Mike Oldfield
The Killing Fields (Original Film Soundtrack)
(Mercury)

Sweet strings slither on high in “Pan’s Theme,” the opening track to Mike Oldfield’s soundtrack of 1984’s The Killing Fields (Original Film Soundtrack). The chorus vocals and again strings begin, then settle around drums and horns in the next cut, “Requiem For a City,” with the orchestra truly rising by the third track to overplay a main melody on “The Trek.” The bouncy, space-age, synth, metallic of “Evacuation” present rather simple synth arpeggios with descending single notes. “Bad News” has lilting, intertwining, synth strings and synth chorused voices (this is very Oldfield-sounding for sure), ending in synth blurping. “Worksite” has some scary, slicing metallic percussion sounds and there’s even more of that percussion work (along with animal sounds) on the sly beat of “Blood Sucking.” “The Trek” is back to big orchestration, dramatic stuff, very embolden with its low strings and horn accenting, then a sweep of a counter line horn part rising in with big hits of the main melody. Two new bonus tracks end this new collection, the shorter single edit of “Evacuation” and the clinky, percussion, pan flute-sounding, most commercially-accessible tune here, “Étude (Single Edit).” It’s evident that these 19 songs are not built around Oldfield’s singular distinctive guitar orchestrating, nor anywhere close to his most famous mainstream movie music contribution, “Tubular Bells” (or any of the installments of that suite). This is a more studied and somber Oldfield writing specifically for a film (the first time he will ever do so, actually), mining the high strings of orchestra sounds and letting simple melodies sweep in and out.