Mike Oldfield - Ommadawn
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Free Music Notes for Ommadawn
Free Music Review: A masterpiece of sound and spirit
Hit: 5 Stars
I first heard Ommadawn when I was in college, maybe age 19. Now, 24 years later, I still find it one of the most affecting, soulful, beautiful and inspiring pieces of music I've ever heard (especially side 1). It's the sort of thing I used to lie in my dorm room with my girlfriend of the time and listen to with the lights out. How to describe it: a cosmic, atavistic, almost tribal hymn; a chorus to this world and every other, a play of the gods, a dance of angels... I could go on, and maybe I would start to sound kind of silly or corny, but it's all true. If you want to hear music that can really affect you, this is it. It is timeless.
Free Music Review: one of the jewels of a great dacade
Hit: 5 Stars
To me listening to Ommadawn is like spending a few days in beautiful nature, trips you come back from not only relaxed, but full of optimism and desire to get things done. It always fills me with light that stays a while.
Ommadawn is composed of two parts, and it is followed by a song, On Horseback. The amazing guitar solo of Ommadawn part 1 is like a bird learning to fly, very consistent in its approach but not successful until the final few minutes when it finally becomes airborne. Our melody becomes introduced to us right away by the acoustic guitar and being repeated by Celtic folk and other instruments Mike chooses to use which are introduced to us later on throughout both parts of this composition and including panpipes, uilleann pipes, timpani, glockenspiel bodhran, banjo, bouzouki, harp, mandolin, cello, trumpet as well as acoustic bass and classical and acoustic guitars, including a 12 string guitar. At the same time, the use of drummers of Jabula is combining our northern Celtic experience with the African elements and making this 1975 album one of the first world music records of value. After 4 minutes like an ugly duckling appears the electric guitar. Everything sort of stumbles in its tracks, the music is not progressing that much although it is a pleasant walk across this melodic back and forth landscape. In 9th minute electric guitar appears again, does not seem so out of place any more and this guitar starts building the music and our experience. Human voices singing nonsense in Gaelic develop a song without meaning but full of magic transforming it into an incantation more than anything else. Perhaps it was heard because on some level everything from that 15 minute or so awakes, the ugly duckling by now is turned into the most beautiful and powerful swan and it is this instrument which brings on the absolute beauty of the last few minutes of Ommadawn part 1. Ommadawn is like an argument supporting the fact stating that it is not the goal alone but our way to accomplish that goal which is worth our life experience. Play the last 4 minutes of Ommadawn part 1 and yes you will hear some great music, but no, you will not experience it in the same way you would have, had you started from the beginning. The solemn mood of the first 5 minutes of Ommadawn part 2 falls upon us like the reality of a goal already accomplished. A sudden realization that new dreams need to begin again for us to fill fulfilled. But then these awesome Scottish pipes blow that feeling away. Mike Oldfield's conviction contained in the lyrics of On Horseback although have turned some away from not only that short experimental part of the album, places all of us again in front of his passion, if we have not heard it clear enough in his music.
Back in 1975 I used to listen to a lot of German electronic music and I was really into Klaus Schulze's Timewind and coming the same year from the group he left behind Tangerine Dream's Ricochet. The other great albums introduced in 1975 were Supertramp's Crisis? What Crisis? and Queen's Night At The Opera. However, to me personally 2 other albums could have been the greatest( not only of that year, but the entire decade.) Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here with its magnificent Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Mike Oldfield's Ommadawn. It will most likely always be one of ten best albums of my life. Mike gained the majority of his recognition after 1972 at the age of 19 for Tubular Bells, which was his most popular album. Personally, I liked the following album Hergest Ridge more, but I did not truly fall in love with Mike's music until Ommadawn came out in 1975. Mike's following double album Incantations is spectacular as well and I place it right behind Ommadawn. They both have elements of electronic, acoustic, world and highly spiritual music, or that is where they take you. I find them both uplifting and grounding at the same time.
Free Music Review: The musical equivalent of astral projection
Hit: 4 Stars
In the 70s when it came out it seemed to resonate with cosmic beauty - now slightly less atavistic, but still has moments of pure illumination, fringed with greatness. It distilled the Zeitgeist of its era. Sat comfortably with Gawain and the Green Knight, Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra, films by Fassbinder, Stan Brakhage, Nicholas Roeg, etc. (Even the pic of Oldfield on the front evokes Jesus Christ Superstar)
I dock one star because Part II is simply not as good. My record was worn down listening to the magical Part I and the quintessentially English "On Horseback."
"Et o, ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!" (thank you, TS Eliot)
Free Music Review: thanks so much
Hit: 5 Stars
Ommadawn
thanks very much i love the recent above purchase found it impossible to buy within the uk so doubly happy thanks again
Free Music Review: I don't get it. (from a Fan)
Hit: 2 Stars
I usually don't take the time to write reviews but I feel strongly about this one. IMHO, Mike Oldfield had written one of *the* instrumental masterpieces of all time. And its called "Songs of Distant Earth".
SDE, has been a very influential record for me as a composer and a
music lover. Several people have said to me "oh yeah, Songs of Distant
Earth is great and all but, you do you have Ommadawn?" I had heard bits
here at Amazon in the past and passed on it but being the huge Oldfield fan I am, I bought it and listened. I admit that the 2 records are pretty different in terms of the period and the approach to production but they are both clearly Mike Oldfield. With that in mind combined with the fact that so many seem to proclaim "Ommadawn" as his Masterpiece, I must say that I humbly disagree. I would not hesitate to recommend Songs of Distant Earth to any music lover but honestly would not recommend Ommadawn.
On a side note, I have been listening to the samples of "Music of the Spheres" as I have been writing this and is sounds really good! I am really looking forward to buying it after posting this review.
Thanks for reading. One of the great things about music is there are all different kinds for all different ears and we all don't really need to agree as to what works for us as individuals. :^) Mike if you read this, you are a brilliant composer/producer!!