DISCOVERY

I can't say that I've heard every Mike Oldfield album, but I have heard the ones that are essential and own a few to them. But I can say for sure that this is the worst one I have heard. It's not simply for the fact that it has pop tracks (7 out of 8) with vocals and only one track that can be considered progressive. It is because the pop tracks are so uninteresting and cheesy. I can understand the attempt to get a bigger following, using pop to get more people to listen to your better music. Frank Zappa and many others have done that and were successful. But you have to have something appealing in your music that will persuade the masses to dig deeper into your discography, and this album simply does not do this.

Now, the singing isn't too bad, but it is quite standard fare, and that is surprising considering that half of the vocals are by the lead singer from Triumverat. But it sounds like he is not convinced about the music. The only vocal track worth listening to is "To France" which is the first track, and the only reason it is any good is because there is at least a short instrumental interlude that is interesting. The rest of the songs featuring vocals are just bad. The production here doesn't help either. Even though I am not a fan of pop in most cases, even people that listen to radio friendly music expect better sound and lyrics. Nothing here is really that appealing.

However, the one progressive track "The Lake" is more like the Mike Oldfield that most of us are familiar with. Completely instrumental and progressive with changing meters, tempos, great development, it has what you come to expect from this genius. This is where his talent resides and this is where he shines. It is also the only reason to look for this album, but he has so many other great albums that are full of great sounds and compositions that one 12 minute track may have a hard time convincing me that it is worth purchasing an entire album. I bought the vinyl for 50 cents so I wasn't out much and "The Lake" is definitely worth that much. So you decide if it is worth it to you. As far as I'm concerned it is a poor album that only completionists need to track down if they really just have to have everything he recorded. 1 star.