Amarok is the thirteenth studio album by English multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Mike Oldfield, released in May 1990 by Virgin Records.

By this time, his relationship with the label had become increasingly fraught as a result of disagreements over his contract, royalties, and the lack of effort in promoting his albums.

[4] The idea for Amarok originated in August 1989, when Oldfield recorded a session for broadcast on BBC Radio 1 that included a 7-minute excerpt of his debut album Tubular Bells (1973) performed by himself.

[3] When Oldfield started to write and arrange "Amarok", he ignored the pressures of delivering commercial material for Virgin and instead "let it all come out without any interference [...] I felt I was getting ideas from somewhere inside me, and six months later I had a whole album.

[5] Amarok was recorded at Oldfield's home studio, then located in Roughwood Croft, a converted coach house in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire.

Oldfield's decision to combine AMS Neve amplifiers with Brüel & Kjær microphones made the album "sound much better than anything I've done".

This continued with Amarok, including (in the spirit of techniques such as bricolage and the ethos of Musique Concrète) a number of items such as shoes, spoons, a Hoover vacuum cleaner and the "contents of aeromodeller's toolbox".

Two of the album's sections, "Mandolin Reprise" and "Africa I: Far dip", feature Oldfield's processed "caveman" voice, first used on Tubular Bells – i.e. him shouting partly unintelligible words into the microphone while running the tape at a much higher speed than normal, which resulted in a significantly lowered vocal pitch when played back at normal speed.

In addition, William Murray, who co-wrote the song "On Horseback" for Ommadawn, photographed the Amarok cover photo and wrote the short story included in the liner notes.

"[9] To promote the album, Oldfield spent his own money organising a mailing list for fans who purchased tickets to his shows through Visa and those who had signed up for additional information on Amarok.

[3] The message is a Morse code sequence made from synthesized trumpets, located 48:04 minutes into the piece, that spells out "FUCK OFF RB", a reference to Virgin founder Richard Branson, who had signed Oldfield to the label in 1973.

It roars like a baboon, murmurs like a child, drums like the blazing arms of one thousand drummers, rustles like water in a glass, sings like a lover and laments like a priest...Amarok Sampler is a promotional CD-Maxi released in Germany in May 1990 including 5 excerpts from the album, with catalogue number 663,271,000.