Mike Oldfield – Discovery (1984)

Discovery is yet another Mike Oldfield album I got from my father's vinyl collection when he gave up owning a turntable. Discovery was released in 1984 when the sound world of music had already changed to what we know as the 80s pop period. This has had a massive impact on this Oldfield album as well. In his previous album, Crises, he had moved away from experimental synth progressive rock and presented a couple of mainstream pop songs that did very well on the charts. The most famous of these was Moonlight Shadow, performed with Maggie Reilly. She also performs on this album and there are various mainstream pop songs on this album. For this reason, Discovery is by far not my favourite Oldfield album. His strengths were precisely in experimental instrumentations and strange long songs, which are almost absent on this album.



I've mentioned it in this blog already, but Mike Oldfield was one of my father's favourite musicians while I was growing up and therefore I'm much more familiar with his music than I probably should be. These albums played at our home quite often and I did enjoy the strange space sounds of Tubular Bells, I still do. I just feel that Oldfield got kind of stuck to that album and never found his sound again after that. The music isn't bad, but it's not very interesting either. Also, as my frequent readers will know, I'm not much of a fan of 80s sounds, and that makes these 80s Oldfield albums even less appealing.

The album starts with Celtic sounding synth flutes and rhythms that change into digital synth sounds quite soon after in the song To France. Maggie Reilly's vocals come in soon after. Her vocals are clear and high, but there's not much sentiment in them. The next song, Poison Arrows, has a bit more interesting sounds with dark echoey synths and clear and sharp electric guitars. The vocals and lyrics are a bit cheesy, so this song would work better as instrumental song. Crystal Gazing is more similar to the opening track. The song is quite catchy and I can see it was probably pursuing some commercial success. It also has Reilly's vocals. Tricks of the Light has already quite cheesy 80s sounds. The melodies are very simple and there are some influences from stadium rock in them. It's funny how this song sounds like a hybrid of all the different 80s genres. The title-track Discovery takes on a galloping hard rock beat and the vocals also sound more like power metal of the time. There is not, however, same kind of power in the sounds, which makes this song kind of pointless. Talk about Your Life shows the better side of Reilly's vocals. They're soaring high with nice echoes. The synths on the background are quite subtle which gives more room for the vocals, which seems to be a really good choice. Saved by a Bell is a proper pop song with a very simple and catchy melody. The result is a very cheesy song that sounds almost like the monstrosity We Are the World. The album ends with over 12 minute song The Lake. This is probably the best song on the album, because it gives enough time for Oldfield's multi-instrumentalism and his space synth sounds. I think he would've been better off sticking to space-age progressive rock than going to fiddle with customary pop tunes.

The best thing about looking at old Mike Oldfield videos is the style people have in his videos. The live video for To France shows Maggie Reilly with the most ridiculous hairdo and a band that looks like they're from a British comedy show. Especially the bass played in a tight wife-beater, incredibly tight jeans and with the most ridiculous futuristic bass is fun to look at.

I don't know how I would feel like these songs, had I been old enough in the 80s to truly understand what these space sounds sounded like when they had just been invented. In hindsight though, it all sounds a bit cheesy and artificial. Don't get me wrong, it's kind of fun to explore sounds like this and laugh at the styles of old, but I don't think I could ever listen to this album seriously appreciating it as piece of music.

Listen to the album on Spotify.