TUBULAR BELLS

At barely twenty years of age, Mike Oldfield made his mark in one of the stellar years of the progressive movement, 1973, and released "Tubular Bells", one of the most outstanding debut solo albums of the genre. A work in which the English musician takes charge of most of the musical instruments, in a display of versatility and surprising maturity for someone so young, and which takes on even more value given its instrumental nature, an enormous challenge when it comes to transmitting the messages that are usually channelled by the singer of a regular band.

Divided into 2 large sections, "Part 1" shows progressions that build without haste, dominated by the persistent sounds of the glockenspiel, with sonorities similar to the xylophone, organs and grand piano, in an introduction immortalised for being part of the soundtrack of the terrifying film "The Exorcist", and gradually incorporates the bass, the infinity of distortions of the electric guitars, the acoustic guitar and mandolin, creating a suspenseful and intriguing atmosphere, and whose final section features the famous tubular bells pounded by a wooden hammer, the participation of Oldfield's sister Sally as part of the choir, and the English musician and poet Vivian Stanshall as master of ceremonies introducing each musical instrument, an original detail.

Spanish guitars, string elements and grand piano star in "Part 2", until the eruption of the deep, melancholic bagpipes simulated by a guitar and the darkening of the instrumentation becomes dramatic and leads into Oldfield's unique vocal interpretation of the strange sounds that Piltdown Man would emit, the famous missing link in Darwinian theory supposedly discovered in 1912 in England and scandalously proven to be a fraud 40 years later, concluding peacefully with a lengthy organ accompanied by beautiful Spanish guitar solos, and the brief adapted appendix of "Sailor's Hornpipe", a traditional piece related to the British Navy.

Many record labels rejected the project because of their scepticism about the commercial viability of Tubular Bells given its unconventional characteristics, but Richard Branson, the iconic entrepreneur who was taking his first steps with Virgin Records, saw the potential of the work and took a gamble on Oldfield's album. A gamble that clearly worked out very well.

4 stars