Music : Tubular Bells Vol.1: Remastered

Rating: - Curate's Egg
A good re-mastering of the origial for the most part. Tarnished however by some truly atrocious mixing. A few sections in the first 10 minutes have the balance between the main melody and the backing track wholly reversed, with the backing track drowning the melody almost completely of this otherwise (still a milestone) tone poem.

9/10 for the digital remaster quality, marred however and spoilt in places. If you can stand the grating on your nerves when it goes wrong, the rest is worthwhile.

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Rating: - Improving melody after 34 years at the TOP
Looking at Sir Richard Bransons multi Billon pound empire its hard to believe that this experimental percussion album launched Virgin as a world wide empire.

Mike Oldfield demo tape in hand went to every record company in London looking for a producer but everyone turned him away saying that his 17.4million albums to date was not marketable,so in stepped a very young starting out Richard Branson who allowed Oldfield some recording time and decided to release the album.The rest is history,its akin to the JK Rawling story where everyone refused to publish Harry Potter until somebody took the risk and massive sales ensued.

The Daily Mail recently gave a free copy of the album away and i can remember buying my album way back in the seventies and since then have only listened to it several times but this time i really appreciated the genius behind that catchy melody with Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Dooda Band annoyncing each instrument Mike Oldfield was playing.

If released today i think it would still have a mass appeal mainly because it has universal appeal because it is easy listening and a tune that once heard never forgotten.

This remastered version is a revelation,every instrument is refreshingly clear and even the slight mistakes in recording the instruments can be heard.Remember this album was recorded 34 years ago long before the digital age so all the iregularities are still there.

What surprised me on my reintroduction was how quickly its all over,the entire album is only 48minutes long but feels half that time.

There are few instrumental albums to compare with it,its like the Beatles Sgt Peppers album a timeless classic that in the distant future people will still play it because it is a giant of an album which should be part of everyones collection.

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Rating: - Great music with fantastic sound quality.

This release was groundbreaking for many reasons and I'm sure Virgin Records owe their success to this album. There's an innocent charm to the compositions, although excessive exposure spoiled my enjoyment for many years, having used it as a "demo" disc many times over the seventies and early eighties.

I was saddened that the original CD sounded so muffled, as I remember - CD promised so much in the early days and didn't always deliver for various reasons. Those days are thankfully long behind us and THIS release realises, for me, how good the original recording could be in its stereo version.

There's a clarity here that really helps you to delve into the mix and discover elements that were all but inaudible in the original LP and CD versions. The early "Quad" mixes on the boxed set were good too, but sufficiently different that they were almost different pieces of music to me... My CD player is good, but quite conventional - no HDCD or the dreaded sacharin sweet SACD here... and the sound is perfectly good without all the latest commercial "tricks".... It seems one of the original production team did the remastering for this release, so hopefully, what we're hearing now is about as good as the original mix gets.

I must admit I'm getting really confused with the large number of *versions* of this album available as of 2006... I think that it's now time for both Mr Oldfield and the record companies to leave alone and move on - PLEASE!

RECOMMENDED as the definitive mastering of the original mix! If it's not in your collection, at this price you can't go wrong.

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Rating: - No Tubular Bells, no Virgin Records
Virgin records would never have become the huge company that it is without this record - if it hadn't been the huge success that it was, the company would never have been responsible for some of the great music on that label. How this ever came about though is a mystery - why would anyone have given a complete unknown the chance to make an album like this?

The answer is - love him or hate him - Richard Branson. He decided to let Mike Oldfield have some studio time after being persuaded by Tom Newman, who was building Manor Studios for him, after Tom had heard a tape of ideas that were to be used for Tubular Bells. Part One was recorded in a week of studio time alloted to Mike, Tom and second producer Simon Heyworth, and Part Two was recorded in various sessions as studio time became available.

There are stories of the sessions being recorded at all times of the night, sometimes after long sessions in the local pub, and the 'Piltdown Man' vocals are apparently a slowed down version of Mike shouting into a mic after drinking large amounts of whisky that was found in the basement of the studios. However it happened, it was available technology being pushed to the limit. There were only 16 tracks available to record on, and so a lot of overdubbing took place. This meant making huge lists of instruments and notes and accurately mapping out which track they were recorded to. Any mistakes could mean recording over previously recorded material!

The result was one of the most original pieces of material to ever be recorded. It's easy now to forget how unique this was, as its influence is felt throughout most modern music, but at the time it became a huge hit because of popularity without being hyped by a huge publicity machine. A couple of years later it's popularity was galvanized by the inclusion of some of Part One in the film 'The Exorcist'.

Most of this album is played by the multi-talented Mike Oldfield, with a few other musicians helping out here and there. It's quite an incredible achievement to think that Part One was recorded in only one week, but this is testament to the hard work of the three men who believed that this project could succeed.

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Rating: - A rock classic
This massive rock symphony was a great idea and Oldfield pulls it off very well.
The distict , haunting piano opening followed by all sorts of instruments providing a whole 50 minutes worth of tunes may sound daunting and possibly boring, but this work keeps you gripped. theres humour with the Piltdown man, and theres something wierd about the bagpipe passage.

A change of mood for the second half- a more relaxed guitar orientated movement.

Its a touch of genius to end with the sailors hornpipe.
Fantastic revolutiuonary music that hasn't been betterd in its field.