TUBULAR BELLS

One of the most over-rated album in history but was and still is a fave with the public. In the soft aerial genre you might want to try his following two albums (Ommadawn and Herdgest Ridge) and JM Jarre's Oxygène or some Vangellis. Actually maybe the main merit of this poor album is that it sold in such great amounts that it allowed the Virgin label such financial freedom that they dared taking chances on unlikely and uncommercial acts like Gong or even more daringly Henry Cow.

I suppose one of the reason why I rate this album poorly is the over-exposition of such a musical idea-poor album: a few good ideas but greatly overly-extended and an incredibly cheesy instrument announcement part around the close of the side 1 of the album. As if we b-needed him to know what a grand piano or a slightly distorted guitar is.... Let's face it: very few albums managed such a great commercial success on so few ambient ideas. As the little old lady once said about her hamburger: Where's the beef?????? Oh, yeah, although there are some slight folk influences (Mike was in a folk-rock band Sallyangie with his sister Sally at the start of the 70's) throughout the whole album, they become insufferable in the semi-jig-like finale

Of course, the fact that he has redone the Tubullar Bells thing about 20 zillion version to fill up his bank account, it has not helped my views on the original work.