CHILDREN OF THE SUN

As you can see in the bio, this work was mainly due to Pentangle's guitarist John Renbourn who decided to produce two skilled teen-agers and gave them the support of Jethro Tull's David Palmer and Pentangle's drummer Terry Cox. The result was an acoustic-guitar based folk album with some (pretentious) experimental moments that can be forgiven because of the youthness of the duo.

The duo was composed by Mike and Sally Oldfield and I have to say that I always thought the B side was the A side and vice versa, as Transatlantic was used to print the disc information on one side only of the vinyl, so I discover now that Balloons, my favourite album's track, is not the opening.

Almost all the songs contain flute arrangements (Ray Warleigh). Without it, the two guitars and Sally's leading and Mike's background vocals would have been too "flat".

The Bach's excert from "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" is remarkable at the end of "Balloons". Some short tracks obtained by "torturing" the guitar's strings could have been avoided but they are very short so it's not a big problem.

I think this album is mainly important as document, but it contains good moments. Don't think to this as a Mike or Sally Oldfield's album. It's an interesting and promising work of two teens and this is haw it has to be intended.

Good but non-essential fits well. For Mike Oldfield's fans, this is one of the few opportunities to hear Mike singing.