I recall George was pretty positive on him, including on some of the oddball 80s albums with normal songs on them (like the one with Jon Anderson on it that Kanye sampled). I still havent heard those.

Oldfield’s discography goes to some unexpected places for sure. though the followups to TB dont come close to the debut in terms of their boldness. There are plenty of nice melodies to be found, but TB sets an extremely high bar for catchy instrumental melodies so not really that surprising nothing comes close to the TB piano intro in terms of hookiness, but the flow of the music is more focused, less clunky and better arranged.

Relistened to Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn for the first time in ages, enjoyed both a lot more than I remembered. HR is like TB if it were mostly the mellow bits. lots of pretty acoustic guitars, lacks the immediacy, but is super lovely to listen to, flows very nicely and doesnt jerk you around tonally as much as Tubular Bells does. Ommadawn is similar but brings back the eccenticity while leaning further into celtic vibes. Both have much better recording quality than TB, both make better use of actual instrument tubular bells than the TB album does, and both have lovely endings that are not a total cop-out joke like “The sailors hornpipe”. Though I do have to give a bagpipe warning in case you hate bagpipes haha.

Incantations, and Amarok are my favs outside of Tubular Bells. though they are both the kind of album with an hour plus of music that you cant possible digest or pull apart. so I have no idea how they would land for you.