THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

This is a brilliantly melodious album. We all know how well he plays the guitar. In some albums Mike also 'showed off' his skills. But beginning from Tubular Bells 2, we find a Mike who is sure what he wants to make. This is an album without any show off-- its rather pure music. He restrained himself from applying his guitar licks and we find a calm and very passionate style of guitar playing from him here. This album heavily emphasises choirs and voices at the base level of the composition and that makes it sound different from other albums of Mike Oldfield. Anyone who has read Arthur C Clark's book of the same title will surely get visuals of a gigantic spacecraft approaching a world full of water, having very small land mass. But I can tell, anyone who has not read the book before can visualise a watery world.