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.

[4] 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.

[5] 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.

[6][7] 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.

[7] 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.

As a test, a copy was made onto recording tape using Dolby SR, a type of noise reduction, which he thought produced some nice results but greater loss of clarity.

He ends it with a note about the album: "Since the finale of the novel is a musical concert, I was delighted when Mike Oldfield told me that he wished to compose a suite inspired by it.

I was particularly impressed by the music he wrote for The Killing Fields and now, having played the CD-ROM of The Songs of Distant Earth, I feel he has lived up to my expectations.

"[7] The CD-ROM allows users to travel through a futuristic city on board a spaceship and towards a central control system, inside of which houses a musical tower.