Mike Oldfield - Incantations Exposed live (1979)
1,720Incantations part 1: 0:00
Part 2: 15:04
Part 3: 26:26
Part 4: 35:13
Mike Oldfield – acoustic and electric bass guitars, electric guitars, piano, synthesizers, percussion, electronically processed vocals
With, alphabetically:
David Bedford – conductor for strings and choir
Sebastian Bell – flutes
Jabula – African drums
Mike Laird – trumpet
Pierre Moerlen – drums, vibraphones on "Part 4" (credited "Pierre Moerlin" with a typo)
Sally Oldfield – vocals
Terry Oldfield – flutes
Maddy Prior – vocals on "The Song of Hiawatha"
The Queen's College Girls Choir – vocals
Originally released as a double album, it is Oldfield's second longest album after Light + Shade. Despite the length, much of the album can be described as being compositionally minimalist, including melodic lines played by only a few instruments at a time.
The album as a whole is unusual in that it makes extensive use of the circle of fifths as an accompaniment to many of the musical ideas. Since this musical structure requires that each idea be modulated through twelve keys, before the next is introduced, more time is required to develop each idea, so that each section unfolds more slowly than is usual in Oldfield's work. A byproduct of this musical structure is that most of the album is not in any one key, but cycles continuously through them all.
Incantations was recorded at Througham, Mike Oldfield's home after he completed Ommadawn. It was during the creation of Incantations that Mike Oldfield underwent the assertiveness training course Exegesis, and almost immediately thereafter Oldfield went on his first solo live tour around Europe with Incantations.
Along with some other pieces of Oldfield's work, a different version of "Part Four" was used for the soundtrack of Tony Palmer's The Space Movie; the lyrics there are from Kathleen Raine's "A Spell for Creation".
When the CD version was released, due to the shorter length of the format at the time (early redbook standards only allowed for a maximum playing time of 74:33), many early pressings unnecessarily have "Part Three" shortened from 16:59 down to 13:49 by cutting from the beginning. When 80-minute CDs became the norm and quality control was increased, the full cut of "Part Three" was restored. All modern pressings have the full version of the piece.