Mike Oldfields LANDMARK: Tubular Bells by: Ed Butler Tue:20-Nov-07 Label: Virgin Year: 1973 WB rating 56 out of 100

The year 1973 was something of an annus mirabilis for prog rock. Pink Floyd released their magnum opus, Dark Side of the Moon, multinational kraut-rock heroes Can put out Future Days, Lou Reed's Berlin polarised critics the world over, and those doyens of progressive rock, King Crimson put out the magnificently titled Lark's Tongues in Aspic.

It was into this musical climate that the ambitious young Englishman Mike Oldfield unleashed the not-quite-so-spectacularly-named Tubular Bells, and it is through this prism that the record has been viewed ever since. The record was a phenomenal success, single-handedly creating the Virgin record label, selling something in the order of 25 million copies to date, appearing, memorably, as the theme music for classic horror flick The Exorcist, and holding the distinction of returning to displace Oldfield's follow up, Hergest Ridge at number one on the British charts.

Tubular Bells is revered the world over by record producers and sound technicians as one of the pioneering albums in sound recording, with Oldfield laying down multiple tracks of himself playing (almost) all the instruments, paving the way for what is now a fairly standard recording technique, and popularised by classics such as 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. But now, with prog rock resuming its place in the musical pack as a niche industry frequented by nerds and music majors, perhaps some revisionist history is in order.

There's no doubting the scope and ambition that positively oozes out of every pore of this album; Oldfield apparently had absolutely no problem taking himself and his music dead seriously. It's also abundantly clear that, in terms of compositional complexity and breadth of influences, Tubular Bells was unmatched, marrying prog, folk, classical and Eastern sounds to create something that was, and remains, truly unique.

However, it is in this trauma-inducing ambition that the album meets its nemesis. Because if there's one thing that will always begin to ring false to a music lover's ear, it's pretentiousness. For starters, the two, 25 minute tracks that comprise Tubular Bells are really multiple tracks tacked on to one another. The joins are smooth, and occasionally seamless, but this owes more to the sparse nature of the music that any particular genius on Oldfield's part.

The one, great, overwhelming, unavoidable obstacle in the path of Tubular Bells' claim to greatness is purely and simply that is isn't all that good. It's big, it's ballsy and it works hard, but it just doesn't quite have the talent to cut it with the big boys. Breadth of vision and shooting for the stars is all well and good, but only if you can actually put together some music that is truly engaging. And very rarely does this happen throughout the 50-odd minutes.

TB is so preoccupied with multi-layered, multi-instrumental, cracked time signature antics that there is a glaring absence of genuinely exciting music. Much of the album sounds like the padded-out tripe that the Mars Volta offer in between bursts of sheer genius, only without the genius. Maybe, once, the soundscape on offer would have provided a shock of the new, but today, perhaps due to studio wizardry that was absent in 1973, the record suffers, and certainly sounds dated.

And therein lays the final coffin nail. Maybe in 1973, the tubular bell, which essentially looks like a massive metal pan pipe that you thwack with a mallet, was a cool instrument. Today, it is not. And it sounds, frankly, shit. Then, closing a 50 minute attempted masterpiece with a bizarre 'Zorba the Greek'-meets-'Sailor's Hornpipe' may have been a dazzling left turn; now it sounds trite.

Also, throughout history, the premise of introducing a face-shattering solo simply by uttering the word 'guitar' has been the absolute height of cool. Having the late Vivian Stanshall introduce the 'glockenspiel' (among others, including – and this is no joke – 'two slightly distorted guitars'), is somewhat like the fat drunkard at the party announcing he's about to do a cartwheel. And then doing it. It's unimpressive at best and in no way cool. And the satanic German (Oldfield has referred to it in the past as his 'Caveman voice') that pops up around 12 minutes on the second side is best left unmentioned.

Visionary, bold, audacious and, occasionally, startling, Tubular Bells is undoubtedly a landmark record in every sense of the word. Emulated and feted at the time of release, it suffers at the hands of that which truly sorts the musical wheat from the chaff: time. 34 years ago, it was revolutionary, a technical watermark, a breath of fresh air in an industry already at risk of being blown over. However, constant pipe organs, dirge-like intermissions and low-fi studio tricks just don't seem to stack up against the Mogwais, Sigur Ros' and Radioheads of the modern age. While Oldfield will always have his admirers, and they will not be easily swayed, the torch of avant-garde genius in the music world was passed on long ago.