by Steven McDonald
After a two-year pause following the release of Boxed, Mike Oldfield returned with a new epic project, this one spread over four vinyl sides and devoted to Native American themes rather than hewing once more toward the Celtic end of the spectrum. Included was Oldfield's musical adaptation of &The Song of Hiawatha,& grandiose but empty; there was a nice sense of the dramatic when it came to dynamic range, but no sense of time -- the piece ran far too long as Oldfield searched for enough musical ideas to prop the whole thing up. After this, Oldfield avoided album-length concepts for quite some time.