Tubular Bells Vol.2 - Mike Oldfield

I saw this album advertised on tv and I also noticed on the cover that it said 'This album is the new Holst: The Planets but for the 21st century - review by Classic FM'. So I bought it, I mean The Planets Suite by Gustav Holst is an amazing composition so this Tubular Bells Vol II must be pretty awesome stuff right? What a load of nonsense! This album sounds like musical doodlings of a pop centric writer trying in vain to compose something vaguely serious/classical in nature. Oldfield has clearly used sequencing a lot. He takes a riff or simple melody and repeats it endlessly as a loop, adding and taking away bits to create some sort of variety. Perhaps ...  Read the complete review

In the dim and distant past of 1992 I heard that Mike Oldfield was about to release a sequel to the hugely successful Tubular Bells Album. Of course I had to have a copy of this proposed masterpiece as the orginal album was (is) one of the best albums I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. I'm afraid that the sequel was a huge disappointment. OK, I appreciate that I may not have been aware of what I was expecting, but this album didn't meet any expectation in any shape or form. I felt that it was a bad reworking of a very successful album. To be honest the only track that I liked was the first one, Sentinel. The rest had a remiscence to ...  Read the complete review