Comments for Oldfield, Mike, Five Miles Out

A very interesting album. An instrumental side, "Taurus II", that sounds like a long symphonic rock piece, with very suggestive melodic movements sung by Maggie Reilly, a nice uillean pipe tune by Paddy Moloney (Chieftains) and a hard sounding finale with distorted electric guitars. Two rock songs like "Five miles out" and "Family man", a short instrumental track (Mount Teide) with Carl Palmer on drums and the "oniric" Orabidoo. I like it very much. G.L.

I like it too, much better than the preceding "QE2". "Family Man", "Five Miles Out" and "Mount Teidi" really stand out. I love the riff in "Five Miles Out" (so does Mike, evidently; he uses it about a million times on this album).

The title track is great: Why doesn''t Mike use real strings more often? Not all instrumental tracks are equal: taking up a whole side on its own "Taurus II" seems like a lot of bull: very plodding and repetitive. Maggie Reilly''s vocal contributions are a relief to this track and wonderful on the "Five Miles Out" and "Family Man." The title track (and the album cover) seem like precursors to Pink Floyd''s "Learning to Fly." A step towards the commercial direction of "Crises." Ian Thomas