Amarok [Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered, Import]

Mike Oldfield | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 31, 2000)
• Original Release Date: 1990
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered, Import
• Label: EMI Europe Generic
• ASIN: B00004T9AT
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #129,661 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Amarok

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Happy? Indeed!, July 13, 2003

By 

Kenneth Batchelor (Cumberland, MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Amarok (Audio CD)

I must be one of the few people who loved this album on first listen, but I came to it with a looong MO listening history. My first listen to the original Tubular Bells (many moons ago) was similar to others' first listen to Amarok...mainly: "Huh?" I didn't dislike TB...it just seemed boring and repetitive to me. I shelved it and came back to it a year or so later and was stunned; how could I have wasted a year of my life NOT listening to this??? It is true that you grow into appreciating music that you might not be ready for yet; it can take some time. Amarok is just such a work.

You don't play this album as background music while you eat dinner or read a book or pay the bills; you put this album on, sit down and LISTEN to it - closely (headphones and closed eyes highly recommended!). When the album is finished, you feel you've been on a journey and have just returned, and have some things to think about.

This is easily MO's most brilliant work. It is also his most hilarious, with laugh out loud bits occurring when you least expect them - a striking example is during one of the most exquisitely emotional guitar bits (about 42 minutes into the piece) where MO is busy elevating the guitar to divine instrument status in a fantastic passage and everything just cuts out - "Happy?" - and then starts up again. LOVE IT! It is not his most outrightly beautiful work - that is reserved for Incantations, Ommadawn and the like - although there are ravishingly beautiful passages scattered throughout, as well as ear-splitting dissonances and discordant blasts (your speakers WILL get a work-out with this one!). There are more enchanting melodies (MO's strongest creative trait) and more pure sounds made into music on this one album than you can shake a Sailor's hornpipe at. He just tosses them out one after another; most other musicians would make entire albums out of just a few of these (and still not do them justice).

Fa-fa's and footsteps, mandolins, toothbrushing and ahhh's, drums and chanting, cash registers, nickolodeons, bagpipes, choirs and cavemen, guitars of every shape and sound, banjos, organs, pianos, people mumbling, Margaret Thatcher dancing, bells...and the ending - the ending that is a dissertation on how to do endings. Each time it wells up and you think this is the transcendent ending and the CD will be over...you're wrong. It goes on...delightfully, blissfully, zanily...well, what can you say? These are words - they don't do the music justice.

"Happy?" Indeed! Above all...this is a happy, warm work. A master at his most brilliant and creative best, and having a romping good time at it. Buy it, play it and if you don't get it...come back to it again at a later time. As the story in the CD booklet says...

"I hear it has voices to speak of things we cannot speak of..."

"I am told that when men hear its voice, it stays in their ears, they cannot be rid of it. It has many different voices: some happy, but others sad. It roars like a baboon, murmurs like a child, drums like the blazing arms of one thousand drummers, rustles like water in a glass, sings like a lover and laments like a priest..."

"I have heard it says only one word..."

"I was told it depends on how you listen."

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amarocked!, September 21, 2002

By 

Thor (Chanhassen, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Amarok (Audio CD)

I remember the day I bought this album. I was sitting in my van, popped in the CD and eased back waiting for one of my favorite moments in life: the first listening of a new Mike Oldfield album.

Well, it started off a little rough, but I thought, "Oh, you know, sometimes it takes a while for a new Mike O. album to sink in, OK, no problem..." But then, it got more and more troublesome. A good idea would start out and then, after a minute or so of development, Whoosh!, it was gone, to be replaced by another, and then the same thing would happen again.
I was severely bummed! So much so that I stopped the CD, took it out and drove home very annoyed.

Well, it stayed on my shelf at home for about 4 or 5 years without a listen. Then one day I thought, what the heck, maybe miraculously it has improved with age. I fished it out, popped it on and, WOW!!!! It was like a curtain being pulled before my eyes. Everything about the music seemed perfect and made sense, delicious, adventurous, humorous, perfect sense!

I couldn't believe this was the same record I had despised many years earlier. I still can't explain it except for this phrase:
"When the listener is ready, the masterpiece appears."

Its almost like there's this secret code in the music, and if your ears can't seem to unlock it, it sounds just like random blahblah. That this was all the work of one man is truly the work of genius in our time.

Amarok to me is like a soundtrack to someone's day; from dawn to dusk. the music represents little moments from a day in which many things happen to us, and these all become portrayed by music vignettes.

Think of yourself walking down a street and how your attention shifts from this to that; the sound of a jackhammer; then, the sharp call of a bird; the rumble of a motorbike; the wind rushing through the tops of trees; and on and on, all of these sounds drifting in and out; a collage; a tapestry; a quilt of music woven from many different patterns, but all stitching into a framework that suddenly takes shape and ultimately brings forth the most delicious composite musical experience in which you are challenged, changed, soothed, awakened, stretched, jarred, amazed...at the end you know you have lived this music!

This is one of the most unique and satisfying albums I have in my collection. It is a classic that defies definition and that is why it is great. It is not just music; it is LIFE!

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dynamic soundscape and beautiful melodies, April 4, 2001

By 

Thomas Olausson (Manhattan Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Amarok (Audio CD)

Mike Oldfield's masterpiece was never a hit. No one I know has ever heard it. This is probably due to a cheesy cover and the harsh beginning of the CD, but don't let that scare you, there's more yet to come.

This record has very haunting melodies, and Mike's passion for layering guitars: 6-string, 12-string, any-string on top of each other is just great. Some passages make my hair stand straight up.

It's also a production gem. Some parts are really low and mellow, only to be interrupted by a orchestra hit, keeping you alert throughout the record. Some parts are grand and has a lot of sound, without sounding too much.

There's only one track on the CD. Mike's craftmanship with weaving melodies, using well put pauses and previously used chords holds the track together.

So, if you like to whistle along to beautiful melodies, get scared off the chair and experience music made out of traditional guitars as well as strange instruments as Northumbrian Smallpipes, buy this record.