Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells II / Tubular Bells III - Live

Starring: Mike Oldfield Director: Hamish Hamilton Original UK Premiere: 1999 Dvd Release: 20th September, 1999 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Closed-captioned, Full Screen, PAL, Region 2 Encoding

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Michael Gordon Oldfield is a multi-instrumentalist musician & composer, working a style that blends rock, ethnic & classical music. Oldfields parents were Maureen & Raymond Oldfield. His sister Sally & brother Terry are successful musicians in their own right & have appeared on several of his albums. Oldfields most famous work is Tubular Bells, an instrumental composition recorded in 1972 & launched on May 25, 1973 as the inaugural album of Richard Branson s Virgin Records label. The album was groundbreaking, as Oldfield played more than twenty different instruments in the multi-layered recording & its style progressed continuously, covering many diverse musical genres. The album quickly reached the top 10 in UK album sales & stayed on the chart for 247 weeks. In the US, it got attention chiefly by appearing on the soundtrack to The Exorcist. In autumn 1974, the follow-up LP, Hergest Ridge, was No 1 in the UK for three weeks & was then dethroned by Tubular Bells.

Tubular Bells II is an album by Mike Oldfield. It was his first album for his new record label, Warner Brothers Records, following an acrimonious departure from Richard Branson s Virgin Records after 20 years. The album is a complete reworking using modern instruments & recording technology of his debut Tubular Bells album, recorded in 1973. TB2 follows the sounds, melodies & musical structure of the original without being an exact copy — this feat was reserved for the 30th anniversary release, Tubular Bells 2003, which is a faithful & accurate re-recording of the original album. The introduction of the instruments at the end of the first half of the album was done by the British actor, Alan Rickman, though he was only listed in the credits as a strolling player. The album was produced by Trevor Horn & was premiered with a live performance at Edinburgh Castle in September 1992. In the USA the album was released as Tubular Bells 2 to avoid consumers thinking it was actually the eleventh album in a series.

If you’re looking for a ‘Live’ concert recording, with an excellent 5.1 soundtrack, then look elsewhere . However, if you don’t mind listening in stereo , to a soundtrack that seems to have been dubbed onto the video by a producer with his mind elsewhere, then perhaps this is for you.

Both concerts are well filmed, I’ll concede that; but the soundtracks appear to have been dubbed from a different venue. You have a choice of either Dolby 5.1 or PCM stereo. Neither will win an award & don’t believe the 5.1 label; there’s nothing through the centre or rear speakers . In fact, the PCM soundtrack sounds marginally better than the Dolby Digital version, which could have been dubbed from a rather dull CD player. That’s not the only oddity with this disk; most of the instruments that the cameraman chooses to zoom-in on remain strangely inaudible, as do the eerily quite crowds of fans. Also, for some reason, the sound regularly falls out of sync with the video. There are several scenes, particularly noticeable with the Tubular Bells, but also evident with various keyboards & guitar sequences, where the musicians are apparently playing along to a recording; not what I’d expect at a world premier concert. One very notable occasion is towards the end of TBII, where a musician pauses briefly but the sound of the tubular bells continues to play several more chimes before the musician begins to play again. This is repeated on TBIII during a close-up shot of Mike when the tubular bells chime before being struck. I know Mike’s an excellent musician, but I hadn't realised that he was quite that good!! Once this became evident, I lost interest in the concert & found myself looking for other faults; there are plenty.

Add to this, a complete lack of sound steering as the camera pans around the stage & no ambience from either location & you’ll hopefully begin to understand why I was so disappointed with this DVD. Just 2 stars from me – these recordings could have been so much better.

Hamish Hamilton is a British book publisher, founded eponymously by the half- Scot half- American Jamie Hamilton. Hamilton was an Olympic rower at medal winner, a language student at Cambridge & employed by the book department at Harrods before founding his own publishing house in the 1930s. Hamish Hamilton originally specialized in fiction & was responsible for publishing a number of American authors in the United Kingdom - including J,D. Salinger s Catcher in the Rye. Hamish Hamilton Law & Hamish Hamilton Medical were started in 1939 but closed during the war. Hamish Hamilton was established in Bloomsbury, London & went on to publish a large number of promising British & American authors, a large number of whom were personal friends & acquaintances of Jamie Hamilton. Jamie Hamilton sold the firm to the Thomson Organisation in 1965, who resold it to Penguin Books in 1986. Posters Of U2

Editors Choice: U2, Live At Slane Castle, Madonna, Robbie Williams, Westlife, Live In London, The Corrs, Live Aus Berlin, View DVDology

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