Mike Oldfield

condition (record/cover):  NM / EX+ (tag on back and minimal wear)

Released May 1990 (Virgin V 2640), Amarok is Mike Oldfield's last great long-form work: a single sixty-minute composition, all on a single LP, with no track divisions, no breaks, no internal pause. It was famously Oldfield's response to Richard Branson pressuring him to record a Tubular Bells II: instead of obliging, Oldfield went to Roughwood Croft in Buckinghamshire and produced an hour-long piece that explicitly refused commercial sequel logic. The album sold poorly on release and effectively ended Oldfield's Virgin tenure.

In retrospect it stands as one of his best records. The composition cycles through dozens of distinct sections, each a fully developed musical idea: African choral passages, a long minimalist piano sequence, a remarkable acoustic guitar piece halfway through that recalls Ommadawn at its peak, a Morse code section spelling out an anti-Branson message, a multi-tracked Janet Brown doing a Margaret Thatcher impression. The piece moves through these without commentary, treating them as facets of a single hour-long musical statement. Tom Newman (who had produced Tubular Bells) returns to co-produce.

The original vintage Virgin UK pressing on V 2640, with the Hokusai-style wave cover. Amarok is the record Oldfield's most committed listeners tend to nominate as his single greatest achievement, the one that vindicates the entire Tubular Bells tradition by showing what could still be done with the long-form method fifteen years later.