In the 70's, Mike Oldfield did a bunch of long, progressive instrumental albums (Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn). In the 80's, Mike Oldfield went into a more commercial direction with various singers and hit European singles (Moonlight Shadow, Family Man, Islands). In the 90's, after his contract with Virgin expired, he went in a more new age-y, electronic direction. He kept releasing music before he announced his retirement last year. I'd recommend a lot of his music. He was truly a master of his craft. Who's with me?
Mike oldfield is one of the best. So much good ideas and drafts and Melodies in this 60 minutes masterpiece. More creative ideas and memorable melodies than some Bands did in their entire career dude. :)
Hi, I'm the requester of this one. Watched the day it came out and have been meaning to comment but hadn't got around to it. Thanks for the reaction, Bryan! I know this was a marathon and it's also a difficult first listen with the volume spikes and surprises. And don't worry I take zero offense to any of your comments. I'm just grateful for your thoughts and analysis. Thanks to everyone for your amazing and insightful comments as well, as I know Bryan appreciates them and they add to his understanding of Mike as an artist and this track/album in particular. On a personal note, I just want to express my love for this. It's right at the top of my favorite pieces of music and I knew it with absolute certainty immediately after listening to it for the first time. I love all the melodies and ideas; I love the variety of timbres, instruments, and genres; I love the quirky bits and find them fun and hilarious and don't find them one bit unpleasant or annoying; I love the more serious emotional moments; I love that it's an artist just making art for art's sake; I love that there are repeated motifs/themes within the track and the references to his other work. It's just got everything and I always enjoy listening to it.
The thing with Amarok is that it isn't a one time listen. If you just listen once, you will miss a lot of connections all over the place. And the story you're saying isn't there.. it's there alright, and it's.... Amazing. Period.
Pure genius not many musicians and composers could make a disparate piece of music that not only works but is adored by many whilst utilising sounds of teeth cleaning, a typewriter and going off in multiple and diverse tangents. Zappa, early Peter Gabriel, perhaps?
I appreciate that you took the time to listen to this in full. I am a huge Mike Oldfield fan and have been since his early career. There aren't that many of us in the States. While I love just about everything he's done, this is his absolute best and one of my all-time favorite pieces of music. I love it so much that I have Amarok on my license plates. It was fun watching you react to what I knew was coming up. I doubt you'll do it, but it deserves a second, third or even fourth listen. It is a very emotional album and I cry every time I hear it. One other thought - you aren't alone in thinking he's categorized as being electronic. Many record stores seem to want to put him there. The truth is that he does a little bit of everything (as you said - his resume) and one category can't describe him.
The album was not designed to please, nor to please an audience of millions. Rather, it is a reckoning, the last contractual work for Virgin. An opportunity to do things differently, completely free from constraints. The result is music that plays with expectations, destroys them with relish, creates something new and keeps the listener permanently in suspense. That's what makes art. Although I have adored Oldfield's music since the original Tubular Bells, I was a stranger to Amarok for years. It took me 2-3 attempts to get to grips with the album, to discover what it contains, what a grab bag this work is. Today, after listening to it hundreds of times, Amarok is "my" masterpiece by Oldfield. It is one of the very few pieces of music that I listen to and enjoy like a good film or a great book. And I keep discovering new things, understanding the work a little better each time. Incredibly great musical ability paired with technical virtuosity at the highest level. In addition, the recording quality is first-class even by today's standards. For me, a modern classic.
Bryan is not wrong in a sense when he describes Amarok as a collage and he was astute enough to discern the (often) subtle connections between the sections. However this may not be the best way to approach this work. I experience it as a master musician doing what he wants as FpunktKpunkt suggests. And so because he is such a gifted musician the album is more like going on a journey through some marvellous inner landscape - a dreamland perhaps where we encounter section after section - some "familiar" and some not so much but we don't care because the artistry and invention is so dazzling. Oldfield does some wonderful things with the mix too- some extremely low levels of some instruments eg - so the journey never allows you to guess who you will meet next. So yes, for me too, it's a masterpiece even if the meaning of the dream remains a little obscure.
I returned the album the first time I bought it!!! Lol. After speaking to some Swedish fans at Horseguards Parade, I was persuaded to give it another go. So I bought it again, gave it a listen and.... THEN I got it. And I've never looked back.
The first reaction to Mike Oldfield's Amarok is the same for everyone..."but what is this--? Amarok is the most rebellious, crazy, ingenious, virtuous... work in the history of music. Oldfield wanted to demonstrate what his essence was, and that is to create music, for the pleasure of creating it, without a reason. Oldfield wanted a work so that Virgin could not release a single or that could be radio...he wanted to annoy each and every one of Virgin's directors who "forced him to make commercial songs, despising the essence of Mike Oldfield, the essence that helped create Virgin Records. A few listens later, with ears and a more open mind, Amarok opens up as a complex work much more rounded and cohesive than it appears. Oldfield makes music from the inside, recording every day he went to the studio first thing that came to mind, with almost anything he found in his studio... an airplane modeler's toolbox, toy hammers, whistles, chairs, spoons and an immense amount of guitars played in ways impossible (except for his fingers). He sends a message in Morse to Richard Branson "fuck off RB", he even imitates a speech by Margaret Thatcher at the end...The Africa part, with three different endings is an immense party. Oldfield is in charge of reminding us at all times that he is HAPPY... Amarok is a sonorous feat of music. It is Oldfield in its purest form. Each listen makes you discover new sounds, melodies... it makes you travel and makes you feel all kinds of feelings and discover the feelings you had at the time Oldfield recorded it. There is no why, there is only music.... 1 Just a minute of Amarok has more feeling than the last 20 years of musical creations.
So some additional insights ... Mike Oldfield at the time described this as "Ommadawn II". It was said as an angry quib to Virgin who wanted him to make "Tubular Bells II". The kicker was that the first album that he made for Warner Bros. Records in 1992 (he left Virgin the previous year) was ... Tubular Bells II. Despite rejecting the notion of calling it to Tubular Bells, it does subtly call back to elements that are found there. There's the obvious one where he performed nearly all the instruments himself. He brought back Tom Newman as a producer and engineer. There's a quick recitation of instruments used. He also employed a comedienne (Janet Brown who did the "Thatcher" voice). And he even used "long thin metallic hanging tubes" ... or ... tubular bells. So in that case, you were intuitively correct in that it was a kind of musical CV and a musical string of consciousness that was more free and less constructed. He was also going through a phase where he wanted to make music that displayed musicianship, and thus didn't employ the Fairlight CMI or the Amiga computer to construct. For the rest of his career, he would go back and forth a bit on this. Mike Oldfield started out as a guitarist and draw heavy inspiration from English folk as well as what was the British and American folk scenes of the 1960s. He then played bass for Kevin Ayers's band The Whole World (Ayers also being a founding member of Soft Machine). But he also discovered various experimental/avant-garde music and there were two works that played a big role in formulating Tubular Bells: Terry Riley's Rainbow in Curved Air and Centipede's Septober Energy. (The latter is if you *really* want a challenge in long-form composition/album listening). Oh and this is worth repeating: Tubular Bells - what started his music-making career and what started Virgin - was released ten days after he had turned 20. Amarok was released when he was still barely under 40.
The musical callbacks go even further back than Tubular Bells, to a pair of solo guitar folk tracks he played in an album with his sister 4 years before Tubular Bells. And like Amarok, those tracks also are a collection of ideas mashed together with constant sudden changes in almost everything but the instrument, one of them even with a bit of humor at the end, they do sound like mini-Amaroks, just much less polished and more frantic, I wonder if he wanted to remember those days somehow.
Finally, someone reacts to This album, I think this is Mike's greatest achievement, he pours everything into it, the playing and production is amazing, however, it is an album that needs to be listened to about 3 times to truly get it, as there is so much going on to take in.
@CaptainsChannel58 Exactly, it has so much depth, even Mike's huge fans, like me admit the 1st time they heard it, they were unsure about it, repeated listening is a must. Mike, should release a surround mix if it too.
!!! Oldfield has had numerous hit singles. He's not all Tubular Bells and Incantations. And not only is it unsurprising that he's on Virgin, he was their debut artist, and launched them to great success with his incredibly well-selling first three albums! He certainly has been quite marketable. Only in the USA did he not take off.
The fact this album was recorded almost entirely by one person in the old fashioned way with tape machines and a metronome with no DAW in sight yet manages to make it so complex while at the same time being a sixty minute middle finger to Richard Branson (one of the parts is literally "FUCK OFF R.B." in morse code, haha) still amazes me to this day. It captures Mike at the peak of his playing skill, and also at the peak of his weirdness, and I will always love it. The huge dynamic leaps which annoyed me a bit on my first few listens are now some of my favourite parts about it. Also, of course, it contains my favourite vacuum cleaner solo of all time.
Amarok: my favorite piece of music ever written. When I listen to it, all the superfluous vanishes, and I fully (re)connect with the Essence of life. There is rage and bliss. Sadness and joy. It's tense and paradoxical, but absolutely harmonious and cohesive. Amarok is sublime and transcendent, beyond perfection. Happy?! Ha-Ha-Ha!
OH MY GOD. You madman, you actually did it. I've been searching your channel for Amarok every couple of weeks for ages to see if you'd taken the challenge yet. Thank you (and Ryan)! One of my favourite albums of all time. Looking forward to settling into this one 🙂 Edit: Just finished, very enjoyable. On the subject of musical ideas mashed together, throughout his career he's doodled musical ideas and motifs onto cigarette papers in his own notation, stashed them in a jar, then gone for a rummage whenever he's needed inspiration. In the case of Amarok it's fair to say he dipped into the jar hard... Interestingly though, there are many callbacks / easter eggs to his career in here. I wondered if you'd pick up on the triplet-heavy guitar run that's a nod to a similar section in Ommadawn Part 1 which you covered, albeit a long time ago. Some of the synth pad sections bring Hergest Ridge to mind as well, and the riff around 54:10 is pure Tubular Bells Pt 1 (complete with tubular bells in the climax too). Some of the uglier growling sections are referencing the Piltdown Man section of TB1 as well. I think it's one of those albums that's particularly meaningful when you have a very intimate understanding of someone's back catalogue. You smile at those - sometimes very gentle - nods to previous work and it adds a level of emotional engagement and nostalgia(?) that elevates the experience. Yes, it's a spite album in many ways, but in doing it that way he's leant hard - with some misfires - into something that only he can really do.
Callbacks to his career makes a lot of sense as he seems to be an intentful writer and I couldn't imagine this was literally just a bunch of musical odd and ends.
> > > "I'm kinda surprised he had a record label at all, much less Virgin Records" Well, in fact the very first Virgin Records album was Mike's first (solo) album, Tubular Bells, which is what started Branson's fortune and quite a big part of Virgin's initial success. Branson already wanted to start a record label, but they didn't have one at the time, they just agreed to let Mike record the album on their studio when the sound engineers insisted there was something in the demos Mike handed them, and then Branson tried to sell it to some label, but since nobody wanted it they just went ahead and launched the label with it. After Amarok, Mike made a single album with Virgin, only because contractual obligations, also angry with Virgin, but more in the lyrics than the music itself. Then he went to Warner and made Tubular Bells 2, which was rather successful, and which Virgin had asked him to make for years; in fact they wanted to name Amarok Tubular Bells 2, but Mike refused, saying if anything it would be more like Ommadawn 2, which doesn't make sense to me as an music ignorant, other than the african drums at the end. As for the name, Mike had been watching something regarding wolves, that you mentioned, and he liked the "amarok"-ish sound. And also he said it could mean "I am a rock", as in I do whatever I want (though he had done quite a bit of what the label wanted in the previous album/s, only for them to barely promote them). Mike has done several types of music, so it's difficult to put him in one specific genre. He started with folk, but then picked influences of rock, progressive rock, classical, minimalism, ambient, ..., and has certainly done pop singles and quite a bit of other stuff. Personally I think he's made music of way too many styles that weren't really his thing, but hey, good for him, and I guess he picked some more fans here and there that wouldn't have liked his other music (like a friend of mine that always mocked me because I listened to some of his music, but one day he couldn't stop talking about the new awesome Mike's album which I didn't care about).
I saw him play a free open air gig on the banks of the Thames, just prior to "Incantations" release. He was with David Bedford and a small choir. It was an amazing performance. "Amarok" is one of his best works, along with his early period which I love.
I have nearly all of MOs music from the start. When I got to this one, I couldn't get through the album a single time, so I shelved it. On an online forum, the hardcore MO fans really loved this album and I didn't understand why. So, one day I was about to do a complete clean up my apartment and decided to put the CD back in and force myself to listen. Suddenly, I could understand (once it got past those early disruptive sounds). It is an amazing composition and performance. You might want to know that there is one cover out there on RU-vid done by a guy on the piano and his buddy on bass (Gus Fogel). It is an interesting listen too.
Thanks. The tremendous changes in volume are due to the fact that Mike Oldfield hated Richard Branson's partner and knew that he turned the volume of his Lamborghini's radio to maximum when driving through the streets of his city. So the beeps and shrill sounds of the record were to scare him and cause him to have an accident. There are also messages in Morse like screw you RB (Richard Bramson). There was also no way to release a single due to the continuous changes in melodies and rhythms of this magnificent work. Amarok is an album conceived out of hatred only to spite Virgin and Richard Branson. Amarok is the name of the wolf in Inuit, the Eskimo language, although it could also refer to "I am a rock" in reference to the fact that Richard Branson could not get his way in this fight that he and Mike Oldfield had. A hug.
Mike stated that "Amarok" came from the Irish word "Amarach", which was itself another callback to Ommadawn which was named after the word "Amadain" (fool) which appears in the vocal sections.
It must have taken me a good ten listens before I really appreciated this album, but after that, when you know every change, every note, every flight of electric guitar ... listening becomes magical, the most incredible musical journey. Fun fact, there is a health warning on the cover : "This record could be hazardous to the health of cloth-eared nincompoops. If you suffer from this condition, consult your Doctor immediately" ... There was only one more album after that with Virgin, Heaven's Open on which for the first (and last time) he sings, and is called "Michael Oldfield" on the cover
I congratulate you for being the first RU-vid reactor to take on this behemoth. I’ve always liked it. The highs are dizzying and the more dissonant bits aren’t so sonically enjoyable but help a bit to sell the story of the piece for me!
Finding so many ways to go against the grain - let alone so beautifully (melodically, harmonically and rhythmically) - is superhuman genius. I'd play this to my best friend to enjoy and to my greatest enemy to suffer. I'm sure to get the desired effect on both occasions.
the album's back cover reads: "HEALTH WARNING - This record could be hazardous to the health of cloth-eared nincompoops. If you suffer from this condition, consult your Doctor immediately". 😄
This album was a massive pisstake on Virgin Records. He introduced "Fuck off R.B." on morse code and offered a prize on the radio to first listener to decypher it. He also added the volume spikes knowing that Simon Draper loved to blast his demos on his car stereo, on the way to to work. Among many other insiders and diverse ways of flipping the bird... On my behalf, this was the last truly great album by Mike Oldfield.
In the late 80s Mike was increasingly associated with technology and computers as compositional tools, as opposed to a purer use of analogue instruments, but guitar always remained his main instrument. In a way, from the very beginning, he was pushing the boundaries of what was technologically possible, but always in service of his compositions. This album was not only a protest against Virgin, but a return to more long form music of his earlier years and a massive technological detox. And what a result!!
This is one of the greatest albums ever released. PS. You are lost with the idea of Mike being electronica guy. No. Not even close. Multi instrumentalist more on the traditional side. PS2. That is true.
I remember when this recorded dropped. I'd been a massive MO fan since the days of Crisis and discovered his long form music. This one is his last stroke of pure genius, it's impossibly epic, he's obviously not 'happy' and when he's not feeling good with the world he creates his best work. The more you listen to it the more it envelopes you, that jagged feeling which is relatable when you're depressed and are saving face for the benefit of everyone else in the world. He did some solid work afterwards but there was never anything as visceral as this.
You're so right when you say that MO creates his best work when he's not feeling good, mad Mike is genius Mike. He was a mad frog in the 70's and that was his golden era, but after his successful therapy, it's as if by becoming "normal", his music has become more banal.
If you listen to "Sallyangie" the first album he made with his sister when he was 15, you can hear bits of Amarok in his instrumental section, so clearly he has been carrying around those ideas for many years.
Also on some of the Tubular Bells and Ommadawn demos are further ideas that appear here. He pretty much emptied himself on this album. To me, his last stroke of genius - from then on, he just started doing basically less and less motivated/inspired copies of his older work.
Firstly a big thankyou for taking this one on. I like your resume idea but to me its "Chaos and Order" I also want to apologise to those people who listened to this in my car. Cloth eared nincompoops
I've been a Mike Oldfield fan ever since childhood, and I finally heard this album in 2019 when I was studying for my degree in film and video production. It was great! Helped me get through the soul-crushing elements of the year, especially when COVID stopped us mid-year, having to work from home.
He's done quite a few marketable singles, like Moonlight Shadow, Man in the rain and Five Miles out and family Man etc, as well as some brilliant albums :)
The random volume spike section near the beginning Mike said he made specifically as a prank for an executive or something who he knew loved to listen to music really loud. So he made a fairly quiet section of music and inserted random musical transients of volume in it just because he knew it would make him jump lol.
Amarok is one of my favorite albums and when listening to it I always hear 6 or 7 musical themes twisted around each other. Some of those themes can be heard on the Sallyangie album where he was experimenting (too many notes, Mike, as his sister Sally said). And don't forget the Morse codes around three-quarter of the album in which he issues his grief towards RB (Richard Branson). And at the end the perfect imitation of the voice of Margaret Thatcher by Janet Brown.
It’s a musical rollercoaster and theme park. Mike having fun.
7 месяцев назад
god I love this (one-hour long, absolutely incomprehensible and wonderful) song One of my favourite albums of all time. I'm sooooo happy you got to it! Interestingly, listening to it alongside you, I flashbacked to my own first time and how O_O my face was back then and how unexpected and weird and even uncomfortable this music felt. I immediately loved it, but I think I only knew some of Mike's more...palatable(?) prog rock before that...Tubular Bells III, Crises, QE2...with weird moments in all of them, probably, but nothing like this. Amarok is strangely beautiful and interesting and groovy in many many places but as you said it, so disrupted on purpose that it's hard to understand. It's also angry, yes...cheeky and stubborn and vexed, but I never felt like it's peculiarly antagonistic towards me as a listener. Just maybe...being a bit difficult :D I found all those disruptive moments fun! I always felt like, Mike said, listen, if you know the stuff I like and do, you'll get this. But as I listened to it probably hundreds of times since then, this flashback now just emphasized how much it changed in my comprehension. All those disruptive moments, I expect them now, all those weirdness, the ideas that dont work together, I find them funny and lovely and a part of a whole, and the collective, smoother concept, the harmony between the disparate pieces emerges better. And I always felt like it's kinda...sad, but also very beautiful. A celebration of complexity. Human understanding. Joy in wackiness and in that such different things can create a cool thing together. And I agree it's kind of like a resume, even though he did many cool stuff after this, too. It definitely feels like... here you go guys, this is what I can do, and prepare well, because it's gonna get Strange. I can still listen to it and have just as much wacky fun as for the first time. Lots of people told you all kinds of info which I won't repeat. I think you should absolutely listen to Tubular Bells which was Mike's first Big Thing and brought him (and Virgin) lots of fame. Ommadawn which you already listened to is another classic. I really love Tubular Bells II, for me, a more mature iteration on the first one, and I even love TB III which is the thing to listen to if you want electronic (and more pop) from Mike. For me, he's always been guitarist-composer first (see the album Guitars), then all kinds of other things second. Maybe folk prog second? :D He went pretty electronic in the 2000's which is not my fave thing from him, but still okay because of his composing and soundscapes and moods, I enjoy a lot of it. Honestly, he's really a mad lad, he just does what he's interested in at the moment, I think. His last album is from 2017, Return to Ommadawn, and honestly...it's good. P.S. I loved your thought, about "control over art". I agree!
i love your take on oldfield, only knowing him and his work for about 2 years i can easily say he’s my favorite artist ever. the only album on vinyl i don’t have is man on the rocks now lol
6 месяцев назад
@@luapkcuhs I had most of the albums on CD... the only vinyl I had was Discovery and that was the first I listened to and the one that started it all. The Lake has a special place in my heart ever since :) P.S. Man on the Rocks is so weird I never got into it. I even like whatsitcalled...Light+Shade, but...not that one :D
This was Mike’s last album for Branson, he designed it so that there were no parts which he could have put out as a single from it, the morse code part says, Fuck you RB..
"Amarok" is kinda of masterpiece to me. Mike tried to pull out his "soul" to us... from high to low, from funny to disturbing. Friends asked me, how i can listen to that. Uhmmm... easy to answer: It's a part of me... simple answers r not for anyone.
Hi, Bryan, hi everyone. So many great comments here! I'm just... "HAPPY"! 😊 All the essential things about this masterpiece have been said (and often in a really good way), I think: - The incredible cohesion of the whole, when you get to know it better, after multiple listening. - The fact you can still discover new things within each new listening. - The hidden (but now famous) morse code message, saying "Fuck off RB" (Richard Branson), towards the end. - The funny warning on the back of the album, to the "health of cloth-eared nincompoops"... - The way Mike added those great unexpected dynamic peaks here and there to frighten the studio executive while listening to the album in his car. - The funny / sad / sarcastic way he keeps repeating "happy ?" during the piece. - The different possible known meanings of the title ("Wolf" in Inuit language / contraction of "I am a rock",...). - The really interesting, poetic and meaningful story printed inside the album sleeve, that someone here kindly reproduced, which can make you approach the whole piece with a new artistic perspective. Etc. Etc. Like a lot of people here, I'm really glad someone finally released a reaction to this incredible piece here, on a RU-vid music reaction channel. Your reactions and comments are great, Bryan. Your analysis is also really interesting, and rather accurate, I think. On a personal level, to the classical question of what album I would take with me on a desert island, "Amarok" has always been my answer since I discovered it, in the early 90's. And even after more than 30 years of intensive and repeated listening, I never changed my mind about it. Yes, I am a hard fan of Mike Oldfield's music, and this is my number one favourite of all his works. And yes, it's also my all times favourite piece of music, from any artist. ❤ I hope we’ll all be able to enjoy other "music people" on RU-vid reacting to this album, eventually. It is a really precious musical gift, and I'm sure some of them will appreciate it too. Fingers crossed...
I guess because I came to this piece as one with no musical training, I can only go with how it made me feel. The first two thirds gave me that similar feeling of frustration, punctuated with flashes of, "Oh, that's so cool!" But the finale blew me away so powerfully the first time I heard it that I roamed my neighborhood that night cackling like a madman. And that's all I need to say to justify my enjoyment of this piece of art.
This is still the CD that has the best sound quality I've ever heard. Its so rich and chunky. I'm a bit of an Oldfield fan - I remember thinking this was quite quirky too when I bought it on release...
I think you are the first to have done this album all the way through on here! so so much to unpack. For an album that was created out of a fit of pique and to speed up getting out of an onerous contract it has remarkably become something of a cult masterpiece - down to the incredible production (Tom Newman), deft musicianship (Oldfield) and a vast soundscape that defies any pigeonhole to label it. Coming just short of mid way through his career this release was so left field and unexpected - over the previous 10 years he had been producing pop and soft rock tracks which really were not making much of an impression on the world. This came out and it still did not make any mark on the mainstream market - but for the fans it was a revelation and a relief that he still could craft something incredible. It harkens back to his early 1970's works by stringing together often unconnected musical ideas into a somehow coherent piece. Back then he was rolling his own cigarettes and when ever inspiration would hit anywhere he would jot the ideas down and stuff them in a jar. when it came to producing the last two albums of the Virgin contract (Amarok and Heaven's Open) he up ended the jar and pieced together this and the side long instrumental "Music From The Balcony" on Heaven's Open. Safe to say all the good ideas ended up in Amarok as no one listens to Music From The Balcony!
When people ask me about ma favorite album/song, my answer is "it's complicated", becasue Amarok is my favorite album/song, and also Oldfield is my favorite musician. I could add some commentary about the background of it, but other in the comments already did in the detail I would have done. The only thing is that nobody but Oldfield knows why Amarok was choosen, but I know the music player is named after the album. Even then, the versions of that music player are named after mike's songs. Hailings from Mexico!
one of the best music album by its originality and the composition. Every changing will you lost you for a better one. You dare the try of it. Thank you. Now you have to hear all the MO dinasty. Hope you will enjoy. Remember, Mike was first n a lot of things.
I feel he went back to his pre-TB days of experimenting with sounds and employing non traditional instruments such as a manual toothbrush and a typewriter amongst others which he liked doing. Always found very enjoyable!
"The more I hear it the more I get an interesting idea what's going on ..." RRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNGGGGG, RRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNGGGGG ... hahaha. I read somewhere that Mike considers this his best achievement. It was a backlash against Virgin because they wanted more & more pop-songs from him. Just one year earlier, he released "Earth Moving" which only contained quite awful pop-songs. Amarok was the middle finger and he finished his contract in 1991 with a final ok-ish album.
Mike had a competition to uncover the hidden message in the album. It turned out to be morse code spelling out f off R B (Richard Branson). In an interview he said he imagined Simon Draper (Virgin Records) listening to it in his car, turning it up, then the jump scare sounds at the beginning scaring the carp out of him.
If I recall the history, it was 1972 when he recorded Tubular Bells which was released as the very first Virgin release ever. As his fame grew, he ended up signing a 20 album contract. The first four compositions (Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn, Incantations) are considered by his hardest core fans are considered his best. Lots of ideas, lots of different styles and sounds. The 5th album was more jazzy (Platinum) and the next handful started to be more pop (QE2, 5 Miles Out, Crisis, Discovery, Islands)...due to the request by Virgin execs to try to have Mike be more mainstream. Mixed results with some gems in there. Between those and Amarok, there was a movie score (Killing Fields) and the advent of CDs where a compilation was released. After Amarok, he just mailed it in doing the bare minimum to get tracks recorded and the last couple albums delivered. Virgin was awaiting the 20-yr anniversary of TB with the release of Tubular Bells 2...but Mike saved it for his jump to Warner music. He returned to his former sound with big fanfare with a live concert at Edinburgh Castle. At the turn of the millenium, his sound changed again to be more dance/club style as he was living in Spain during that time. The last album I'm aware of is Return to Ommadawn which he recorded after his fans voted for Ommadawn to be revisited much like he did for Tubular Bells. In my opinion, there was a constant battle between business and creativity without much care to what Oldfield's fans wanted or what Mike's artistic talent was "designed" for. Amarok is a product of that time and the result is intentionally chaotic.
@ 49:47 in this reaction (48:04 on album), Oldfield inserts a "hidden" morse code message to Richard Branson, for which he offered a1000UKP prize to the first person to find it. It reads ..."F... OFF RB" The work seen as a resume is a perfect description, "endings as beginnings" as he was concluding his contract obligations with the last two releases for Virgin ( Amarok & Heavens Open). Amarok displays references to Tubular Bells(the record that made Branson wealthy), Ommadawn, etc as well as displaying concepts, production skills, instrumental & compositional virtuosity and versatility that he felt was being undermined and underappreciated by Virgin management.
Ommadawn i Amarok to najlepsze płyty. Z Amarok trzeba się obyć. Gdy wyszła ta płyta to miałem mieszane odczucia, po kilkukrotnym odsłuchu zacząłem ją uwielbiać.
Interesting! I have not heard Amarok before! I listened a lot to Tubular Bells in the 70s. A young angry composer who didn't care about anything but composing. This was a more mature man. Still angry. Still don't care. I felt a close affinity between Tubular bells and Amarok. Yes, collage! Or like that kind of books for small children with an attached sheet with small selfgluing pictures - where the book is Tubular bells and the sheet of paper is Amarok. I think I would learn to appreciate Amarok! Needless to say I am a fan of Zappa and Gentle giant.
I remember reading that Mike put the audio spikes there to annoy Virgin exec, Simon Draper, who listened to new music in his sports car! I imagine those spikes could be quite painful and unexpected in an enclosed space. It reminds me of a car trip I took from London to Edinburgh. I had the radio tuned to a classical music station, and they played all four parts of the William Tell overture. The third section is rather pastoral and quiet, and I cranked up the volume, forgetting the finale. I just about clung onto the steering wheel after jumping out of my seat. A few years ago Mike was doing remixes of his previous work, but he never got to Amarok. I always wondered if he would just remix the audio, or do some actual rearrangement.
I have listened to MO albums for last 40 years and I love 75% and like the rest. Even heavens open has its gems. This one…I have tried and tried and I go back to it every few years and it just hasn’t hit me. Sadly. People love it. I wish I did. It’s chaotic and disjointed and when I want him to settle into an idea, he’s on to the next thing. Maybe when I’m 60 ivv be will try again . lol
Sometimes music just isn't for us; we're not the target audience. I don't think I'll ever come around to enjoying something as noisy and unfocused as Amarok and that's ok.
The part around 50:17 (48 in the album) has that strange sort of electric prodding sound in the background. It is in fact morse code for ‘fuck of RB (richard branson)’ for not letting mike take creative control in previous years.
Album art is meant to be an update on the cover of Ommadawn, adding to it's Ommadawn 2 credentials (Celtic themes, eastern European instrumentation, Jabula African drumming).
I love Mike Oldfield's music, but I had a distaste for this album for a long time, even though I love wonky shizzle, this was just too wonky for me ... not anymore though, as I've slowly reached the same level of wonk over the last decade or so. Maybe I'll even surpass the wonk and start disliking it for not being wonky enough. Anyway, love your reactions to this wonk :-) ... more Mike Oldfield please!
I guess there is no album on that whole world that combines such a broad variety of different motives, ideas and tunes! A unique whole music wonderland in the extent of several albums!
Thank you for all these wonderful reflections, it was a pleasure to see them real time as the music unfolds. Please refer to music such as this as “this work is, etc” rather than “this song is, etc”. Song is for a song, most large compositions should not be called songs and are works.
I have played this album in the last 30 years literally hundreds and hundreds of times and it remains an experience every time and never get boring and discover new things in it. Words can’t describe what a masterpiece this is, in one word: Epic! With respect, i don’t think you can truly ‘feel’ and get this album by hear it one time, you must learn the album, for me it is not a soundcollage but one cohesive piece, almost an spiritual journey.
The Part at 46:29 got Released close to like a Single, It got Released as amarok excerpt and got Released on Mike oldfield elements for example. So the closest one to a Single Release out of this Album I guess :) as He Tried to differ All parts enough that they dont get cut to a Single Song :D
At 44:42 on the album, (not the video) the part that's used as an excerpt begins. Virgin records managed to pull this part of it into a single and use it in a compilation album ("Elements" - 1993) to show Mike that he did indeed have the ability to make a short track out of this album. Ironically, at 48:03 Mike uses a synth board to imitate morse code. In the message it says "F*** OFF R-B" which no doubt was aimed at Virgin's CEO Richard Branson. This was also included in the compilation and yet no one realized the hidden message except us Morse Code people.
Initial impression...reminds me of animals as leaders "braindance" with the acoustic part. Have not heard of this fellow. Interesting. I will continue listening...
Thanks for the review! Still one of the greatest piece of musical art ever...listened to over 50 times, still discover some before unheared detail. And btw...MO had a LOT of singles.. Moonlight Shadow, To France, Family Man, 5 Miles Out....
Interesting your take that it feels like a resume...in a way yes - some of the ideas go right back to the 1960's! Also his first solo album that made him, Tubular Bells, was very much a resume to the industry - Mike was a nobody then, just a jobbing session player and getting the opportunity to put down his ideas and prowess in playing in a professional studio during its down time allowed him to create the ultimate musical CV to give to producers, agents and gig venues. Annoyingly that bunch of unconnected musical ideas became a colossal hit and created it's own entity. After listening to it a few times you don't notice the jarring juxtaposed segments as your brain is expecting them and has already drawn the connection ahead of time. Amarok does much the same only the segments are shorter.
It took me a while, but I quite enjoy Amarok now. Amarok is not an album to be the first of Mike Oldfield's works that you hear, you need to listen to all the other albums first to understand where he was in himself and what he was saying through this album at this time in his life and career. Hidden in the track is a musical morse code that is reported to spell out F*** off RB, with RB being Richard Branson, head of Virgin records. They have since made up their differences and are now friends again.
Like with a lot of prog music, on a first listen you think this or that just doesn't work. Then, after you've listened over and over again and your mind gets used to all the variants and changes, when you hear an edited version, or sometimes an altered live version, you find yourself going, 'nope, I want it the way it was'. Suddenly, the stuff that didn't work at first, is now essential listening.
As far as i remember, about the meaning of 'Amarok' in fan circles was speculated, that it wants to mean: "(i) am a ro(c)k! (=> "you can´t break me, Virgin/Richard Branson!")
This album historically is hard to unpack in many ways for his state of mind. In 1973 he allegedly signed a 13 (!) full LP albums contract....and Amarok was one of the last ones with Virgin from that contract and in 1990 there was bad blood between both since for Virgin Mike was a relic with a long contract and dimishing historical importance for the company and Mike resented being forgotten. The disruptive sounds you hear were made on purpose to angry one of Virgin's executives..as Mike imagined the guy getting scared while driving when the loud noises came and he also wanted the album to be unmarkeatable so Virgin couldnt make money i guess (i think they even were in court over royalties). Amarok was also a "statement" of Mike against full electronic computer music with no man playing which is ironic because in the 80s and later on after Amarok he wasn't shy of using samples (albeit not too much) on his live performances in the 80s and in his albums of the 2000s foward...Was always an early adopter of new musical tech like Fairlights and other programable early instruments but in 1990 he kinda went ludite as far music goes.
Dude. You don’t judge an Oldfield album on first listen, especially one that his most hard core fans consider hid opus( me included ) If I may , you are talking through all of the best parts . And who gives a flying f about a single ? If Mike wanted to write a single he would have, as he has done many times ! He’s not marketable ? The Virgin Empire was built on Mikes first album. Amarok is a journey. I do hope that you actually listen to it sometime and listen to it again. It’s not a bunch of random nonsense . You have a good channel. I hope you’ll listen a few times and do a new review so you can correct your mistakes ! It sounds “disjointed “ because the brain cannot connect all of the themes being introduced. And not a word on his guitar playing? Someone told you it was “antagonistic” and that’s all you heard in what he ultimately a very positive work. Kubrick feared that people were loosing the power of observation . I’d add they are losing the power of listening. Second edit You just admitted that you haven’t listened to his earlier works so you are forgiven. :) Third edit : he didn’t play “hundreds of instruments”but very few . What he did use ate a variety of household items. He pulled off what Pink Floyd tried to pull off and failed .
That's awesome! I usually hear a lot of hate for remasters, especially from long time fans, so it's nice to hear that this remaster brought out some ideas that were hard(er) to hear in the original.
