Mike Oldfield
Guitars

This album by Mike Oldfield lives up to its promises, with its rather sparse title already announcing that the guitars will be the undisputed stars of this music. And that's how it is, venturing through the ten tracks of "Guitars," released in 1999. Total duration 43 minutes, nine guitars employed, including classical, flamenco, electric guitars, and guitars treated via MIDI, which Oldfield uses to simulate the timbre of percussion or to produce sounds similar to strings, also using, as an exception that proves the rule, a Roland VG8 synthesizer.

But beyond a quick survey of the instruments used (always a must in the case of an extraordinary sound craftsman like Mike Oldfield), what remains are the musical values expressed in "Guitars" and the overall high-quality level of the work. What strikes most is the great melodic inventiveness found in these purely instrumental tracks: Oldfield, it's true, had long accustomed us to the particular singability of his themes, and here he provides further confirmation of it.

Fully acoustic tracks (like "Muse" at the beginning, or "Enigmatism") alternate with electric tracks, tinged with the tone of distorted electric guitar (as in "Cochise" or "Out of Sight"). "Summit Day" is very beautiful, where the theme entrusted to the classical guitar is doubled after the exposition by the electric guitar an octave above. And "Four Winds," the longest track on the album (9 minutes), is divided into four episodes, each with well-defined sounds and characteristics, which ideally represent a musical portrait of the compass rose and the four cardinal points.

It's hard to find faults in this work; perhaps in some passages, the accentuated use of reverb makes the sounds a bit too dainty, but it's a forgivable sin quickly overlooked. For the rest, note after note, sound after sound, there is only Mike Oldfield's sure and convincing musicality.