Cheap Incantations (Music) (Mike Oldfield) Price

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Customer Reviews of Incantations

When a piece of music is so dear to you, it is very difficult to write an objective review.

Music like Mike's, I feel, is always a journey. It all relates back to those 70's concept albums that many people ,now, find inaccessible. Yes this is a long, mainly instrumental, album but captures every element of Mike's genius. Dynamic, classical, ambient, melancholy. It is part of a class of music that was allowed to be produced in the 70's. Some may call it self indulgent meanderings. Is not music, by nature, a selfish thing?

On the "Essential Mike Oldfield" video (1979) he explains that the majority of the work is based on one chord, used mainly as an ascending series of notes. I was astounded when I realised this. I could hear this throughout the piece and it made it much more enjoyable to listen to. (The pop version of this is "Guilty!")

People call Mike a musical magpie or whatever and compare this piece to Phillip Glass' works or any other minimalists. I believe Mike creates a very unique and innocent style of music. Ultimately this is a very melodic piece and yes it does involve repetition but this proves to be hypnotic not boring (there's a fine line for some people here). The use of arppegios in cycles, undulating bass riffs, sparkling synth lines, muted, staccato strings underpinning the main theme, like a never ending circle.

A journey that never ends. Life.

Anyway, the closing part of side one is one of the greatest pieces of music written by Mr. Oldfield. If you like the elements (passing of the seasons, a roaring sea, autumn etc.) and you are a sensitive soul (hippy) then lose yourself in Incantations and you will return feeling human again!

Rare and minimalistic Oldfield
Incantations is a rare gem in Mike's output. Very diferent from the previous three symphonic-folk-rock masterpieces, but also isolated from the rest of his discography. Here the musician-composer-interpreter is more composer than ever, in a very academical way, close to such composers as Steve Reich, Phillip Glass or John Adams, althought his distinctive guitar can also be found here. If the previous Ommadawn was folky and romantic, Incantations is minimalistic and classical, without the dramatic emotional intensity of his predecessor and more inclined to an aseptic flowing of musical structures and melodies. Mike gets very close to Steve Reich here, specially for the sparse use of melodic percussion, flute and strings, and also in terms of compositional technics: the use of minimalistic cells which create the base and background of the music. The chord-arpeggios are also very used and refer more to Phillip Glass; so any doubt that this is a real minimalistic piece of music, long and repetitive, but with great oldfield-melodies and idiosyncratic guitar-playing. The only link with Ommadawn is a medieval influence in some parts, but of course in a very different context. The best parts for me are part one and four, with a special mention to the vibraphone passage on part four, in which he uses changing meters as 4/8, 6/8, 5/8. In my opinion Mike reached a top with this work in terms of compositional ability and musical ambition (73 minutes of music), so he changed completly of musical direction to more easy and commercial works; a real pity. The sound-atmosphere of the recording is clear and sophisticated in itself (in contraposition to the previous albums, more raw and rustic), so there's no need to say that the remastered CD dignifies the final listening tremendously. The only problem with the remasterd edition is the bad quality of the covers, as another reviewer has pointed out, it seems like a colour photo-copy! what kind of Art-work is this? I can do it better with my scanner and computer. Five stars for Mike Oldfield and Incantations. Four for the edition.

Good but repetitive
When this album came out, it was a double LP. It probably should have been condensed into one album. This release has some of the best sections of Oldfield music in existence, mostly contained in Parts 1 and 3. Many other parts of the album are, however, very repetitive and grate. The Song of Hiawatha poem in part 2 is quite nice but, once again, goes on too long. This CD is certainly worth picking up, if nothing else for the first and third parts. Even these are repetitive in places, however. This is nothing like the tightly constructed Platinum that followed it.