Mike Oldfield
Earth Moving

THE REVIEW

The first impression is most likely the right one.

"Earth Moving" is an uninspired album born out of a success that overwhelmed Oldfield in the '80s, decisively influencing many artistic choices of the British multi-instrumentalist and especially of his record label, Virgin by Richard Branson. In 1987, Mike released "Islands," a work containing all the elements that hinted at a potential creative crisis with bland FM radio songs and little else.

The album, in its uniformity, towards the lower end, was partially redeemed by the suite "The Wind Chimes," still far from Oldfield's best compositional work. In 1989, it was the turn of "Earth Moving," and for the first time, Mike created an album of only songs. If the initial idea was to make a highly selling album, the predictions were not among the happiest; the album did not sell in a satisfactory manner, and its singles went largely unnoticed. Indeed, the audience that followed Oldfield from the beginning of his career cannot help but see this LP as a banal and irritating sequence of soulless, if not irritating and dull, songs like the awful "Innocent" sung by his partner Anita Hegerland.

To get an idea of the consistency of the material present in "Earth Moving," just take as a reference all of Oldfield's production post-1982, mix it up, and let it settle in an inconsistent and predictable manner. Tired, boring compositions with plastic sounds largely entrusted to different singers, making the listening experience even more cumbersome. It's not worth analyzing the songs because there isn't one worthy of note; the album is not even recommendable to completists who are probably already disappointed by "Islands." After 1989, Mike partially recovered, partially.