Mike Oldfield – Earth Moving (1989)

As my regular readers will already know, I've gotten loads and loads of Mike Oldfield records from my father. He had pretty much bought all the Oldfield albums on vinyl, until suddenly, he switched to CDs and when his record player broke down, he didn't buy a new one, so I took a hold of his record collection. I'm not a big fan of, especially the 80s, Mike Oldfield, but I guess it's interesting to get out of my comfort zone every once in a while. I feel like Oldfield has become more and more commercial with his every album and these late 80s albums are already just quite close to any stadium rock pop. What has remained from his 70s albums is the use of synthesisers. Mike Oldfield has made quite catchy pop tunes on these late 80s albums, but for some reason he never really had big hits around those days. Goes to show that you need to have something more personal to make it.



As my readers will also know, I'm not a big fan of 80s sounds. Earth Moving has really cheesy 80s sounds that even by that decade's standards sound tacky. Then again, I have more recently started to understand those sounds a bit more. In that decade, these sounds sounded futuristic and new. They told a story of the globe that had moved to an era once spoken about only in science-fiction novels. There are cold and hard industrial sounds all over this album, but the main stage is still reserved for conventional band instruments like guitars, drums, bass and keyboards.

The album starts with the song Holy, that has very 80s style synth sequences in the intro. The song itself is quite grand. When the guitars kick in, it's even more apparent just how cheesy this album is. Hostage is a more typical 80s hit song with sounds that could be featured in an 80s cop movie. Far Country is more of a ballad and it takes quite some time for it to get properly started. Surprisingly, the vocals are quite big part in this song, as they actually are throughout the album. There are no instrumental songs on this one. Innocent is filled with industrial clanking beats and futuristic synth sounds. The female vocals are a nice change. Runaway Son has a soulful groove, but the sounds are really awful. This is the worst kind of cheesiness in 80s music. See the Light has a heavier hard rock sounds. The vocals are also filled with raspy rock attitude. I'm thinking this is like a weak version of Billy Idol. The title-track Earth Moving has a pulsing guitar riff throughout and perky female vocals, which actually impress quite a lot. No wonder this is the title track. Blue Night is a straight-forward pop song that has Oldfield's trademark guitar sounds. The album ends with a long double song Nothing But/Bridge to Paradise. The first of these sounds actually a little bit like 80s Kate Bush, although the vocals are not obviously hers. In the latter half there are long guitar solos and really cheesy ones at that.

The title-track Earth Moving has a music video as well. In the video, a globe map is flying around space with spacemen, planets etc. flying past. The video also shows Nikki "B" Bentley, the vocalist, sing the song. She has a ridiculously 80s outfit and hair. There's also some cut-out animation from London. The epic saxophone solo is played by a guy with a mullet and ridiculous moustache. Towards the end there is apparently some kind of environmental theme where they show chopping down of forests.

I probably wouldn't own any Mike Oldfield albums if I hadn't gotten so many of them from my father. Well, maybe I would have Tubular Bells, because that's a really good album. But anyway, I've just ended up with these albums and I don't really listen to them that often. But it's nice to have these kinds of strange albums in the collection to bring a bit of versatility into it.

Listen to the album on Spotify.