Short Reviews [Tubular World - 2020 - "Tubular Bells"]

Towards the end of 2020, Tigermoth Records released a documentary about the birth of the Virgin empire and a double album re-recording of Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’. It contained four hours of interviews with those involved with the early days of Virgin, along with plenty of archive material. The re-recording of ‘Tubular Bells’ was undertaken by more than 30 musicians, including some who have worked with Oldfield in the past, and was then released as a double CD and double DCD set to tie in with the documentary. I guess the question for me has to be, why? Let’s take it as a given that the production and musicianship is exemplary, but why go to the effort of re-recording an album so that it sounds incredibly close indeed to the original? One could argue that Oldfield has spent his whole career attempting to recreate those early days, and he has also revisited the work numerous times, but what is the point of someone else doing it? Did I enjoy it? Yes, of course I did, this is a classic album which I spent much of my teenage years listening to so I love the material, but instead of trying to take the originals and move them in new directions we have instead a series of musicians doing their level best not to sound too different to how they appeared recently. MY view on cover versions has always been the same, in that there is no point in doing them unless they are being taken in a dramatically new direction, Nazareth’s take on “This Flight Tonight” being a case in point, as it sounds nothing like the original yet still stays true in many ways. All that being put to one side, this is indeed a wonderful remake of a classic album and is something I have enjoyed playing immensely, but without the documentary tie-in I cannot imagine this would ever have been put together.