At the end of summer this year, 50 years passed since the release of this dreamy, emotional, calm album with its flowing and floating melodies and themes. The huge success of Tubular Bells (number 1 in the English LP charts) came as a complete surprise to everyone involved, and the introverted, shy Jesus-looking progressive musician Oldfield in particular was unable to cope with this development at all. So he retreated to the solitude of rural Herefordshire to work in peace and quiet on his second album, Hergest Ridge. What came of it? Pure, unadulterated Mike Oldfield for connoisseurs. While Tubular Bells sounded like a collection of various smaller instrumental pieces, Hergest Ridge presents itself as a single composition. Oldfield's apparatus is simply splendid here. The melodic guitar playing (an Oldfield trademark) appears clear and always appropriate. The choirs and organ sounds exude a kind of pastoral calm, gentleness, and balance.

I purchased my copy upon its release. I had tears in my eyes when I heard the record for the first time; it was progressive music ingeniously written that was so moving to me back then. Even today, 50 years later, when I close my eyes, I think of lush green meadows, morning dew, light mist, and the ruins of old houses and castles. For me, this is the finest Oldfield album of all time. Some critics derided the album at the time. They were anticipating it as a sort of sequel to Tubular Bells. Hergest Ridge, however, dethroned Tubular Bells from the top spot in the album charts down to number two. Wasn't that fantastic?

I also lived at the foot of HR for 5 years... in Kington, so I know it well.

His first four albums are all great. 

I remember very well the first time I listened to Hergest Ridge, as it was a day which turned to become one of the very good memories from my late teenage years. 

I was visiting a friend of mine together with some other friends, and he had bought this album, so one of the first things I did, when we came there, was listening to it. Meanwhile this friend of mine made some pancakes of a rather special kind which we ate, even they tasted somehow peculiarly. And then we went outside and had a big snowballs fight, as it was a winter day, and just couldn't stop laughing and having a lot of fun - as stoned as we were. 

That was surely great, and Hergest Ridge?, I became not so little fond of it, even probably not quite as much as of Tubular Bells and Ommadawn. That is maybe the case today as well, but still, definitely one of my three Oldfield fond-ofs / loved ones.

Up to and including Incantations or even a little beyond that?

Although Mike Oldfield could be termed a 'genius' (although the seventies had a lot of them , Fripp, Emerson, Wakeman, Howe etc) he still went in the same direction that everyone did post punk. It's not that strange. He started touring after he completed Incantations but that was a massive undertaking and so for later albums he put together a much sleeker smaller group of musicians that called do touring properly without the massive logistics. I love a lot of the bonus extra live tracks that you get on the reissues of that period (1980-83 mainly). His first four albums (could say five as Incantations was a double) show his pure progressive side and were at a time when artists were encorouraged to experiment. By 1979 that was nearly gone. ''Pretentious'' cried the critics and everyone got into line and the dream of progressive music died.