Earth Moving flat out stinks. A big steaming pile of you know what. Take that steaming pile, add another scoop of stinkage and well, you have this horrendous flop of an album. Gone are the epic and adventurous multi-part suites that we associate with a creative and original brand of world music that Mike Oldfield is responsible for bringing to light 15 years earlier. In its place lies utter garbage.

The pop songs were bad enough, but this... THIS?!?!? Whatever Mike Oldfield was going for here is completely unacceptable. "Nothing But" shows that Oldfield was interested in mainstream soul that the likes of Whitney Houston and several others brought into the picture. While not a bad type of music by itself, ask yourself this- does it REALLY belong on a Mike Oldfield album? Absolutely not. "Bridge to Paradise" has the same generic guitar work that Kenny Loggins used on "Danger Zone" and the vocals even resemble Kenny Loggins quite a bit. For some reason though, I don't *completely* hate this song. The cheese factor is enormously strong but the melody itself (especially the chorus) has something appealing about it. "Building a bridge to paradise" Yes, I'd like to build one to my personal paradise... where albums such as Five Miles Out, Ommadawn and Tubular Bells stand above the clouds!

"Holy" has forgettable vocals. It's caught somewhere in between commercial spirituality and pop music. For me it doesn't work very well, but at least the vocals sound honest enough. The chorus is obviously trying to mimmick the early 70's Moody Blues because it sounds like a severely watered down version of "Isn't Life Strange?" Still, I actually like the song. Perhaps there is a legitimate attempt at putting Oldfield's vision in a different light here, but my gut feeling tells me that it's probably all a big put-on and just an attempt at going commercial which means we can't take it as seriously as Oldfield's golden year period (1973-1981). Adrian Belew does a nice job singing the melody at any rate. A far cry from his King Crimson days of course. I keep thinking "Far Country" is actually "Far Cry" (which is fitting, really). Soulful, over-sentimental vocals that don't blend well at all with Oldfield's style- I hate this song. I have a lot of trouble even sitting through it, in fact.

"Hostage" makes the fatal mistake of including horns and heavy guitars at the same time. Not a big deal any other time. I mean Genesis used to combine the two really well and those songs are terrific. So what's the problem here? The songwriting is mid-tempo boredom and the lead singer sounds identical to Noddy Holder, the lead singer of Slade minus the soaring range. "Runaway Son" sounds like the theme song to some horribly dated family-oriented show from the mid 80's.

NOW do people understand why I'm so hard on the 80's? This is why originality is important- without it, everything turns bland and sounds the same. I honestly feel nauseous right now. This is just awful, awful awful. HIGHLY recommended that you skip this. This isn't even Mike Oldfield.

Don't get me wrong, I am a big Mike Oldfield fan, anyone can see that by looking at my reviews. However, I was highly disappointed with this album. This album is not simply not any good... it won't appeal to fans of Mike's early, sprawling, epic-length works, or even to fans of his 80's "pop" tunes. I have always greatly preferred the epic works, but some of his 80's albums, Islands in particular, had some truly good pop songs on them. But Mike had been walking the line between acceptable, and occasionally great, and unabashedly corny pop songs since the early 80's and albums like Five Miles Out. With this album he finally hit rock bottom. Thankfully, he veered away from this tripe and back into great music soon after (Tubular Bells 2, anyone?) I think he realized he had gone too far. The songs here are weak and are only occasionally even saved by Mike's startling music. It could be almost anybody. I hate to insult any Oldfield album this way, as he is one of my favorite artists and a highly respectable musician, but this album just doesn't stand up to the masterpieces he has released in the past. The only reason I'm even keeping this album in my collection is because the last song Nothing But/Bridge To Paradise is actually quite good. If you are a DIEHARD Mike Oldfield fan, you'll want to buy this album for that song, and to complete your collection. Otherwise avoid.

Okay, so this isn't Oldfield's best work. You should, however, keep one thing in mind: second-rate work by Oldfield is still head and shoulders above the best work by others.

This is an atypical Oldfield work in a lot of ways. Oldfield, an extraordinarily talented multi-instrumentalist, made his name recording albums where (through the miracle of overdubbing) he played the vast majority of the instruments himself. Here he uses plenty of other musicians. The composition on this album are also unlike a lot of his other work.

But different isn't necessarily bad. The title track, "Runaway Son," "Blue Night" and "Holy" are more than worth the price of the CD. Can you get significantly better Mike Oldfield work? You bet. But for a paltry 12 bucks, you won't regret having this album as a companion piece to his best work.

What an utter piece of crap. Did they sign Mike to a contract for this one with the caveat the he write cliched and uninspired pop song garbage? How did Adrian Belew get involved with this nonsense? If you love the albums Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn, Incantations, and inspired compositions on albums such at 5 Miles Out you will find it hard to believe this is the same artist. Too bad Mike got involved with the Exegesis thing, it sure didn't help his composition.

You know unlike anyone else on this review I like this album especially Far country and Holy. But to be fair I have to say that this is the only album of Mike Oldfield that I have heard and I have to say I was impressed with this album and that is why I have decided to purchased other albums. I figure if this one is as good as it is to me the others most be just as excellent.