Hergest Ridge (album)

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Hergest Ridge is the second studio album by English musician and composer Mike Oldfield, released on 30 August 1974 by Virgin Records. The album followed the unexpected and overwhelming commercial success of his 1973 debut, Tubular Bells, which had thrust the reclusive twenty-year-old into the public spotlight. Seeking an escape from intense media pressure and panic attacks, Oldfield retreated to the English–Welsh border country, writing the new material at an isolated house known as The Beacon, situated near the Hergest Ridge hill in Herefordshire. Like its predecessor, the album is an instrumental progressive rock work split across two side-long, multi-movement parts: "Part One" and "Part Two". It is characterised by its pastoral atmosphere and a complex, densely layered arrangement of electric guitars, synthesisers, organs, and traditional acoustic instrumentation including the oboe and flute. After early recording sessions in London and Oxfordshire were abandoned, the album was recorded...

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