AMAROK

This is another album I've changed my mind about during the years. When I purchased it, few days after its first vynil release I was very disappointed: I didn't like the exhagerated high.volume of the orchestral accents. I found the techno-speech very disturbing also considering that in my home language it sounds like "BEE". It was coming to my ears like a sting, so I stopped listening to it after about 10 minutes and that album remained unused until last week when I decided to give it another try.

Well I still don't like the orchestral accents and the speech, but the remainng 40 minutes are pure Mike Oldfield's stuff, very intriguing with melodic parts alternated to more rocking parts. Said so, also the first 10 minutes wouldn't be bad if the two "disturbing" elements were removed.

What remains is a nice suite in the Oldfield style with some highlihts spreaded here and there during the suite. All this to say that what I would have rated very low until few weeks ago is now for me a good- but-non-essential album that doesn't add much to the very huge Oldfield's discography (non- essential for this reason) but good enough for 3 stars.