Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
Posts: 3511
Joined: Dec. 1999 |
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Posted: April 20 2003, 02:22 |
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Heh, ok, let's see what I can say about this...
A look at Rainer Münz's discography doesn't reveal anything specific about there having been an edition with The Wind Chimes parts one and two as separate tracks. He does however list a US edition which he says has a different track order to the usual one, and is missing When The Night's On Fire - he could be contacted for more information on that one if necessary.
As for why the two tracks were combined on CD, I don't have a definitive answer. All I could suggest is that, if it was Mike's decision, it might have been done to reinforce the fact that Part 1 wasn't just something insignificant that could be skipped over, but an important part of the piece.
If it was an artistic decision, the reason for it being done there and not on other albums would most likely be that The Wind Chimes was Mike's first multi-part instrumental to be written after the introduction of CDs into the marketplace. Whereas he'd probably not have had any say over how his previous albums were transferred to CD, it's likely he would have had a say over how his new album was mastered for CD.
The parts are listed separately for the LP and video (they even have separate production credits, with Part One credited to Mike Oldfield and Part Two credited to Mike Oldfield and Simon Philips).
I would imagine that case with the placing of The Wind Chimes on the album was similar to with a lot of his albums, where there was the long instrumental for his own satisfaction, and the songs to satisfy more commercial requirements.
The Wind Chimes came after large amounts of experimentation with video, which culminated in Mike's visit to Bali with a film crew, in order to make some video footage, which formed the basis of the video side of the project, while samples from the video's audio track formed the basis of some of the music.
The video was released after the album, but I suspect that the video for the instrumental was finished before even the album was released (backed up by the way things like the jet engine sounds towards the end fit in with the images, but would seem like an odd thing to put in that part of music otherwise), with the songs and then the videos for the songs being put together after that (a video for an instrumental isn't too hard to work on in tandem with the music, whereas of course a video for a song has to be done after the vocals are recorded, if there's going to be anything lip-synced in it). I don't know whether the delay in releasing the video-album was due to Mike still working on the videos for the songs, or just for bureaucratic reasons.
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, and I don't feel like scanning a record that's probably rare. 
), on Exposed they simply copied the original track list (but they mixed a little bit side A with side B to give more continuity to the record).
