Artist: Oldfield, Mike
Label: Virgin Records
Release: 1974
Duration: 40:15
Rating: 4.5/5
The album Hergest Ridge is named after the range of hills where Mike Oldfield was living at the time. The beautiful, empty landscape, where he walked his dog and flew model planes, helped him find inspiration for a new venture and a new assault on the top of the charts.
After Tubular Bells, this multi-instrumentalist decided to take a different approach. The music is more restrained, acoustic, pastoral, folksy; you can feel a deep love for nature and for life in general. A sense of longing runs through the whole thing, one that wasn’t nearly as noticeable on the previous album. Hergest Ridge is an album with more feeling and fewer technically complex flourishes. You can tell just from the fact that on Tubular Bells the melodies swap at an incredibly fast pace, while here they’re longer-lived and there are far fewer of them (and even some of those are linked together or are just built-up versions of earlier ones).
The first part kicks off with organ (Oldfield is one of the few who uses Farfisa, Gemini and Lowrey rather than Hammond organs; with them he creates very recognizable sounds) and pipes. Right away you notice the album is going to be different, more romantic than its predecessor. Then the keyboards, instead of the pipes, are joined by guitars, bass and mandolin. Acoustic and electric guitar take the lead while you can hear lovely choral singing in the background. In this segment the trumpet now and then plays an ode to nature, and when the timpani joins in, this section wraps up. A new, fairly extensive section begins, where oboe and trumpet, alternately and sometimes together with acoustic guitar, create a yearning atmosphere, with the electric guitar occasionally chiming in. A new melody starts with the bass, joined by organ and bells, creating a mood similar to Christmas (sleigh bells on Santa’s sleigh). This part comes to life a bit when the electric guitar, mandolin and piano come in. It’s all emphasized even more when the choir and Oldfield’s famous tubular bells join in. The first half of the album ends the same way it began – with gentle playing on organ and pipes.
The second part leads us in with an already familiar melody, but the arrangement is different (organ, acoustic guitar, bells), so you might not even recognize it right away. The electric guitar joins in, later both lead vocalists and the mandolin. Later the piece calms down a bit, with only bass guitar and organ playing, along with occasional interludes on electric guitar. The timpani announces a change in tempo, but before that comes a transitional (already familiar) melody on organ and flute. And then comes the first and last real rock explosion on the record. This stretch, where guitars, basses and organs (without drums) blend into a cacophonous whole, lasts a good few minutes (maybe even too drawn out). What at first seems cacophonous and scattered turns out to be very organized and polished. Oldfield is one of the few who can create a melody that’s seemingly chaotic and “ugly”, but the more you listen, the more it turns out to be exactly the opposite. After six minutes this part suddenly ends and a calmer folk melody returns, with strings among others taking part. And at the end, Sally Oldfield and Clodagh Simmonds, in English and in a Celtic language respectively, sing a hymn of praise to Hergest Ridge, and the album slowly winds down.
Hergest Ridge is a very different record from the previous one. If it weren’t for that livelier section, you could hardly even argue it’s a rock album (apart from the occasional electric guitar). Mostly it’s a mix of folk and classical. The record has exceptional aesthetic value, it’s full of imagination, daydreaming and love of nature, and only in that one moment is there also some anger and rawness under the surface. Oldfield really did create something that sticks in your heart, but something even more monumental was still to come.
What was interesting about Oldfield early in his career was precisely that none of his albums sounded like any other. Sometimes he put out a folk album, sometimes a symphonic one, sometimes something in between, and other times he focused more on rock. On top of that, he combined all of this with countless influences – from African music and jazz to electronic music (the early kind, like Tangerine Dream). This album is one of those where he blends folk and rock. The simple music and emotional depth of this record fill the gap between Tubular Bells and Ommadawn, where Oldfield took the sentimentality of Hergest Ridge and combined it with the complexity and variety of Tubular Bells.
Lineup
– Mike Oldfield: acoustic, electric and Spanish guitars, bass, mandolin, organ, bells, gong, tubular bells, timpani, percussion
– Chili Charles: drums
– Lindsay Cooper: oboe
– Ted Hobart: trumpet
– Sally Oldfield: vocals
– Clodagh Simmonds: vocals
– June Whiting: oboe
– choir & strings conductor: David Bedford.
Production
Mike Oldfield
Track list
1. Hergest Ridge, Part I 21:30
2. Hergest Ridge, Part II 18:45
