At the same time as working on "Discovery", Mike was completing the film score for David Puttnam's The Killing Fields, which appeared in December, 1984. The musical style, helped by old friend David Bedford, bordered on the avant garde. Often, when you see music described as avant garde, you assume it is not enjoyable to listen to, but this is not the case here - yes, the atmosphere is rather mysterious in places, but it is always thrilling, without a moment where you can get bored. Worth noting are contributions from Eberhard Schöner and the Tölzer Boys' Choir.

The two years which followed were the quietest Mike's fans have ever seen him. Only two singles appeared up until spring 1987: Pictures in the Dark / Legends and Shine/ The Path, both with the same format - side 1, a vocal track aimed at the charts and an instrumental track on the back to prove "I can still do it!".

During this time, Mike was perfecting his technique on a £2 million video lab which he had installed in order to control his own video productions. The highlight of this experiment came in 1987 with the next album release.

Islands came out in September 1987 and wakened press interest in the "Wizard of 1000 overdubs" again. A new singer came to the fore, partly connected with his split from former girlfriend Sally Cooper, by whom he had 3 children: Molly (8/12/79), Dougal (1981) and Luke (11/4/86). Anita Hegerland, a Norwegian singer who had made her name singing "Schön ist es, auf der Welt zu sein" (it's nice being on Earth!) as a young girl with Roy Black, became his new companion and moved in with him, bearing their two children: Greta Marie (summer 1988) and Noah Daniel (spring 1990).

Back to "Islands" .... generally, the press reacted with distaste to Mike's youngest work. Sales were worse than preceding albums.

This seemed somewhat strange to Mike's fans, as the 21 minute masterpiece The Wind Chimes really is one of his finest. It may be true to say that the impression you can get from two or three listenings is somewhat abrupt, jumbled and lacking a concept, but the true value of the work becomes apparent after listening more.This track featured the excellent video, lasting its entire length - probably the World's first video for a long instrumental track. The songs "Flying Start" (with Kevin Ayers) and "North Point" (Anita) tower on the second side. A further track available only on the CD (and "Islands" 12") is the marvellous "When the night's on Fire" (again with Anita).

Lastly, it is worth mentioning that Mike made use of four co-producers on "Islands" (Simon Philips, Alan Shacklock, Michael Cretu and Geoffrey Downes), as well as five singers (Kevin Ayers, Anita Hegerland, Bonnie Tyler, Jim Price and Max Bacon). The latter is only to be heard on the "Magic Touch" single; Bacon's version couldn't be used on the album, as he was still under contract to Arista.

A 2 year break from vinyl followed before the 1989 album "Earth Moving" came out, which heralded new ground in that there was no instrumental. Mike used six vocalists on ten songs to produce an album not greeted with great acclaim from his fans, and even treated with a degree of reticence by Mike himself, as Virgin had basically forced him to suppress his unique talent to produce a commercial album of chart songs. Although the result did fit the mould well, the sales were low (by Oldfield standards - many other artists may be very pleased with such sales!)