More about the Oldfield "Incantations" CD

[William LeFebvre <phil@rice.edu>]

Heavy sigh!  Virgin Records didn't do as well as I thought they did.
They put Incantations on a CD alright, but it's 69:42 instead of the
72+ minutes that it's supposed to be.  Now I know the CD format can
hold up to 73 minutes, and I think it can even hold up to 74.

The CD version of Incantations that I have (made in Japan) has three
minutes shaved off the front of part three.  It's even reflected in the
published track times (as compared to the vinyl).  Rather than part 3
starting out with the brass fanfare that I was expecting, the disc just
kind of casually fades in to it.  I almost expected to hear a voice say
"We now returned to our regularly scheduled selection, already in
progress".  Why did they do this?  If I were Mike Oldfield, I'd be more
than a little upset.  That's not how he wrote the piece, and that's not
how it should have been reproduced.

			William LeFebvre
			Department of Computer Science
			Rice University
			<phil@Rice.edu>

P.S.:  please direct any replies to me at the above address---our site
seems to be not getting love-hounds in any form these days (I'll have
to *hound* someone about that :-)