THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

I was very surprised to see all the fuss about this album on the review list. To me "Songs of Distant Earth" is a bit dull. New age in a rather anonymous form. If you want to explore ambient or similar from this period I would suggest the Orb for example (which by the way has made a remix of Oldfield's "sentinel"). I would recommend plenty of other Oldfield albums before this one. If you feel a great urge to discover contemporary Oldfield, I suggest "Amarok" from 1990.