Mike Oldfield
Ommadawn

"Ommadawn" marks the end of Mike Oldfield's most creative phase. His splendid portrait on the cover, after all,  seems to be there to make us understand it: his gaze, tired and pensive, looks through a window and gets lost in a rainy day, betraying a sense of bewilderment or fear for a future that appears distant and uncertain.

If with "Tubular Bells" Mike Oldfield had explored, in splendid solitude, a mysterious world made of chaos and turmoil, with the subsequent "Hergest Ridge" he masterfully dealt with the serene flip side of that world. With this "Ommadawn", Oldfield ideally closes the circle, offering us a work that is halfway between the two previous ones, resulting less mysterious and more compact, but equally evocative and engaging.

The work presents itself with the same, now tried and tested formula, of a single long suite divided into two parts which, despite the length, is not at all difficult to assimilate, even for an ear not "accustomed" to listening to similar compositions, also because this album, as previously mentioned, turns out to be less fragmented than the previous ones and more ""immediate"". Once again, Mike showcases a plethora of instruments among the most diverse such as the bouzouki, banjo, spinet, synthesizer and the inevitable array of classical and electric guitars  besides a classical instrument, the harp, which he gives much space to, especially in the splendid introductory theme, which will then be revisited multiple times with all the other instruments, the latter also played, and for the first time, by other musicians. Among these are the Irish musicians Paddy Moloney and Clodagh Simonds, well-known for their folk music which, in this album, marries with the African atmospheres given by the African musician Jabula's percussion, creating a beautiful Celtic-African fusion, a splendid example of world music, practically the first real example of the genre in Europe. The first part, more sustained, reintroduces the initial theme several times, elaborating it each time and closes with a tail end of percussion that supports a Celtic choir sung by the voices of Sally Oldfield, Bridget St.John and Mike himself where you hear the word amadan, which is nothing but the origin of the album's name, and would mean in Gaelic "crazy", in this case for the music. The second part, while mirroring the style of the first part, with a continuous exchange of ever-changing melodies and webs that chase each other, proves to be more lively, if only for the dominance of the guitar that gloriously closes the album, in a frantic but rather "serious" manner as opposed to the well-known "stupid" motif that closes "Tubular Bells".

An album of such magnitude is quite difficult to explain in detail: it must be listened to in one breath to fully understand it, and to grasp every little nuance that words can hardly bring back.  In conclusion, in my personal opinion, the album is one of the highest points in Oldfield's discography, certainly the only one that can equally compete with the "tubular bells" despite the historical importance and practically unique charm of the latter.

Listening to this album sprawled on the couch is fine, but the best would be to sit in the shade of a tree, in a forest, with your gaze lost in observing what surrounds you, letting yourself be transported by the wonderful atmospheres that only a genius like Mike Oldfield could create.