This morning on my office’s radio, I heard this song that featured tubular bells, a technoy rhythm section and a male singer with a reggee-type voice (i couldn’t make out any lyrics). I’ve heard this song before, so it can’t be THAT obscure. can anyone identify?
I’m a big Mike Oldfield fan, but I need a bit more to go on. Lot’s of Mike’s music uses singers singing in either foreign languages or made up lyrics. But he usually uses female voices for it.
If it isn’t Mike, I have no clue.
What’s the format of the office station? That’ll help.
I’m going to plump for Clocks by Coldplay
-Even though I know that’s wrong - it’s just the first thing that popped into my head when I read the description (but I don’t know why, because it doesn’t even fit.
The correct answer is, of course, Rio by Duran Duran. 
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I’ve seen that reference often, but never found the original thread. Do you have a a link to it?
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well the radio station later played Money by Pink Floyd, Even Flow by Pearl Jam and Carribean Blue by Enya, so the only format I could really call it is “songs from fusoya’s 5 star playlist” … I later found out that the music was pumped into the office by the building, and so nobody could tell me what station, except that it was one of the satellite commercial free stations.
And it is definitely NOT Coldplay. Ick. The tubular bells, although not playing a melody, were very prominently featured in the song. Funny how Mike Oldfield has a song called Tubular Bells, but that wasn’t the song…I played a couple itunes store samples, and none of his other stuff sounded like it either.
Half stab in the dark, and a tenth “weird vibe thing going on here”, leads me to say “Bob Sinclair” as the artist.
Was the bass line distinctive? Was it a real bass?
Maybe the theme to Futurama?
It’s definitely not from Tubular Bells I or Tubular Bells II, but he puts a little tubular bells piece in just about all his albums. What other instruments were playing? Were there drums? The end of Amarok has some cool African drumming and some African voices (don’t know the language they’re speaking) for instance. Ommadawn has a lovely pipe solo by Paddy Maloney. I can believe a station that plays Enya plays Mike also. He usually isn’t really New Age (except maybe Voyagers) but is often filed that way. Ommadawn and Amarok are Celtic words, so you see he fits right in.
You know, I had this distinct feeling that the artist might have been Enigma when I got home, but I played through about 30 seconds of every one of their songs, and none of them matched. It had a new age feel to it. There were real drums, but it sounded like electronic bass.
The tubular bells followed the same CHIME, CHIME (3rd down), CHIME (another 3rd down) pattern every couple of seconds, and only when there weren’t lyrics being sung.
I’ll check those other suggestions when I get home from work. I can tell you off the bat that it’s not Futurama though (good suggestion for a tubular bell song, but there aren’t any lyrics in that theme, and the song was at least 4 minutes long).
I wish I knew where it came from, but I don’t - maybe someone else can help?