Released in 1973, Mike Oldfield's debut album--a single composition, loosely stringing together a sequence of musical motifs--managed to sell in excess of 16 million copies, effectively kick-starting the Virgin Records empire and bringing its creator, then just twenty years old, a level of critical and commercial success he would never achieve again. Little wonder that he should choose, years later, to revisit his most famous work--though inevitably, this time the stakes were much higher. Good thing, then, that he took so few risks. Like its predecessor, the album unveils a series of musical tableaux, though this time without the slightest pretence of actual thematic development: it's less a single, unified piece, than a medley of pretty folk-rock instrumentals. The mood sits somewhere between foggy Celtic mysticism and pastoral elegy, occasionally pausing for a moment of unexpected light relief (the bizarre whimsy of "Altered State"). Unlike the original, however, it sustains its pleasures more or less evenly across the entire composition. --Andrew McGuire
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