Mike Oldfield

From the Source

Five Miles Out is one of the first albums in Mike Oldfield's wide-reaching musical career and it sees him take a diversion away from large-scale symphonic compositions towards the sound for which he became renowned throughout the '80s - rock and pop electronica. Five Miles Out is an vibrant album and home to Oldfield's first ever bona fide rock single, 'Family Man'.

Not wishing to stray too far from his conceptual roots, the first track on Five Miles Out, an album based around the crash of an aeroplane of which Oldfield was the pilot, is the epic 'Taurus II', an unrestrained twenty-five minute track tinged with hints towards Oldfield's creative past - including the use of uilleann pipes and a chorus made up of female vocals. Says Oldfield "To write lyrics you've got to have something to write about. Well, this time I had something to write about: my airplane theme. That's what the album's all about. Every time I go up in a small plane something terrible happens. One engine stops, we go into a thunderstorm or snowstorm, or we're surrounded by fog."

He continued "It's just me. It relates to hundreds of different sorts of music in different ways, every little bit of music that ever made me think, 'Oh, I like that' - English blues, English hard rock, a bit of bluegrass, Irish music, synthesizer music, classical music, even nursery rhymes and children's music."