Mike Oldfield. He may not initially strike you as absolutely fucking fucked, but beneath the veneer of that seemingly inoffensive noodling of his 70s heyday, the fucker’s off the fucking scale.
A multi-instrumentalist known for taking full advantage of the studio, in his most famous work he endlessly multitracks himself, layering his pieces with overdub after overdub. The musical universe he occupies is therefore at once both a populous and a lonely one. It is inhabited only by him, but by so, so many of him. This is the very essence of his fuckedness.
The promotional films that accompany his early output replicate this recording technique. Consider that of the single In Dulci Jubilo – the screen is divided into 9 sections, at times reduced to 8, each presenting a different iteration of Oldfield, his various selves simultaneously playing a variety of different instruments.
Link: Mike Oldfield - In Dulci Jubilo (YouTube)
At this point though, this multitracked selfhood is a kind of Hell. I would go as far as to say that if the film Exorcist had used In Dulci Jubilo as its theme rather than the opening of Tubular Bells, it would have been infinitely more unsettling. Here, his musical gift is a solipsistic prison which he has punched his way into and sealed himself within. The many layers merge into one, thus becoming a world which is populated entirely by numerous identical selves. His name is Legion, for he is many.
But sometimes of course we must travel through the underworld to attain that which is truly inspired. And indeed, Oldfield continues to multitrack and multitrack himself to such an obsessional degree that eventually he breaks on through to the other side. It is perhaps a similar principle as with a flotation tank, only so much more than this as well. In a flotation tank of course, the visions arise from sensory deprivation as we are left to commune only with our own minds. Oldfield however is faced with not just one but a myriad of the same mind to commune with, endlessly repeated and reflected back and forth between its manifold selves. And the vision that comes of this is truly astonishing. Put simply, it's beyond fucking fucked.
Oldfield comes multitracking back through the door in the wall with his next single, Portsmouth. In its video he initiates us into a strange, backroom-like metaworld that he has accessed, in which the many of him present are joined by a troupe of smiling female folk dancers, who presumably represent the muses (though they are of course ultimately also him in as far as they arise from somewhere within the depths of his own psyche). Thus he shares with us his achievement of a higher plane of Middle English consciousness, which I leave you now to enjoy.
Link: Mike Oldfield - Portsmouth (YouTube)
Above: Gallery of fucking fuckedness