Mike Oldfield

Mike Oldfield's musical legacy is dominated by his debut release, with Tubular Bells still at the forefront of people's minds 40 years after its release. The tinkling opening to the album featured in last year's Olympics' opening ceremony - and the fact that despite four decades passing, was instantly recognisable is testament to the album's long term impact. But for Oldfield, the shadow of the multi-million selling release has case itself across the rest of his career. From time to time he has even had to to dip into resurrecting the name with follow up releases to boost commercial success.

However, in the early to mid eighties Oldfield achieved his biggest commercial success in terms of singles, with Moonlight Shadow a huge global smash. Thanks to the vocals of Maggie Reilly, the song still sounds fresh 30 years later, and the track is featured here on Crisis, which alongside Five Miles Out, from the previous year, are issued on various limited edition collectors’ formats.

These release include coloured vinyl, remixes, live footage DVDs, unreleased demos, essays and including interview material with Oldfield himself, as well as an attractive 30th Anniversary collector’s box set and book for Crises.

As well as Moonlight Shadow, Crises has tracks that feature guest vocals from Jon Anderson (In High Places) and Roger Chapman (Shadow On The Wall), all on the original second side. As memorable as Moonlight Shadow, is the iconic cover, featuring the artwork of Terry Ilott but more forgettable is the meandering 20 minutes of the album's title track which fills the original's A side. And the contrast between the two sides sums up why Oldfield's experimentations did not continue to prove commercially successful, as he moves too easily into self-indulgence.

Five Miles Out was originally released in 1982 and features another Maggie Reilly-sung hit in Family Man, which was made more famous by Hall and Oates a year later. Again there is a lengthy opus in Taurus II but ultimately there is again more here to show why Oldfield became an acquired taste pretty soon after, and why the last 30 years has largely been baron, apart from those moments where the Tubular Bells well has been dipped into.

The sampler supplied for this review was fairly limited in terms of the bonus tracks and added demos - but there is some interest in the live moments, including Guilty's energetic rendition from Cologne, while there is also a whole concert from Wembley in 1983, containing the opening half of, yes you guest it, Tubular Bells.