Mike Oldfield - Amarok
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Free Music Notes for Amarok
Free Music Review: Happy? Indeed!
Hit: 5 Stars
I must be one of the few people who loved this album on first listen, but I came to it with a looong MO listening history. My first listen to the original Tubular Bells (many moons ago) was similar to others' first listen to Amarok...mainly: "Huh?" I didn't dislike TB...it just seemed boring and repetitive to me. I shelved it and came back to it a year or so later and was stunned; how could I have wasted a year of my life NOT listening to this??? It is true that you grow into appreciating music that you might not be ready for yet; it can take some time. Amarok is just such a work.You don't play this album as background music while you eat dinner or read a book or pay the bills; you put this album on, sit down and LISTEN to it - closely (headphones and closed eyes highly recommended!). When the album is finished, you feel you've been on a journey and have just returned, and have some things to think about.
This is easily MO's most brilliant work. It is also his most hilarious, with laugh out loud bits occurring when you least expect them - a striking example is during one of the most exquisitely emotional guitar bits (about 42 minutes into the piece) where MO is busy elevating the guitar to divine instrument status in a fantastic passage and everything just cuts out - "Happy?" - and then starts up again. LOVE IT! It is not his most outrightly beautiful work - that is reserved for Incantations, Ommadawn and the like - although there are ravishingly beautiful passages scattered throughout, as well as ear-splitting dissonances and discordant blasts (your speakers WILL get a work-out with this one!). There are more enchanting melodies (MO's strongest creative trait) and more pure sounds made into music on this one album than you can shake a Sailor's hornpipe at. He just tosses them out one after another; most other musicians would make entire albums out of just a few of these (and still not do them justice).
Fa-fa's and footsteps, mandolins, toothbrushing and ahhh's, drums and chanting, cash registers, nickolodeons, bagpipes, choirs and cavemen, guitars of every shape and sound, banjos, organs, pianos, people mumbling, Margaret Thatcher dancing, bells...and the ending - the ending that is a dissertation on how to do endings. Each time it wells up and you think this is the transcendent ending and the CD will be over...you're wrong. It goes on...delightfully, blissfully, zanily...well, what can you say? These are words - they don't do the music justice.
"Happy?" Indeed! Above all...this is a happy, warm work. A master at his most brilliant and creative best, and having a romping good time at it. Buy it, play it and if you don't get it...come back to it again at a later time. As the story in the CD booklet says...
"I hear it has voices to speak of things we cannot speak of..."
"I am told that when men hear its voice, it stays in their ears, they cannot be rid of it. It has many different voices: some happy, but others sad. It roars like a baboon, murmurs like a child, drums like the blazing arms of one thousand drummers, rustles like water in a glass, sings like a lover and laments like a priest..."
"I have heard it says only one word..."
"I was told it depends on how you listen."
Free Music Review: Amarocked!
Hit: 5 Stars
I remember the day I bought this album. I was sitting in my van, popped in the CD and eased back waiting for one of my favorite moments in life: the first listening of a new Mike Oldfield album.Well, it started off a little rough, but I thought, "Oh, you know, sometimes it takes a while for a new Mike O. album to sink in, OK, no problem..." But then, it got more and more troublesome. A good idea would start out and then, after a minute or so of development, Whoosh!, it was gone, to be replaced by another, and then the same thing would happen again.
I was severely bummed! So much so that I stopped the CD, took it out and drove home very annoyed.
Well, it stayed on my shelf at home for about 4 or 5 years without a listen. Then one day I thought, what the heck, maybe miraculously it has improved with age. I fished it out, popped it on and, WOW!!!! It was like a curtain being pulled before my eyes. Everything about the music seemed perfect and made sense, delicious, adventurous, humorous, perfect sense!
I couldn't believe this was the same record I had despised many years earlier. I still can't explain it except for this phrase:
"When the listener is ready, the masterpiece appears."
Its almost like there's this secret code in the music, and if your ears can't seem to unlock it, it sounds just like random blahblah. That this was all the work of one man is truly the work of genius in our time.
Amarok to me is like a soundtrack to someone's day; from dawn to dusk. the music represents little moments from a day in which many things happen to us, and these all become portrayed by music vignettes.
Think of yourself walking down a street and how your attention shifts from this to that; the sound of a jackhammer; then, the sharp call of a bird; the rumble of a motorbike; the wind rushing through the tops of trees; and on and on, all of these sounds drifting in and out; a collage; a tapestry; a quilt of music woven from many different patterns, but all stitching into a framework that suddenly takes shape and ultimately brings forth the most delicious composite musical experience in which you are challenged, changed, soothed, awakened, stretched, jarred, amazed...at the end you know you have lived this music!
This is one of the most unique and satisfying albums I have in my collection. It is a classic that defies definition and that is why it is great. It is not just music; it is LIFE!
Free Music Review: Listen! And you will thrill
Hit: 5 Stars
The music, the noises, range from pythonesque silliness to godspiringly grandiose, from gently playful mellifluence to painfully sharp and stabbing. The tonal ranges, the harmonies and amplitutidinal extremes will test your sound system - possibly to destruction. It will thunder and rock the foundations of your room, it may shatter your crystal. ... This is music unlike anything else, but it is totally MO. I don't know why others found this a "difficult" or hard piece to get into. I was in love with it from the first I heard it. But then... I have been a long time fan of MO's music. Still, even if it takes you time, once you grok it I guarantee you'll be addicted. I've listened to this more times than any other cd I acquired in the past 6 months. Every week or so, I need a refresher, just to be reminded how great it is. If you've never listened to Mike Oldfield, I found QE2 to be one of the easiest albums to get into. And getting into it is a very worthwhile thing to do.
On Amarok, expect to get the usual unique Mike Oldfield electric guitar style, the usual collection of strange stringed "things", layers of exotic instruments, noises (like dropped toolboxes, and teeth brushing), yes - tubular bells, and lots of beautiful choral work - mostly in Zulu ethnic style (nostalgic, proud, deeply happy melodious music). Other ethnic styles abound - there are distinct irish and scottish influences in parts. Some parts are played in a symphonic style, other in ethnic style, then a bit like electronica, sometimes rock, and in-between just throughly messed up and uncategorizable. Don't be scared! Dare to experiment. But listen with intent - Enjoy!
Free Music Review: Breathtaking
Hit: 5 Stars
The most breathtaking, exhilerating and imaginative album that I have ever heard, by far the best out of my collection of 850 records (including Beatles, Radiohead, Verdi, Peter Gabriel, Miles Davis, Brian Eno, Beethoven, Jimi Hendrix, Smashing Pumpkins, The Clash, Grieg etc)Normal songs are fairly preditable - verses, choruses, you often know roughly what to expect. That kind of music is all that most people seem to listen to, unfortunately.
Here, there is no way you know what's coming next. The diversity of styles on Amarok is unbelievable, it is an absolute work of genius - and of course none of the so called 'experts' have a clue about it. An incredibly intricate work which initially seems thrown together in some insane manner but gradually suggests a deep underlying coherence once the listener becomes more familiar with it, Amarok is packed full of stunning guitar work, Zulu choirs, all manner of different instruments, about 50 melodies per minute...basically its full of insanely imaginative and tremendously joyous and jaw-dropping sequences, throughout all of its 60 minute length.
If you're reading this and curious, but don't know whether to buy it, for Gods sake at least borrow it from someone or hire it from a library!!! If you're open-minded to music as long as its good then I promise you'll end up wanting Amarok with you for a LONG time.
The ending is quite simply the most uplifting, hair-raising piece of music that I have heard in my entire life. This album is certainly one of the greatest of all time, despite its relatively unknown status. Just listen to it for yourself.
Free Music Review: Belongs in a straitjacket
Hit: 5 Stars
This CD needs to be strapped up in a rubber room and given a good shot of Haldol in the gluteus maximus. Talk about schizophrenic music...! But brilliantly so. This CD is easily ten years ahead of its time. Much of it is steeped in inspired progressive rock. Pianos build to spanish cadenzas, orchestras swell into titanic thundering climaxes, distorted guitars crunch into punchy melodies, acoustic guitars deftly interweave into folksy ditties, and a thrumming bass guitar gets a poppin' and cracklin' for an infectious interlude. The beauty of this CD is that it isn't repetitive. Oldfield throws out new ideas and melodies at a frantic pace, seemingly strung together at random, but they work. And his sense of humor is loony and hilarious. He uses a toothbrush, power drill(?), and God only knows what else. He probably uses every instrument known to man on this album, mostly played by himself, proving that he is a brilliant musical iconoclast. I could have done without some of the music, such as the goofy part at the end with Margaret Thatcher tap-dancing while babbling. But this CD is so ingenius and fun, its become a classic in my collection. I believe Oldfield was at the pinnacle of his creativity with "Amarok" and "Tubular Bells II". Too bad its recognition hasn't spread. This type of music definitely isn't for all tastes, but if you enjoy occasional forays into the world of the manic and psychotic, you'll probably cherish this stab at lunacy distilled into an hour-long thrill ride.