Country: United Kingdom
Running time: 40 mins. 13 secs.
Spotify link (Part 1)
Spotify link (Part 2)
YouTube link (Excerpt from Part 1)
Following the immense success of his debut album Tubular Bells (1973), the humble and shy composer and multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield retreated to English countryside, obviously more than just a little scared of his unexpected success. While staying there, he composed and recorded his sophomore album, and I cannot resist comparing his situation to George A. Romero's zombie trilogy, even though in reality they have absolutely nothing in common.
The original Tubular Bells (like Night of the Living Dead) is the classic that everyone remembers and appreciates. But its follow-up Hergest Ridge (like Romero's Dawn of the Dead) is the vast improvement on the original, in terms of artistic quality.
When composing Tubular Bells, Oldfield was the first of his kind, creating a masterwork that had no similar predecessors. When composing Hergest Ridge, he had a predecessor, composed and performed by no one else but himself, which helped him achieve a clear vision of how to improve on it. And improve on it he did. Hergest Ridge is right up there with Beethoven's 5th and 9th Symphonies, among the greatest compositions ever created.
The instrumental work is divided into two separate movements, due to the restrictions of the vinyl LP. If one absolutely had to decide which movement is better than the other, one would probably have to choose the first one, even though the opening as well as the finale of the second part is certainly some of the most beautiful instumental music ever created.
Some time after the release of the album, problems arose. Oldfield himself came to the unexpected conclusion that the original mix had too many instruments and therefore felt too noisy and overarranged. He decided to create a new mix with less instruments. For any fan with any appreciation for musical genius, this was obviously an insane move but because of it, this far inferior mix was for a very long time the only mix available on CD. The only lucky ones were the ones who had bought the vinyl version, including myself. Except of course that they couldn't upgrade it to CD, which I did, not knowing that it contained a different mix. One of the least played CD's in my collection, to be sure.
This very, very unfortunate state persisted for years, even a couple of decades. It wasn't until 2010 that the original mix was finally released on CD, as a part of a Deluxe Edition that also contained other mixes of the album. Here is the new album cover that you can recognize the corrected version from:
So, when you want to hear this masterpiece in its original form, make sure that you either buy this CD and choose the "original 1974 stereo mixes", or check them out via Spotify links above. Music doesn't get much better than this!
Due to its "new age", straightforward nature, Hergest Ridge was disqualified from the top 20 long prog masterpieces list. Had this not been the case, both parts had made it to top 10, and Part 1 had most likely taken 3rd place from Starless, by King Crimson. But to be perfectly honest, this is not a progressive rock work, although at the time of its release it seemed to belong to the same genre.
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