1984 was an odd year for Mike Oldfield, releasing the whimsical Discovery, his ninth album and one caught between the stools of his folky ambitions, his composing wizardry and the odd, ill-advised stabs at arena rock.
The rambling To France, that featured Maggie Reilly on vocals, the more expansive and reflective The Lake and the punchy, histrionic title track, which was all driving snare drum and sounded like it was recorded in a room full of dry ice, made for a mixed bag and an uneven-sounding album.
This edition, presumably to lure the unsuspecting in, comes with the grandly titled The 1984 Suite, which is a rather thin reworking of Poison Arrows as well as music from both Discovery and The Killing Fields, but to suggest it’s a new composition is pushing it a bit.
While time’s not been kind to Discovery, the same cannot be said of the 1984 soundtrack to Roland Joffe’s The Killing Fields. How this didn’t lead to a lifetime of Oldfield producing scores for Hollywood’s great and good remains a mystery. Its haunting refrain and theme still stand up to scrutiny and the soundtrack elicits the kind of thrill that instantly transports you back to the shuddering horror of Kampuchea’s worst atrocities.
