Mike still has the talent.
‘Music Of The Spheres’ is an album by Ian Brown and sees King Monkey venturing further than he had ever before and his lyrical partners certainly pushed the envelope of ideas on logic and space. It featured his massive hit ‘F.E.A.R’, the one where he rode about on a bike and loads of people loved it, it was quite a good album. This review isn’t of that album but of one by Mike Oldfield. Most R13 readers won’t really be interested in the Mike Oldfield version but its still riding high in the charts a good while after release so it must be doing something right.
Or perhaps adults now have far too much disposable income and something must be done about that. If you have parents, go and pester them about getting some new faddy product that you will be bored with in a matter of weeks. If you want to affect the adults who don’t have children to pay for, go and smash some windows or key some cars to ensure adults have to pay for repairs and insurance premiums. That will stop them from spending their hard earned money on records that are a bit dull. On second thoughts, please don’t undertake any violence or civil disobedience just because R13 said so. If you do get caught, blame it on the NME or Pitchfork please? Cheers.
Anyways, the idea behind the term music of the spheres is a really old philosophical idea about the movement of the celestial bodies (the sun, the moon and the planets) and their possibility of creating melody as they move. It’s a really interesting concept that you should perhaps spend more time reading up on if you are so interested but to be honest, we’d never do it justice in a brief review. This provided a concept for this record and it meanders and travels along like an album based on a philosophical idea should.
Its nice enough, it is exquisitely played and the Spanish guitar chimes lovely but it doesn’t do anything at all. If you have quiet time and want to chill out a bit or have it on in the background whilst you relax, there are a lot of worse records to play than this. Then again, there are also a lot better. Mike Oldfield made his name on the seminal ‘Tubular Bells’ album so there is no doubting his talent or vision but its hard to get worked up by this release. It is still selling well though so who knows, it may be kicking about in your parents collection already.