The Songs of Distant Earth is the sixteenth studio album by English musician, songwriter and producer Mike Oldfield, released on 21 November 1994 by WEA. It is a concept album based on the 1986 science fiction novel The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke. The album reached No. 24 on the UK Albums Chart. Background In 1993, Oldfield completed his 1992–1993 tour to promote his previous album, Tubular Bells II (1992), his first concert tour since 1984. The album was his first of the initial three that he was contracted to produce for Warner Music UK, following his signing to the label in 1992. When Oldfield was ready to record a follow-up, label chairman Rob Dickins suggested that he make a concept album based on the 1986 science fiction novel The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke. Oldfield deemed the story not one of Clarke's best, "but it had lots of atmosphere" and started to think of musical ideas on travelling through space and landing on another world and the events that take place on it. The title of the book particularly attracted Oldfield, calling it "intrinsically musical, a natural starting point". Oldfield visited Clarke in Sri Lanka to discuss the possibility and found out he was a fan of his soundtrack to the 1984 film The Killing Fields and felt "delighted" about the album. Clarke was given a copy of Tubular Bells II for listening; he was impressed enough and agreed to collaborate. Writing and recording Oldfield chose to have the album follow the novel's plot "loosely". It recounts the destruction of Earth in the year 3600 after the Sun goes nova, for which the planet has 1,600 years to prepare, sending spaceships to nearby planetary systems. The album took longer for Oldfield to complete than he had initially planned, in part because he considered some of his usual instruments - including acoustic guitars - too "Earth-bound" for the setting, opting instead to create a "new vocabulary" of sounds in the studio. This lead Oldfield to broaden his repertoire and appeal, and resulted in an album which he classed as "very ambient". He made extensive use of samples, including from the sample CD Datafile One (1991) by Zero-G, Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" (1971), film soundtracks, and world music recorded in Polynesia and Lapland. While the album was being mixed and cut, Oldfield was