Cheap Cds - Music Of The Spheres

Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: Where's the trademark Mike Oldfield??
Comment: This much awaited album came as a disappointment. It may be good as a classical album, but the
trademark seering guitars, the power and energy in the compositions are completely lacking. I agree
with many other reviewers on Amazon and elsewhere. I thought this album might grow on me, so after
listening to it for 3 months or so, still I feel it has not worked it's magic. Dear Mike, please
give us another trademark album before you retire!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Great as usual
Comment: Again Mike Oldfield gave us a record that is unique but has his strong style. I was just a little
surprised that CD is so short - but it is because there is never enought of listening of Mike's
music.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Kept thinking it would grow on me.
Comment: Being a fan of Mike's for longer than I care to remember, I looked forward to this much heralded
album.
However, the arrangement has echoes of the past (Tubular Bells?), and, simply, sounds
like a film score.
There is nothing inherently bad about the album, it just doesn't move me.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Stirring stuff!
Comment: I love Mike Oldfield's music, and especially his repetitions and reworkings of familiar themes,
something I know some reviewers see as lazy and/or boring, but I find the restatements and
variations fascinating, and I love it when an almost familar tune from one album becomes something
quite different on another. This is a fabulous example of taking Oldfield melodies old (and new) and
taking them somewhere spectacular (well, outer space to be exact). I found this very stirring as
well as beautifully restful, and it's wonderful to write to.

If you're new to Mike's
music thanks to the new exposure he's got from Classic FM for this, can I suggest you also try his
Millennium Bell which is similarly stirring and melodic, but with a dash of club music as well!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Joyous and grandiose
Comment: A definite return to form by Mike Oldfield and a far more complex and lastingly enjoyable album
than the light-weight disposable fluff of Tres Lunas.

Mike has, of course, dabbled in
classical/unplugged compositions before (notably Voyager), but never to this degree. MOTS is a
full-blown classical orchestral piece.

But is it a true Oldfield classic?
/>Well it comes pretty damn close I reckon!

Oldfield aficionados will recognise many
themes being reprised and revamped in this opus - hints of QE2, Ommadawn, Hergest Ridge (dare I
suggest even a soupcon of Moonlight Shadow?) and obviously the ubiquitous Tubular Bells are all
embedded in there for your delectation. But there's more. Much more!

Round about
track 8, things get almost Beethovian, with a magnificently memorable tune given the full orchestral
treatment. The raising of the hairs on the back of my neck is reliable testimony to the power of
this piece. But do things peak a tad too soon? Maybe. The subsequent reprising of the reprised TB
theme feels almost like padding thereafter. But another peak soon hoves into sight, as the horns
and strings swell to a crescendo, driving that principal Spheres riff (if such a term is suitable?)
into the listeners' brain.

This is truly uplifting music, that should appeal to a wide
audience. The only possible dissenting voices would be those who expected Mike Oldfield's trademark
soaring electric guitar sound. Just listen to him pluck those nylon strings though and chill
out!

Well done Mike 9/10!

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