I really enjoyed the Mike Oldfield music you shared before. I wanted to find more (especially the "pretty" more uplifting stuff) so I did some searching, and I realized he's got about 40 albums! I feel way in over my head. Can you recommend some more? I feel like his more experimental music is worth exploring because the contrasts may be where you find the truly satisfying compositions, but there's so much.
Okay well I recommend the big four to start:
Tubular Bells, The Songs of Distant Earth, Amarok, and Voyager
Those hit the four corners of his musical geography (baroque, synth, experimental, guitar)
Everything else fits under those four. There’s also an album called Islands, which is a pop rock album from the 80s, sort of an outlier, but very pretty just the same (the opening instrumental pieces from Islands, called “Wind Chimes,” is one of his most beautiful pieces overall and reminds me of reading The Lord of the Rings as a kid but anyway!).
His most “difficult” album is Incantations. It’s stunning and frantic and hypnotic. I like it, but it’s not easy to like.
Most of his albums have a long, thematic instrumental piece followed by several shorter songs. Those instrumental pieces are usually the prettiest.
As for recs these are my other faves:
Crises (upbeat synth, contains his famous song “Moonlight Shadow”)
Guitars (sounds like Assassin’s Creed, highlight is “Four Winds”)
Tubular Bells 2 (upbeat synth, lush and pretty, Alan Rickman narrates!)
Platinum (upbeat synth, this album has a jazzy almost Fosse sound)
Music of the Spheres (classical/guitar, sounds like a film score for an award winning National Geographic series about the Solar System you loved as a kid)
And here’s a delightful song from Platinum to make this reply even longer:
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
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