Search - Terry Oldfield :: Spirit of the World

Terry Oldfield is a musician whose fingertips are just short of his aspirations. The flute-playing brother of Mike Oldfield has been churning out New Age meditations for years on the New World label. Driven by marketing as much as music, each of his more than 16 albums has a theme, thinly related to their subjects. Having done Spirit of the Rainforest, of Africa, of Tibet, and of India, he's now decided to toss them all into one pile, Spirit of the World. Oldfield touches down on Aboriginals, Tibetans, Native Americans, and Cambodians. Each one is tangentially related to its area by a musical signpost: didgeridoo on "The Aboriginals," monks chanting on "The Tibetans"--you get the picture. But it's only on "The Greeks" that he arrives at a theme beyond formula, perhaps because he actually lived there for several years. Taken on its own, Spirit of the World is a pleasant, well-produced piece of faux-exotica, but with artists such as Afro Celt Sound System, Baka Beyond, and Robert Rich around, Oldfield is like the tourist who returns from his travels with the funny hat and ugly print shirt. --John Diliberto