Mike Oldfield Return to Ommadawn With Return to Ommadawn, Mike Oldfield revisits his third album Ommadawn. He has past form for this, having revisited his masterwork Tubular Bells twice (the third revisit and fourth instalment Tubular Bells 4 is due next year). I wrote about Tubular Bells II for my understated classics series. Of course Mike has in fact made many more than three Tubular Bells albums1, and this is not a first “return” to Ommadawn.

Album Digest January 2015 rounds up a few albums from the tail end of 2014 that I didn’t get much time to write about. The only one of these six to be released this month is the excellent “No Cities To Love” by Sleater-Kinney. Sleater-Kinney “No Cities To Love” I had heard of Sleater-Kinney before their boxed set “Start Together” was released in 2014. I was quite impressed that they curated their own Spotify playlist with the contents of the box.

Only one of this month three albums was actually released this month. Nelly Furtado’s Mi plan was actually released over three years ago - I only discovered it last year when I wrote the September album digest following the release of “The Spirit Indestructible”, or it might have been when I wrote about “Folklore” at around the same time. Anyway, I guess these are albums that I bought with my Christmas gift vouchers!

Five albums to see in the new year: FOE “Bad Dream Hotline” Leila “U & I” Diagrams “Black Light” Pyramids & Horseback “A Throne Without A King” FabricLive 61 mixed by Pinch FOE Bad Dream Hotline I listened to “Bad Dream Hotline” about four times thinking “who does her voice remind me of?”. In the end I realised it was Sophie Ellis-Bextor, though in parts she sounds like KT Tunstall too.

Here’s to 2011 and the start of a monthly album digest. I want it to be a brief trot through some of the albums I have listened to each month. Sometimes January can bring a few quiet releases by big name bands. This happens if the previous album did not do as well as the record company hoped or if it is the kind of artist who would get lost under the hype of all the Christmas releases.