Crises (1983) was the closest Mike Oldfield ever came to a pop album. With the single hits Shadow On The Wall and (especially) Moonlight Shadow, it was also Oldfield's most successful album in the Netherlands. Where he previously mainly excelled in instrumental, long drawn-out pieces, now, with the help of vocalists Maggie Reilly, Jon Anderson and Roger Chapman, he delivered a few excellent three-minute
… singles. In addition, the album also contained some long, more complex pieces with which he lived up to his name as a prog superstar. Production-wise Crises was a tour de force, with many layers of guitars and voices, without being bombastic. In that respect, too, the album was a relief from the synthesizer violence of the eighties. (MS)more
