactly what great rock music should accomplish. There are several sections like this throughout the piece--almost reminiscent of the musique concrete explored by John Lennon in the late 60s, they differ substantially from the sound fans have come to expect from Oldfield. But as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing.

Technically, Amarok consists of a single uninterrupted track, but I find it helpful to divide it into three distinct sections. Part 1 is largely defined by the kind of manic energy mentioned earlier, with heavy use of synth stabs, squealing guitars, and frenetic riffing--this first part continues until the "breathing troubles" section that kicks off part 2. This second part is a bit closer to what Mike Oldfield fans tend to expect, with many sections echoing previous melodic motifs in less discordant ways. For example, the final section of Part 1 has a mandolin riff punctuated by off-tempo percussion, which is reprised in Part 2 as a more typical Mike Oldfield melodic idea. Interspersed in both these parts are some standalone (mostly acoustic) sections that serve to break up the monotony--again, pretty standard for Oldfield's oeuvre. There are videos on YouTube of Oldfield interviews where he plays some of these guitar sections as stand-alone performances--and I think they really demonstrate what a criminally underrated guitarist Mike Oldfield has always been.

As with much of Oldfield's work, there are several melodic motifs that echo throughout the piece. Some highlights include:

-The "mi-re-do-sol" melody that is first developed fully at the end of part 1 and the beginning of part 2, but can subsequently be heard subtly echoed all throughout the album on repeated listens.

-The closely related "intro" and "climax" melodies, introduced as a New Agey type of chant in the first part and eventually reinterpreted as an African choral melody

-The discordant "fast riff" and "mad bit" that occur intermittently throughout more manic sections of the piece.

-The recurring chord structure of I-V-vi-IV-IV-V-I-V

-The "la-ti-do-ti-la-sol" motif introduced early on

-The "sondela" chant in the Roses section, eventually expanded to a full Xhosa chorus.

Compared even to his classic period, Oldfield does a much better job of reinterpreting and expanding on these melodic themes, resulting in an album that feels more cohesive than ever even though it's designed to be as disjointed as possible. For example, while the orchestral hits in the fast riff intro sound jarring at first, repeated listens reveal that they foreshadow the "mi re do sol" motif that appears later in the song.

Then we get to Part 3 of Amarok: the Africa section. Here, Oldfield recruits South African bandleader Julian Bahula, who previously led the Jabula Quartet's performance on "Incantations" backing up the "Song of Hiawatha" sections. Hearing this African group perform a style distinctly in its wheelhouse is a welcome departure from the Incantations appearance, where they were brought in for a Native American-style sound, presumably because "well, they both have tribes and were mercilessly exploited by white settlers... close enough, right?" The result was a confused musical offering that sadly exemplified (maybe even invented) the New Age trope of world music as artsy pretension. By contrast, Amarok really feels like a celebration of the African sound that by that point was actively being platformed in popular music. Nothing about it feels shallow, and it has all the eclectic and compositional energy one expects from Oldfield.

It's also here, at the 48-minute part, that we get to Mike Oldfield's now-infamous message to Richard Branson, where he tells the Virgin CEO to "f*** off" in Morse Code. Of course, the whole album is designed as a middle finger to Branson, who'd been pushing him in more of an 80s pop direction to diminishing returns and was pressuring him to release a sequel to Tubular Bells. As a result, Oldfield deliberately made this album--one of his last two with Virgin--as deliberately uncommercial as possible, injecting them with sonic assaults like synth stabs, vacuum cleaners, and even one mad bit (no, literally, that's what the album calls it) where it sounds like a car bomb is going off. One can imagine Oldfield exasperatedly walking into Branson's office with the final product saying "well, here's your new album. Are you ha-a-a-appy?"

A lesser artist might have rebelled by just making the absolute most discordant, most unlistenable assortment of nonsense they can think of. Instead, Mike Oldfield threads the needle between artistic integrity and corporate rebellion, creating an intricate tapestry of interwoven sounds while also ensuring that none of it could be spun off into a radio single. There are certainly enough oddball elements to go around in this piece, but most of them come across in a musical way. Some have called this album a disjointed hodgepodge. I would say it's no more so than Tubular Bells or other albums from his classic period, where Oldfield's eclectic grab-bag of musical ideas is very much his style--and his charm. Amarok is fundamentally the next step in that progression from an artist whose label has tried to steer him to calmer waters, but who now breaks off into less charted territory with more abandon than ever.

Then, in the last 5 minutes, after a cheeky interlude about endings by a Margaret Thatcher impersonator, Oldfield does something I don't think he'd ever done before in his extended compositions--he writes a satisfying conclusion. Previous entries would peter out repetitively while saying little of substance (Crises, Hergest Ridge), fail to tie back into the album's developed musical ideas (Ommadawn, Five Miles Out), or just break out into the Beverly Hillbillies theme (Tubular Bells). But here, Oldfield actually builds one of his recurring musical motifs into a crescendo with an African chorus that offers a payoff to the "sondela" motif repeated throughout. The instrumentation swells as new choral parts are added, and that final note of guitar squeal as the chorus cuts off is just orgasmic. A fantastic ending to his Virgin tenure--but as we all know, endings are just beginnings. ;-)