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Bulldog · 03-30-2011, 01:10 PM

So, now for one of those deviations from the format I was a-talkin' about...

3 Reasons Why You Should Listen To David Bowie's 90s Material

In addition to endlessly long posts about albums you couldn't give a monkeys about, or showing off a bunch of different individual tunes I'm quite the fan of, I'll be doing this kinda thing. These are basically going to be three closely-related albums, be they in the same discography, from the same musical scene, subgenre or whatever, all having a very brief eye cast over them by yours truly. I'm gonna try and keep these coming from my own personal 'why can't everyone else have the same opinion as me' folder...stuff I think is pretty underrated in general, then. There'll be plenty more of these in future, don't worry

And here we are, starting in Obvious Territory with 90s Bowie. If you're not in the know, allow me - by the time the 90s were in full swing, Bowie was just beginning his efforts to emerge from a pretty dark time in his career, that being the constant ridicule he'd been subjected to from about the mid-80s to the early 90s. He'd well and truly imploded artistically by not only releasing an...an...an adequate album (Tonight), and not only taken his credibility behind a toolshed and beaten it half to death with a baseball bat (Never Let Me Down), but he followed all that up by forming the loud, noisy and allegedly pretty crappy Tin Machine (I actually think they have their moments myself). After flapping about at rock bottom for almost a decade then, a new Bowie was ready to emerge and show himself to the world.

And that didn't really start so well to be honest with you. 1993's Black Tie White Noise - Bowie's first solo album of the 90s - had two of my favourite songs on it (the cover of Nite Flights and Jump, They Say if you must know), but other than that was only really half-good. It was a definite improvement on all four of his preceding albums, but far from a classic. It did though signal the true second coming of Bowie, and pointed the way forward for one easily his best successive trio of albums since the Station To Station-Low-'Heroes' one of the 70s.

Now, here's why...

The Buddha Of Suburbia OST
1993

It all started rather inconspicuously with what was until its re-release only a few years ago something of a hidden treasure of Bowie's discography. This was the soundtrack to the excellent Hanif Kureishi's the Buddha Of Suburbia...although in essence it was a soundtrack in name only. True, the title track can be heard in full, and you can hear snippets of the rest of this album here and there, but otherwise this was no TV soundtrack - it was a full-length studio album by Bowie almost full of new and exclusive songs. The fact that for some bizarre reason it was marketed as a soundtrack album meant that the music industry pretty much regurgitated it on sight, like a hot bombay mix when you've had one too many at your local.

Anyway, musically this album is just beautiful, and asking me to describe it as some lame-arse record company genre label would be like asking Joe Rogan to accurately describe his last DMT trip. That's not to call this album trippy or psychedelic or whatever - to be perfectly blunt, it's not. I could be a lazy bastard and call it alternative rock, and I'm sure I'd put it in that section if I worked in HMV or something, but there's a lot more to this album than that. There are two amazing new age (yes, I said it - new age!) instrumentals, there's a full-blown jazz instrumental...besides that you can tell that this was a rock album recorded by three guys (Bowie, Erdal Kizilcay and Mike Garson) recording all the instruments themselves, and...just listen to it yourself.

If it weren't for the lame duck final track (and it's about as lame as ducks get really), this would definitely be in my top tier of favourite Bowie albums. Highly, highly recommended.

1.Outside
1995

And then there's its followup - the mighty, mighty Outside! Without being too much of a randy fanboy about it, this album is just fantastic. You could hear a progression from Black Tie White Noise to the Buddha Of Suburbia, and just like that you can hear the artistic progression from the Buddha Of Suburbia to Outside here. While the more ambient and even new age portions of the preceding album are basically totally done away with the same, no doubt jam-oriented approach to writing and recording songs in the studio is opted for, as opposed to David Bowie demoing them in his living room and talking about them over coffee and donuts with the session musicians. Given that there's a very, very loose narrative to the songs here about a sadistic cult of outsider artists murdering a teenage girl for art's sake, a much darker twist is given to the overall sound. The jazz influences are used a lot more here and there's a very metallic, industrial rhythmic method that underpins most of the songs here. Did I mention there's quite a lot of funky bass too?

What we've got at the end of the day is another one of Bowie's most criminally underrated albums...coming to it as a newbie you'll probably think of it in one of these two ways.

1. Holy crap, this is the best thing I've heard all week! I'm going to go give my Simple Plan CDs to the pub down the road for use as ashtrays and spend this weekend locked in my room with this album, a jar of raw coffee and a pair of headphones.
2. What is this pretentious bullshit (which I guess makes it kinda fitting for a thread by a fella called Bulldog)?! Is David Bowie seriously trying to sound like a 70 year-old man for this spoken word track?!

Again, just listen to it, as it's awesome and has plenty of Bowie's better songs on it. Another album that without it's flaw (being a tad overlong and having those bloody stupid segue tracks in this case) would be one of the man's very best. It's as scary as it is catchy, as lively as it is pensive...and so on.

Earthling
1997

Here's an album which, to be honest, isn't quite as good as I once thought it was. Don't get me wrong; it's still a very, very good album, and is again very underrated. I would say that it's the weakest of this little trilogy though.

Regarding the sound, often the combination of sounds that Outside threw at us would end up sounding a tad like big beat electronica or even jungle music (tracks like I'm Deranged and We Prick You, especially), and this album is basically fully-fledged...big beat electronica and jungle! Well, to be fair only three of these songs sound at all like jungle/d'n'b, and labelling it as such would be unfair to an album which is essentially the David Bowie sound of old being re-wired with a type of contemporary pop motor for the day.

Again, it's home to some of my favourite Bowie songs ever, but overall it's just not quite as good as the two albums that preceded it. I don't what it is...maybe it's that Union Jacket on the sleeve art that reminds me too much of Geri Halliwell, or that a version of one of its songs was on the soundtrack to that steaming pile of shit known as Showgirls. Either way, it stands as a good Bowie album but not an essential. It is though a necessary part of this trilogy, and definitely worth having. Much more commercial than the two albums before it, but at the same time a lot better than the MOR twaddle called Hours that was just around the corner.

03-30-2011, 01:10 PM	#54 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	So, now for one of those deviations from the format I was a-talkin' about... 3 Reasons Why You Should Listen To David Bowie's 90s Material In addition to endlessly long posts about albums you couldn't give a monkeys about, or showing off a bunch of different individual tunes I'm quite the fan of, I'll be doing this kinda thing. These are basically going to be three closely-related albums, be they in the same discography, from the same musical scene, subgenre or whatever, all having a very brief eye cast over them by yours truly. I'm gonna try and keep these coming from my own personal 'why can't everyone else have the same opinion as me' folder...stuff I think is pretty underrated in general, then. There'll be plenty more of these in future, don't worry And here we are, starting in Obvious Territory with 90s Bowie. If you're not in the know, allow me - by the time the 90s were in full swing, Bowie was just beginning his efforts to emerge from a pretty dark time in his career, that being the constant ridicule he'd been subjected to from about the mid-80s to the early 90s. He'd well and truly imploded artistically by not only releasing an...an...an adequate album (Tonight), and not only taken his credibility behind a toolshed and beaten it half to death with a baseball bat (Never Let Me Down), but he followed all that up by forming the loud, noisy and allegedly pretty crappy Tin Machine (I actually think they have their moments myself). After flapping about at rock bottom for almost a decade then, a new Bowie was ready to emerge and show himself to the world. And that didn't really start so well to be honest with you. 1993's Black Tie White Noise - Bowie's first solo album of the 90s - had two of my favourite songs on it (the cover of Nite Flights and Jump, They Say if you must know), but other than that was only really half-good. It was a definite improvement on all four of his preceding albums, but far from a classic. It did though signal the true second coming of Bowie, and pointed the way forward for one easily his best successive trio of albums since the Station To Station-Low-'Heroes' one of the 70s. Now, here's why... The Buddha Of Suburbia OST 1993 It all started rather inconspicuously with what was until its re-release only a few years ago something of a hidden treasure of Bowie's discography. This was the soundtrack to the excellent Hanif Kureishi's the Buddha Of Suburbia...although in essence it was a soundtrack in name only. True, the title track can be heard in full, and you can hear snippets of the rest of this album here and there, but otherwise this was no TV soundtrack - it was a full-length studio album by Bowie almost full of new and exclusive songs. The fact that for some bizarre reason it was marketed as a soundtrack album meant that the music industry pretty much regurgitated it on sight, like a hot bombay mix when you've had one too many at your local. Anyway, musically this album is just beautiful, and asking me to describe it as some lame-arse record company genre label would be like asking Joe Rogan to accurately describe his last DMT trip. That's not to call this album trippy or psychedelic or whatever - to be perfectly blunt, it's not. I could be a lazy bastard and call it alternative rock, and I'm sure I'd put it in that section if I worked in HMV or something, but there's a lot more to this album than that. There are two amazing new age (yes, I said it - new age!) instrumentals, there's a full-blown jazz instrumental...besides that you can tell that this was a rock album recorded by three guys (Bowie, Erdal Kizilcay and Mike Garson) recording all the instruments themselves, and...just listen to it yourself. If it weren't for the lame duck final track (and it's about as lame as ducks get really), this would definitely be in my top tier of favourite Bowie albums. Highly, highly recommended. 1.Outside 1995 And then there's its followup - the mighty, mighty Outside! Without being too much of a randy fanboy about it, this album is just fantastic. You could hear a progression from Black Tie White Noise to the Buddha Of Suburbia, and just like that you can hear the artistic progression from the Buddha Of Suburbia to Outside here. While the more ambient and even new age portions of the preceding album are basically totally done away with the same, no doubt jam-oriented approach to writing and recording songs in the studio is opted for, as opposed to David Bowie demoing them in his living room and talking about them over coffee and donuts with the session musicians. Given that there's a very, very loose narrative to the songs here about a sadistic cult of outsider artists murdering a teenage girl for art's sake, a much darker twist is given to the overall sound. The jazz influences are used a lot more here and there's a very metallic, industrial rhythmic method that underpins most of the songs here. Did I mention there's quite a lot of funky bass too? What we've got at the end of the day is another one of Bowie's most criminally underrated albums...coming to it as a newbie you'll probably think of it in one of these two ways. 1. Holy crap, this is the best thing I've heard all week! I'm going to go give my Simple Plan CDs to the pub down the road for use as ashtrays and spend this weekend locked in my room with this album, a jar of raw coffee and a pair of headphones. 2. What is this pretentious bullshit (which I guess makes it kinda fitting for a thread by a fella called Bulldog)?! Is David Bowie seriously trying to sound like a 70 year-old man for this spoken word track?! Again, just listen to it, as it's awesome and has plenty of Bowie's better songs on it. Another album that without it's flaw (being a tad overlong and having those bloody stupid segue tracks in this case) would be one of the man's very best. It's as scary as it is catchy, as lively as it is pensive...and so on. Earthling 1997 Here's an album which, to be honest, isn't quite as good as I once thought it was. Don't get me wrong; it's still a very, very good album, and is again very underrated. I would say that it's the weakest of this little trilogy though. Regarding the sound, often the combination of sounds that Outside threw at us would end up sounding a tad like big beat electronica or even jungle music (tracks like I'm Deranged and We Prick You, especially), and this album is basically fully-fledged...big beat electronica and jungle! Well, to be fair only three of these songs sound at all like jungle/d'n'b, and labelling it as such would be unfair to an album which is essentially the David Bowie sound of old being re-wired with a type of contemporary pop motor for the day. Again, it's home to some of my favourite Bowie songs ever, but overall it's just not quite as good as the two albums that preceded it. I don't what it is...maybe it's that Union Jacket on the sleeve art that reminds me too much of Geri Halliwell, or that a version of one of its songs was on the soundtrack to that steaming pile of shit known as Showgirls. Either way, it stands as a good Bowie album but not an essential. It is though a necessary part of this trilogy, and definitely worth having. Much more commercial than the two albums before it, but at the same time a lot better than the MOR twaddle called Hours that was just around the corner.