CLEARLIGHT SYMPHONY

Just as Virgin Records wanted, it is, in the most unfortunate sense, both "Tubular Bells 2.0" and also "the future". As if it were Oxygene (Jean Michel Jarre) a year before, in some regards, but also nowhere near as interesting or listenable. And also a new Tubular Bells, 2 years on and weaker than anyone could have imagined, even, and I can not stress this enough here, unfortunately featuring the wonderful talents of Tim Blake and Steve Hillage and Didier Malherbe. Somehow. I'm in utter shock and disappointment [As I edit this months later, aren't you being a tad melodramatic, Dan? [Months later still, I don't think I'm wrong]]. I'm sure, for Steve at least, the very real connection to Mr. Oldfield had something to do with it.

It doesn't help, in light of my anticipation of it being Oldfield-esque, that this is indeed a weak, new-age carbon copy of a style of Prog that I can not be any more bored by. Forgive me. As a quick aside,Tubular Bells will always stump me as to why it is still so heralded... Took me a long while to find any Oldfield that I genuinely liked. Back to Clearlight, in their case, just listen to Forever Blowing Bubbles and we'll all pretend this never happened. I'm sure Virgin Records is wont to be included in that. [Or this is so far removed from them, it's like they have nothing at which to bat their pretty little eyes.]