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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Happy? Indeed!, July 13, 2003
Reviewer: A music fan 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."
It is a good CD, but I had to make a edited version of it to even listen to it. It puts the sound clip of someone saying happy in just to much for my taste. I found that some of the musical jokes went on a little to long and I removed or shortened them, like the lady talking and talking. Her dance was funny, but I also edited it out. Luckly for me I was able to line up other parts of the music so that the edites worked well.
Mike is free to do whatever he wants. And he does. This album is funny, challenging, insulting, gorgeous, crazy and violent. Many artists have used noises, sounds, exotic instruments and arrangements in the past. But Mike Oldfield isn't using these as the main feature of the album. The music is brilliantly written, with defiantly simple, but utterly gorgeous melodies in every place. It is rich and touching, emotionally resonant, and it is able to deflate itself at strategic moments with Margaret Thatcher immitations, dissonant bits and messages in Morse code. The music is sincere and genuine, and highly replayable. There are many ways to listen to this music, and every single one of them is highly rewarding. Truly a masterpiece: an untrivial, gorgeous album that challenges insults and mocks its listeners. It could be Oldfield's own "Trout Mask Replica", in fact, and is every bit as amazing as Captain Beefheart's tour-de-force, if not even more.
I BOUGHT AMAROK 3 YEAR AGO AND I WAS SURPRISED WHEN I FIRST PLAYED IT, IT SOUNDS WEIRD AT FIRST BUT U JUST GROW TO LOVE IT. IT IS ONE OF THE BEST MIKE OLDFIELD ALBUMS I HAVE HEARD!.
mixing variable and noisy samples with charming traditional melodies gives a new quality in music.noisy,annoying but beautifull.an album that you love or hate.i love it.Mike's best album ever recorded!
I give this album 2 stars. The album is quacked. I'm a big Mike Oldfield fan, and I was excited to get my hands on this album. Until I listened to it, that was. The whole album is a loosely strung together bad conversation between the musician and the listener. He seems to be trying to say something with his melodies, and then he gets frustrated with his inability to get it out, so he bombards the listener with loud and poorly crafted passages. At times it sounds like he is raping his guitar, and the guitar is clearly not enjoying it.If you are fan of albums such as Sounds of the Distant Earth, you will probably not like this album. It's not a well-put together groove album. It's an annoying in-your-face strange sounding mess of 1980's sounds. If it is any indication how bad a compilation it is - not even the creator had the patience to try to divide into coherent musical thoughts - hence it is all one big track. So I guess it is a good album - if you skip the first track. The only thing that redeems this album is the random sample of a guy saying "Happy" at different parts of the song. My roommates and I now go around immitating it. Other than that, this album is better left unpurchased.
Happy? Indeed!, July 13, 2003
Over use of sound clip happy, July 31, 2005
Not his best work, not even close, May 24, 2003
