INCANTATIONS

Incanations buy Mike Oldfield, what a controversial album. Incantations could perhaps be compared to Tales From Topografic Oceans. Extremely ambitious album, but which did not reach the finish line. Incatations has beautiful melodies and singing. It has the great feeling of power in it, but unfortunately is rather boring in some parts. Incatations is nearly twice as long as his previous albums have been. For example Ommadawn (which I consider to be his ultimate masterpiece) is only 36 minutes long as Incantations is 72 minutes long. Especially track 2 and 3 are partly boring.

I have listened the album for three times, which might not be enough to fully appreciate this intresting album. For now I have to give it four stars. If it was from 10 to 20 minutes shorter this would be a masterpiece. For now it is just a very good album.

Tip: For those intrested of shorter version of Incantations, live album Exposed from 1979 might be a good purchase. It has the whole Incantations album, but it is far shorter, 47 minutes. I would highly recommend it for people who share the same opinion of this album. Everything is well packed into shorter version, which sounds respective to original score, but maybe bit more dynamic.

Overall I warmly recommend Incantations to fans of Oldield, but for people who haven't heard Oldfield before it's not the best album to start with.