Review: Mike Oldfield – Earth Moving (1989)

Earth Moving is Mike Oldfield’s 12th studio album.

Multi-instrumentalist Oldield shot to worldwide fame in 1973 with his debut album Tubular Bells (over 16 million copies sold). His subsequent albums Hergest Ridge (1974), Ommadawn (1975) and Incantations (1978) sealed his reputation as a sophisticated, large-scale instrumental progressive music creator. But times were changing. In the late 70s, with the advent of punk and AOR, prog began to seem like a phenomenon of its time, and the increasing professionalisation of the record industry did not help. They wanted to put out products cost-effectively, and the month’s worth of polished prog records with their symphony orchestras certainly weren’t. It was also out of the question to let the ”dirty hippies” decide for themselves what kind of music they would make. Now the suits at least had a veto.

As I’ve said in my previous writings, progressive musicians had a few different options in this brave new world. Either they could continue uncompromisingly along their own lines, marginalising themselves and perhaps going into day jobs, or they could adapt to the new demands of the record companies and simplify their music (the third option was to seek musical employment in, say, the film or theatre world; Oldfield also tried this with his great The Killing Fields score).

Many former prog musicians jumped straight into the deep end and surprised their fans with pop music. Oldfield’s strategy (hardly conscious) was to change stealthily and gradually. Albums like Five Miles Out and Crises introduced pop songs alongside complex instrumental music. Crises’ single ”Moonlight Shadow” became a huge hit which was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it proved that Oldfield could indeed make credible pop music and launched his career to new commercial heights, but at the same time it also led record company Virgin to demand more of the same kind of music. With Earth Moving, Oldfield finally delivered what the money-counters wanted: a disc of pure pop songs.

Oldfield has made several albums as a solo or almost solo artist and Earth Moving is no exception instrumentally. Alongside Oldfield, Phil Spalding plays bass guitar here and there, and Raphael Ravenscroft plays his saxophones on a few songs. There is also a four-piece horn section on one song and some violin on another. What is exceptional, however, is the paucity of instrumentation played by Oldfield himself. Oldfield only plays guitar and keyboards on the album and handles the programming. So there are no real drums at all, but all the rhythmic parts are programmed.

There are plenty of vocalists on the album. Including background vocalists, the album features more than ten singers. A huge number of vocalists were apparently recorded for Earth Moving as an experiment, and Oldfield’s squash buddy Fish, for example, came to sing on the album, but his performance did not end up being included. Along with Fish, the booklet for the album gives thanks for Ian Gillan and Roger Chapman so I would guess that they also dropped in for a song or two during the sessions, but I haven’t found any confirmation of this.

Read also: Mike Oldfield – Crises (1983)

The album starts promisingly with the song ”Holy” featuring Adrian Belew from Talking Heads and King Crimson. Adrian Belew sings the song and later he also plays guitar alongside Oldfield in the song ”Far Country”. Oldfield’s heavily effected short guitar solo on ”Holys” is great. Belew sings the song convincingly.

Although ”Holy” is a pretty good song, it already shows what Earth Moving’s fundamental problem is. ”Holy” doesn’t sound much like Mike Oldfield and much of the material on the album is even more generic. Oldfield seems to have lost himself almost completely on this album, desperately picking up influences from here and there and, unfortunately, especially from the 80s pop mainstream. Almost every song brings up distant images of some other artist who I can’t necessarily always name because my pop knowledge is a bit weak.

Mark Williamson’s ”Far Country” sounds more like George Michael than Michael Oldfield. The minimalist synthesizer accompaniment is quite beautiful and the alternating guitar solos by Oldfield and Belew (Oldfield on the right speaker, Belew on the left) are a bit refreshing. The transition from the vocal part to the guitar solos is surprisingly jarring. Oldfield had used other guitarists as supporting guitarists on his albums before, but this is probably the first time that a famous guitarist has actually played a solo on one of his albums.

The third track ”Hostage” is an extremely comical song. It pulses with lightly programmed rhythms like a hit from a boy pop band, but vocalist Max Bacon wails like he’s singing in a hard rock band like Accept. In a way, there’s something fresh about the combination. In a way, no.

The saddest example of Oldfield copycat behaviour on Earth Moving is ”Innocent”, which is very reminiscent of Madonna’s production. The song is sung in a girlish ’sexy’ voice in imitation of Madonna by Oldfield’s then partner Anita Hegerland. In terms of arrangement, ’Innocent’ is probably Oldfield’s thinnest song to date. In other words, it was probably composed and executed with exactly the same amount of effort as the average Madonna song. Drum machines rarely sound as horrible as they do in this song. ”Innocent” lasts three minutes, but it exhausts me by the two-minute mark.

”Runaway Son”, sung by Chris Thompson, is in a way a continuation of the synth-pop meets hard rock fusion that launched ”Hostage”, but this time the contrast is less extreme. And maybe this time it’s more about the collision of AOR and synth-pop. The impression is accentuated by Raphael Ravenscroft’s awkward saxophone. Oldfield imitates the saxophone with his electric guitar which is somewhat interesting, but the moment is over quickly. With a stronger arrangement with the right drums, ”Runaway Son” could have been a perfectly reasonable rock song. A bit like ”Shadow On The Wall” even. As it is, it remains a flaccid romp.

Also ”See the Light” is sung by Chris Thompson and also stylistically it is quite close to ”Runaway Son”. The most ridiculous thing about the song is how desperately Oldfield tries to imitate real rock drumming with programmed rhythms. Wouldn’t it have been easier to invite Simon Phillips to join in? I’m not against drum machines and sequenced rhythms when they are used to create something that can’t or doesn’t make sense to play with real drums, but such imitations just sound cheap and stupid.

The title track ”Earth Moving”, sung by Nikki ”B” Bentley, is a reasonably successful middle-of-the-road pop of some R&B Whitney Houston direction. The song is reminiscent of Islands material, but the execution is more clunky. At least Ravenscroft’s saxophone sounds better than on ”Runaway Son”, and for a while plays with a delightful edge. The melody of the song is also quite strong and Bentley’s vocal performance is pleasant. ”Earth Moving” is one of the better tracks on the album.

In ”Blue Night”, Maggie Reilly makes a surprise return. As I understand it, Oldfield and Reilly fell out sometime after Discovery and on Islands she is not heard at all. Reilly’s return is welcome, although ”Blue Night” is probably the weakest song Oldfield has written for her. Not weak per se, but there’s a bit of a b-grade ”Moonlight Shadow” feel to the track. But at least Oldfield is imitating himself now! The best thing about ”Blue Night”, apart from Reilly’s natural and spirited vocal performance, is Oldfield’s acoustic guitar playing. The deft acoustic guitar playing on ”Blue Night” once again makes you wish Oldfield had followed other mainstream trend and jumped on the unplugged bandwagon that started a few years later. An Oldfield album built around acoustic guitars would have had the potential to be truly delicious!

The album ends with the 8-minute two-part mini epic ”Nothing But” / ”Bridge To Paradise”. Except no. It’s actually two completely separate songs that for some reason have been bundled into an eight-minute ”whole”. A very confusing solution. Is the back cover marking of the ”long” song a desperate attempt to convince old Oldfield fans ”hey you there, you with the dirty hair, there’s something in here for you too!”? Well, there isn’t. ”Nothing But” is a totally forgettable R&B tune sung by Carol Kenyon and ”Bridge To Paradise” is another AOR/synth-pop mess sung by Bacon. ”Bridge To Paradise” should have been shipped on a time machine to Steve Howe and Steve Hackett’s awful GTR band. There it would have stood in its own company amongst other Bacon-sung abominations.

Read also

I have to admit that I’m not particularly interested in pop music, but I do like and appreciate pop songs of high quality and originality. What’s sad about Earth Moving is how clearly it was just some sort of technical exercise for Oldfield; ”you want me to make pop music, well I can do it”. With this attitude, only fake and soulless products are produced. The pop world is full of such products and Earth Moving is just one more unfortunate case in that endless pile.

It must have been frustrating and humiliating for Oldfield that an album made entirely for commercial purposes did so poorly. I haven’t found the exact statistics, but if you ignore the soundtrack album The Killing Fields, I think Earth Moving is Oldfield’s worst-selling album to date. Thanks to the David Hasselhoff-loving Germans, this album still sold hundreds of thousands of copies!

Earth Moving is easily the weakest Oldfield album to date. Actually, the best thing about it is that I think it’s the album that woke Oldfield up. He must have realised that he was at some kind of low point and something had to be done. The following year, an angry and spirited Oldfield released something quite incredible…

Best tracks: ”Holy”, ”Far Country”, ”Blue Night”, ”Earth Moving”

Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI

Rating: 2 out of 5.
Read also: Yes – 90125 (1983)

Tracks

  1. ”Holy” – 4:37
  2. ”Hostage” – 4:09
  3. ”Far Country” – 4:25
  4. ”Innocent” – 3:30
  5. ”Runaway Son” – 4:05
  6. ”See the Light” – 3:59
  7. ”Earth Moving” – 4:03
  8. ”Blue Night” – 3:47
  9. ”Nothing But” / ”Bridge to Paradise” – 8:40

Musicians

Mike Oldfield: guitars, keyboards Max Bacon: lead vocals (”Hostage”, ”Bridge to Paradise”) Adrian Belew: lead vocals (”Holy”), left channel guitar solo (”Far Country”) Nikki ”B” Bentley: lead vocals (”Earth Moving”) Anita Hegerland: lead vocals (”Innocent”) Carol Kenyon: lead vocals (”Nothing But”) Raphael Ravenscroft: saxophone Maggie Reilly: vocals (”Blue Night”) Phil Spalding: bass guitar, backing vocals (”Bridge to Paradise”, ”See the Light”, ”Holy”) Chris Thompson: vocals (”Runaway Son”, ”See the Light”) Carl Wayne: backing vocals (”Earth Moving”) Mark Williamson: vocals (”Far Country”) Simon Gardner, Tim Sanders, Simon Clarke, Roddy Lorimer: horn section Bobby Valentino: violin Daniel Lazerus: keyboards

Producer: Mike Oldfield, Daniel Lazerus
Label: Virgin

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