Voyager (Mike Oldfield album)
| Voyager | ||||
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| Studio album by Mike Oldfield | ||||
| Released | 26 August 1996 | |||
| Recorded | Roughwood Studio, Buckinghamshire Air studios (Orchestra) |
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| Genre | Celtic | |||
| Length | 58:30 | |||
| Label | Warner Bros. | |||
| Producer | Mike Oldfield | |||
| Mike Oldfield chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Voyager | ||||
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| Allmusic |   |
Voyager is the 17th music album by Mike Oldfield, released in 1996 by Warner. It is a Celtic-themed album with new compositions intertwined with traditional pieces.
The album was the last in the original three album deal which Oldfield had signed with Warner after leaving Virgin, starting with Tubular Bells II. Oldfield would stay with Warner until 2003, where his final album for the label was Tubular Bells 2003.
In an interview from the time, Oldfield claimed that the album was one of his quickest to create, only taking a month and a half to record, also claiming that he composed and recorded some songs in one morning.
The music on this album is the most overtly Celtic music Mike Oldfield has produced. The album had originally been recorded acoustically using only hand-played instruments. Apparently the daughter of an executive of Warner Music expressed her feelings that the album may have been a little boring; thus Oldfield added Synthesizers and more instruments to the album.
"The Hero" is a Scottish piece originally written by James Scott Skinner in 1903, as "Hector the Hero". "She Moves Through the Fair" is a traditional Irish song, the melody of which had been used by Simple Minds for "Belfast Child" in 1989. "Women of Ireland", although credited as a traditional song, is not: the main theme is a melody written by Irish composer Seán Ó Riada as a musical setting of the poem "Mná na hÉireann", written by Peadar Ó Doirnín; Oldfield's rendition also includes an interpolation of the fourth movement (Sarabande) of George Frideric Handel's Keyboard suite in D minor, popularised by its use by Stanley Kubrick in his 1975 film Barry Lyndon, where Ó Riada's tune also appears (Oldfield's "Women of Ireland" was reportedly insipred by the coupling of both pieces in the film). "Dark Island" is a Scottish song; the original music was written by Iain Maclachlan in 1958, and the words were written by David Silver in 1962. "Flowers of the Forest" is a traditional Scottish song, a lament for the defeat at Flodden in 1513. "The Song of the Sun" is composed by Bieito Romero from Celtic band Luar na Lubre. Its original title is "O son do ar" ("The sound of the air").
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