Ommadawn
Mike Oldfield was never quite satisfied with that second record. He got bored recording it at The Manor with Tom Newman and he got desperate because he didn't quite like the ideas that came up. In fact, it is one of the albums that he has played the least live and that he has tried to "fix" the most by mixing it over and over again.
On the other hand, the aesthetic contrast between Hergest Ridge and Tubular Bells is enormous. Oldfield once said that "...if Tubular Bells was the sound of the city, Hergest Ridge was the sound of the mountain."
The reception of the disc was irregular. Everyone wanted a second great masterpiece, and Hergest Ridge disappointed some music critics. But it was well received by the public, reaching the first position in sales in the United Kingdom, displacing Tubular Bells to second. Despite everything, today it is undoubtedly one of his canonical works, much loved by his followers.
The following year Mike Oldfield went to work hard on his third album. Annoyed by the bad reviews of Hergest Ridge, he asked Richard Branson to bring a complete recording studio to his house so he could use it at his leisure. No sooner said than done, he set up the studio in a bedroom at The Beacon. At the beginning of the year his mother had died, and Mike thought of a record with a "Celtic" sound as a tribute to the Irish origins of his mother, who was born in Dublin.
Mike Oldfield surrounded himself with very diverse musicians and filled his third album with surprising instruments from musical traditions as diverse as rock, classical music, Greek folklore, Celtic Irish music or African percussion. At the request of our musician, the Irish singer Clodagh Simonds wrote some verses in Gaelic where the word Amadàn (crazy, stupid) appeared. Oldfield liked this word so much that he adapted it as the title of the album, which would eventually be called Ommadawn (1975). Mike Oldfield has stated that he worked on both Ommadawn and Tubular Bells, and that in fact it is one of the albums with which he feels most satisfied. Some surveys reveal that for the majority of his followers it is the best album of his career along with his debut.
Ommadawn, Foto de portada de David Binsley
L'èxit de crítica i vendes d'Ommadawn fou instantani i va proporcionar a Mike Oldfield una incontestable reputació de jove geni de la música. Tot plegat li va valer un període de tranquil·litat que va aprofitar per a traslladar-se. Aquell any havia estat buscant un habitatge gran on construir-hi el seu propi estudi, i el va trobar en un poblet anomenat Bisley, al comtat de Gloucestershire. La mansió, del segle XVI, es diu Througham Slad, i al paller va instal·lar-hi un estudi d'enregistrament de primer nivell.
Ommadawn, Foto de conjunt presa a The Manor
Text: Xavier Alern
Ommadawn representa, al nostre parer, el primer estadi de la maduresa musical de Mike Oldfield. Els experiments d'Hergest Ridge es van anar consolidant donant pas a un so molt més homogeni. També l'estructura de l'àlbum és més coherent, amb el nombre just de repeticions de cada part i un gran l'equilibri entre passatges dramàtics, lírics i humorístics. El so de guitarra elèctrica es torna més dramàtic, còsmic. En relació a aquest instrument hi trobem dos passatges virtuosístics que farien fortuna dins la seva carrera: el solo de sisets de la primera part i el dramàtic solo final, també de la primera part, que va enregistrar - segons el propi autor - enmig d'una tempesta.
Clodagh Simonds repetia