Mike Oldfield
Return to Ommadawn

Mike Oldfield - Return to Ommadawn 2017

The worst time for life is the best time for art.

I have always held this axiom in high regard and have personally found it functional: every form of art has given me ample examples, from poetry to painting, all the way to music.
Mike Oldfield, who I hope needs no introduction, emerged from heavy family experiences with the death of his father first and then his thirty-year-old son shortly after. And while overcoming the first bereavement is a sad generational exercise, the second must be among the most devastating things in the world. Morally destroyed, in October 2015 he announced that he wanted to get to work and prepare a sequel to one of his most acclaimed works, “Ommadawn” from 1975, which in some ways received more critical attention than even the giant “Tubular Bells.”

As then, he found a quiet and accessible spot, like Nassau in the Bahamas, he locked himself in the recording studio and gave vent to all his feelings, dark, oppressive, sometimes freer and serene, but always strongly introspective. This is not a rehash of published themes, but material composed anew for the occasion and, precisely to rekindle the glories of the era, he wanted to return to the model that sees a long suite, distributed in two parts, to recreate the idea of the two sides of the vinyl.

If the construction of the first Ommadawn was characterized by the overlapping and alternating of dozens of instruments, in a remarkable and unique interlocking play, here the medal represents its reverse and all instrumentation becomes sparing, dry, minimal: just enough to represent the idea. After all, a house needs only floors, walls, windows, and ceilings; it's no longer the time of gargoyles, modillions, pediments, capitals, bay windows, and aesthetic frills with more or less functionality. In representing his current inner home, the little that is needed is what he has given us, nothing more.

It's not just the elements that have thinned in number; what emerges from this record is a a very strong simplification of compositions and performance modes. It's almost like the impressive capability demonstrated over the years has senilely vanished and the arpeggios, modulations, fingerings are those of an elderly man working with difficulty. At times it seems to hear a great effort, a great work, almost that of an athlete attempting to break a world record with the means at his disposal, but the result is lacking. Much respect for this, but, let's be clear, Oldfield is not 100 years old and he is not the only musician active since the early '70s.

The main flaw of this record is that it induces a state of boredom-induced torpor. It triggers an inescapable sleep from self-defense, making you close your eyes with the same irrepressible desire you have when the tramontana dries your iris too much.
It's a record past its prime, made by a marathoner who reaches the finish line when the jury is already dismantling the stamping bench, the lights are already off, and the garbage collectors are sweeping away the last scraps from the asphalt. Yet he was a prime marathoner, a precocious and total genius, since his first incisive bass rounds with Kevin Ayers' Whole World.

The thing is, we're talking about Mike Oldfield, someone who has sold an immense amount of records and comes out with an arpeggio, about ten minutes into the first part, that seems like hearing, for those who remember them, the Oliver Onions of "Verde" or with the tribal crescendos of Indians on a visit to the Tepee a few minutes later, or with frivolous yet useless Celtic gigs on faint arpeggiated carpets, and with vocalizations that seem, carelessly toward the end of the second part, to want to reprise those historic ones of "Tubular Bells." Of the roughly forty minutes of the record, three or four minutes convince me, at most.

Going back to the initial axiom: “The worst time for life is the best time for art”? Do I have to reconsider or hypothesize an exception that confirms the rule? “Return to Ommadawn”? No, thank you.

Sioulette p.a.p.