Edgy alterations

music review

Mike Oldfield is a talented musician who blends progressive rock with world, folk, classical, electronic, ambient and new-age music. He is best known for his 1973 album ‘Tubular Bells’ (Virgin Records’s first launch), which became a hit after its opening track was used as the theme song  in the film The Exorcist.

Having recorded sections in an early version of ‘Tubular Bells’ as demo pieces, Oldfield attempted to persuade record labels to take on the ‘Tubular Bells’ project. Success eluded him until he was discovered by the then young Richard Branson and his fledgling record label, Virgin Records.

‘Five Miles Out’ is the remastered and reissued album first released in 1982. It is one of the very few albums on which Oldfield sings lead vocals, as he did not have confidence in his voice quality.

The first track, Taurus II, is a long rendition spanning nearly 25 minutes, with changing melodies and instrumental settings. It features many familiar sounds from his earlier albums.

Family Man is Oldfield’s first “real” rock song to which Maggie Reilly provides vocals. Orabidoo is another long track. It features vocals by Oldfield and Reilly, both through a vocoder, an instrument used to get voices ranging from robotic to warped and bent vocals, used in many songs (for example, the German quartet by Kraftwerk). Mount Teidi is a shorter instrumental piece.

Five Miles Out, the title track, is a short one of just over four minutes, but has a complex structure with multiple vocal parts. The lyrics concerned Oldfield’s experience of a near-fatal aeroplane flight. Reilly sings with a clean voice, while Oldfield uses vocoder most of the time. The song features the same guitar riff that appears in the beginning of Taurus II.