condition (record/cover):  NM / NM

The soundtrack to Roland Joffé's 1984 film about the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, released by Virgin on 26 November 1984. The Killing Fields is Mike Oldfield's only proper film score and one of the most striking entries in his catalog: a record that almost no Oldfield casual fan owns, despite being closer in spirit to the long-form 1970s work than anything he had recorded since.

Composed at Oldfield's home studio in 1984 and recorded across England, Germany and Switzerland, the score combines Oldfield's solo electronic work (Fairlight CMI, sequenced synth, treated guitar) with orchestral and choral arrangements by David Bedford (his longtime arranger, Royal College of Music alumnus and earlier collaborator on The Orchestral Tubular Bells). The result is more austere than any prior Oldfield work: "Pran's Theme", "The Year Zero", "Étude" (a folktronica arrangement of Francisco Tárrega's Recuerdos de la Alhambra released as the album's single in November 1984) and "The Year Zero (Reprise)" carry the weight of the film's subject matter without sentimentalising it. Boys' choir parts add liturgical gravity.

The original vintage Virgin UK pressing on V 2328, manufactured in the UK with full credits printed on the rear sleeve. Oldfield's most overlooked album, the one in which the Tubular Bells methodology was finally applied to music with explicit extra-musical content. for anyone who values the orchestral side of the Oldfield catalog and the Bedford-arranged tradition that runs from Kevin Ayers' Whatevershebringswesing to here.