FIRST TIME HEARING Mike Oldfield- 'Ommadawn Part 2' (Reaction)

FIRST TIME HEARING Mike Oldfield- "Ommadawn Part 2" (Reaction) | A complete and magical roller coaster of emotions...and sublime instrumentation as per usual... 💙

Thank you for checking out this video and my channel. Don't forget to subscribe, like and comment to help the channel grow. I look forward to an amazing journey into the countless musical gems that came out of the 70s, 80s and 90s! Music is power, healing, joy, sadness, wonder and LIFE! The timeless songs from these 3 decades will live on forever...

#reaction #musicreactions #firsttimereaction #firsttimehearing #mikeoldfield #ommadawn #journey #fantasy #ireland #magical

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS.

[retroreactions....]

A complete and magical roller coaster of emotions...and sublime instrumentation as per usual... 💙 Thanks for watching! 🥰

[lascruces]

The reprise of the first sections theme at 12:45 to 13:15 of this video has to be my most favorite and sublime pieces of music I've ever heard and still gives me goose bumps whenever I hear it. Its been more than 40 years now-and its profoundly sad and uplifting at the same time.

[bthagan]

Hey, great reaction! Just a little correction, the pipes are Irish Uillean Pipes played by the incredible Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains. Mike rerecorded the section at the last minute, replacing Herbie's Northumbrian small pipes (though hints of their drones can be heard right at the start of the section). The original album notes were already finalized so Paddy was not originally credited but this was corrected on later pressings. Paddy died last year and was a huge loss to the Irish Traditional Music scene....

[brucer]

This whole album is one of my go to's when I need something to calm me down and soothe my brain and soul.

[michaelbaucom]

The bagpipes make me both happy and sad simultaneously... wonderful section.

The whole song puts you through most emotions you can experience. Well worth the time, for those who hate long songs, you're missing out

[fjaviervelasco]

Ommadawn is my favorite album from M.O. The song "on horseback" makes me cry always and it's like the perfect end of the album, releasing all the emotions that it gives me along the two parts. Great begining, great ending and great closing theme. My favorite.

[charleswagner]

Great album. Incantations is my 8th favorite album in all music history. I hear Incantations as a four part symphony like in classical music. Mike Oldfield has created a lot of great music. Like everyone else, he has few down moments that are far between.

[KNOPFLERSGOD]

The whole of Ommadawn is a masterpiece, real classic Oldfield, his playing is great throughout but is angry guitar solo is stunning. Yes, it is Mike speaking and singing at the end. His 4 albums from the 1970's are all amazing, please keep listening to Mike, try Hergest Ridge next.

[SophiaPangloss]

Gorgeous, thanks, perfect for a cloudy grey morning, just shut your eyes and sail away. Oldfield at his very best here, and some of the best 'English' music ever created, it conjures up the mystical rural England of Mummers and Morris dancers for me, where the sunshine appears in beams through trees and all the cottages are thatched. Beautiful.

[drmagic]

Great to hear Mike Oldfield again! He certainly takes you on quite the journey through such great instrumentation. He has so many great albums for you to discover! 😊

[wheeler]

Probably his most loved and highly rated side of music he ever released. Very churchy the first section. Reminds me of compressed church bells that sort of sound. On Horseback is a bit of a Nursery rhyme sort of thing. Very uplifting and back to nature. Which exactly was where he lived at the time . walked past the place a fair few times in the past .

[silgen]

My favourite piece by Mike Oldfield, and not just for the use of Northumbrian Smallpipes, the only English bagpipes and from my part of the world in north east England. The heavy opening section then the following melodic passage reminds me of a storm and then the calm afterwards.

Great stuff as usual, you choose the best music to react to. If you can stand a recommendation (I'm sure you have a huge backlog) then I would suggest Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise) by David Bowie from his Diamond Dogs album. I was listening to it recently after not having heard it for a while and it struck me that this is possibly Bowie's finest vocal performance. It's certainly up there with Wild Is The Wind and Cygnet Committee. Note that despite the separate sections it is really one long song.

Anyway, keep up the good work, and I look forward to seeing what you choose next.

[routemaster]

Glad you've come back to Oldfield - and still enjoying his early 70's sound.
Even back then there were two sides to him - the long intricate instrumentals and then the shorter often more lighthearted "singles". "On Horseback" was a Double A side single from 1975 released for the Christmas market. The other side was a very uplifting cover of a medieval christmas carol "In Dulci Jubilo". It's enormous fun and each year gets played everywhere in the UK in the lead up to Christmas!
In the 1960's and 1970's the UK charts often had Instrumental and quirky tracks that inexplicably captured the public's attention and sold in their millions. "On Horseback/In Dulci Jubilo" reached No. 4 in the UK charts - the following year Oldfield did one better by getting to Number 3 with his cover of "Portsmouth" - an old English sea shanty!

You should definitely go back and do "Hergest Ridge" next to finish the mighty trilogy of his early works. 30th August was the 50th anniversary of "Hergest Ridge" so even more appropriate.

After Ommadawn Oldfield went even more epic with "Incantations" - a 4 sided album exploring musical rounds and progressive building repetitions - very beautiful but also a bit too much for some of his early fans.

[TheAlbumReviewchannel]

Excellent reaction and review to this wonderful piece of music. I tend to forget about side 2 but it’s gorgeous. And of course to finish off with On Horseback which is a fun piece. 10/10 and five platinum rings from me. All the best. Dave✅✅

[JohnLRice]

😎👍 I hope you'll get to his album Hergest Ridge one of thee days. 💖

[MrSinnerBOFH]

Great reaction! Ommadawn, Mike’s best… or is it? Ommadawn and Amarok (also called “Ommadawn 2”, and you should listen to it) are his best albums ever, from start to finish. I still remember the same I recorded in tape my Ommadawn vinyl, which become 50% of the music I listened every night, one magical summer long long long time away. The other 50% was “Encore”, a double album that recorded Tangerine Dream’s concert in the USA. I really recommend you listening to Encore.

[Musiquesaecouter]

Unfortunately I didn't listened to this work in the past, more familiar to Tubular bells and some other works. Interesting, first part feels very ambiant, the following is more Celtic and folk, also very unplugged acoustic. Great music as expected from Mike Oldfield as usual.

[sagitt]

MIKE OLDFIELD said in an interview that when composing the albums 'Tubular Bells' and 'Ommadawn' he was very much inspired by KING CRIMSON's masterpiece album: 'In The Court Of The Crimson King'. However, personally, I have never found that this inspiration is very perceptible. Thank you.

[goytabr]

Now you know why Mike Oldfield fans consider "Ommadawn" his absolute masterpiece (in a tie with "Amarok", a completely different album, yet with lots in common with "Ommadawn", as Mike himself admitted). It's simply a PERFECT album from start to finish! And to think that he was only *22 years old* when he made it! Yes, it's a rollercoaster of emotions. Part 1 already fit that definition, but part 2 fits it even more. It's shorter, but so much packed with so many great moments and so many emotions in just a few minutes.

I remember being on a mailing list (remember that relic from the early times of the Internet?) of Mike Oldfield fans in the late 1990s, and there were endless discussions about whether Mike sang (or spoke) "some make chaos and others toys" or "some make cows". Of course, you can't make a cow, but you can make chaos, yet at the same time it doesn't sound like "chaos" (kay-os) and it does sound like "cows". Not even the Brits on the list were able to come to a definitive conclusion. Some went as passionate as to include "it's cows!" or "it's chaos!" in their e-mail signatures! 🤣"But it doesn't really matter at all when you happen to be on horseback." ☺🐎

And yes, although Mike himself is English (from Reading, not far from London), this album has a very Irish feel, from the title in Irish Gaelic (I believe it means "fool") to singer Clodagh Simmonds (who came up with the somewhat nonsensical lyrics near the end of part 1 that gave the album its title) to Paddy Moloney's uilleann ("eelan") bagpipes (the Northumbrian ones — from the Northern England area just next to Scotland — do get credited, but I've always known that that amazing bagpipe solo was Paddy's on an uilleann) to several passages where you can almost see leprechauns dancing.

Anyway, if and when I manage to visit England again, I'm intent on doing a pilgrimage to a little town called Kington, in the very rural county of Hertfordshire. There are two things in this quaint little town: the Beacon manor, where most of this album was recorded (of course it's private property, but I hope to be able to at least snap a photo from the outside), and a hill range overlooking the town. You guessed the name of it: Hergest Ridge. The England–Wales border runs through the top of it. I don't know if my old man's lungs will be able to carry me up the trail there, but if they do, I will feel not even a little bit glum! Mike must have been really glum at the time, though, because it was a hard time for him during the recording of "Ommadawn": his mother died when he had just started recording, and all his early recording work was lost due to a low-quality tape that was wearing off its magnetic layer, so he had to start over from scratch.

Now, you didn't answer the challenge, you totally avoided it: what is the instrument used to make that wall of sound that starts part 2? Only hint: it's NOT a synth. Nobody so far guessed it right when I asked, and I only know what it is because I read it in a critic's review in the leaflet inside the "Boxed" luxury box set (which contains remixed versions of Mike's first three albums, plus a bonus record called "Collaborations" with rare and previously unreleased tracks — one of which is among my favorite Mike Oldfield works, "First Excursion", a short but STUNNING guitar piece!).

Another recommendation is his sister Sally Oldfield's magnificent "Water Bearer" album, inspired by "The Lord of the Rings" (decades before the Peter Jackson movies). Although it's divided into tracks, it's a concept album in a continuum, so I recommend at least one full side reaction at a time. Well worth it, it's absolutely beautiful, and unlike her little brother (even on that fan mailing list, everybody agreed that Mike had better keep his mouth shut and just play!), Sally is an amazing singer!