Bowie's Outside: C or D?

Heathen is good, btw.

"Damien Hirst-inflected-T.Reznor-appropriated-art-ritual-murder-hypercycle schtick"

Masterfully summed-up.

I still like it a lot, minus all that trumpet silliness.

I'm a huge Bowie fan, but the albums I'd put on the "don't bother" list would be hours and Never Let Me Down -- followed by Black Tie White Noise (except "Jump They Say" is one of my favorite last-twenty-years Bowie songs) and, actually, Let's Dance.

And continuing to be off-topic, I love Bowie's cover of "Cactus"! Even as a Pixies fan who hates most Pixies covers.

Is HEATHAN any good?

"The Pretty Things are Going to Hell" and "Thursday's Child" are decent songs, though.

Some of the voices for the segues are great, and even if the story is confusing and weird, the tone it sets adds a lot to the album. The main reason I like it so much is that dark futuristic tone and the Eno/Bowie production. There is really no other albums that capture that as well.

(as for Black Tie White Noise, I would say that is his most underrated. Lester Bowie's trumpet silliness, and Al B Sure! combined with Bowie's jazz fusion attempt works so well. Bowie has some great sax solos too. Good songs: Wedding song, Looking for Lester, Miracle Goodnight, Nite Flights)

From what I have come to understand, Eno wanted the record to be a lot sparser. A record can come out a million different ways when you have somebody doing the post-production and the mix-down. I think Bowie pulled a real Raw Power on Outside.

The greatest shame of all is that there are some really great songs and interesting musical ideas hidden beneath all that excessive studio bloat. Strangers When We Meet is one of Bowie best songs to date, but it got lost as the final track on the album. If the production and arrangements had been pared down it could have been a brilliant album. If only Eno had not been cut out at the last minute.

That nails it for me right there. The story is incomplete, but this isn't Tommy. The tone is great. Even when I wouldn't name this as the best Bowie album, I'd call it the one that works best as an album, as opposed to a collection of songs -- for that, it's probably the best album in my collection (we had that thread, didn't we?)

as an "album" it pisses me off. so much of the experimental parts of the record or the segments betweek tracks are a waste of time and ruin the flow of the album.

i came to reassess it after lost highway and everyone took a liking to 'deranged'. the song in its original form is most excellent, dark and brooding in a pleasant lounge-y sort of way.

there are a bunch of tracks from this album that are excellent, but a low signal/noise ratio all together i would say. HOWEVER this album has been borrowed by several of my friends before and they invariably claim it to be an excellent album! i cannot understand the appeal of this album but obviously it is an interesting side note to bowies career and a point when we saw the very beginnings of what might be termed somewhat of a 'comeback'

I'm still struck by how much people still crap all over this record, even as it is far and away (melodically, at least) "the best thing he's done since Scary Monsters" (or, at a minimum, since this record). I remember DeRo called it embarrassing, no one could understand the story, and everyone thought he was chasing Trent Reznor or something. Which he might have.

Without having listened to it in ages (I lost it), I've always heard a very different record, I guess. You have:

A) Several really good tunes. "Heart's Filthy Lesson", "I Have Not Been To Oxford Town", "Small Plot", and two of his best songs, period, "Thru' These Architect's Eyes" and "I'm Deranged."

B) Some great production touches. "HFL" has great Eno-fication. "Small Plot", an incredible creeping arrangment. Joey Baron described the sessions for this tune to me once — said it was fascinating as Bowie just improvised the whole thing off these sheets he'd put together, shrieking through his headphones.

C) And it wins Bowie the 1995 award for "Best Deployment of a Sideman" with Mike Garson delivering an absolutely INSANE piano performance for the duration (he'd won before in 1976 for Roy Bittan).

D) The story, which I've always found to be intentionally tongue in cheek, all the way down to the cheesy Photoshopped artwork. Shame he seems to have bailed on the 2. Contamination sequel...

At any rate, poss. the last decent thing we'll get out of him...

eno sounds very excited about the recording of this album in A Year with Swollen Appendices

It was not so much that Eno was kicked out during the mixing process so much as Bowie kind of took things over towards the end and cluttered things up. There are several good passages in A Year With... discussing there different styles in the studio, the painter vs. sculptor metaphor comes to mind at the moment. I am not going to stake my life on it, but I am not sure that Eno was still in Switzerland when the album was completed. I am in the process of rereading A Year With, and I have not gotten to the part where they mix the album.

Yes, this was when he'd latched onto Trent (before latching onto Moby as his new sychophantic protoge).

I dunno. Lyrics aside, "The Heart's Filthy Lesson" is straight-up Reznor. "I'm Deranged" and "We Prick You" too.

Outside is one of those Bowie albums I loved upon release but now think it's overbaked. "No Control" and "I'm Deranged" are marvelous, and "Strangers When We Meet" is one of his best ballads ever, not to mention his use of Colin Newman-esque non sequiturs in a moving way. The rest I can live without.

i feel that is one of the most overlooked songs in the entire bowie catalog.

If I'm remembering correctly, the interludes on Outside album were recorded with the band using Eno's 'strategies for musicians' cards. I'm interested, too, in what all the band did in the full sessions for these.

it's unfortunate but OUTSIDE's attempts (conscious or not) to revisit the magic of the berlin trilogy came up unfounded.

If I remember right, the video for "Heart's Filthy Lesson" really underlined the connection to NIN, it was all creepy gothy and shot to look like it was on washed out old film stock and such.

Heathen is one of my favorite Bowie albums (Alex, did you hear it?), but I did not like Hours much and found Earthling kinda meh.

The more I listen to this, the more I think that had he junked the concept, this would easily would be regarded as one of his best records -- even with the concept, it still is, but I think some/most people can't get past, like, 10 minutes of narrations to recognize that. And pity, b/c then he goes off into Earthling, which is everything people accused this record of. But as its film soundtrackification proves, a ton of these songs on their own stand very tall indeed. Such is the price of pretension...

Exactly.

"Listened to D.B. disk...The only thing missing: space -- the nerve to be very simple."

If memory serves, that was almost word for word Eno's critique of Lodger -- seems like they work against each other that way. Where Eno taking over means he ferrets out the unnecessary elements, it seems Bowie's instinct is to clutter things. Same thing happened with the Berlin Trilogy, where he started off a Nazi-saluting mess and gradually got his act together.

Still, he clutters interestingly.

Last.fm is urgently recommending someone named "David Bowie" to me, so I need to root around in the archives for something to balance my play count. I haven't listened to Outside... well, since it came out. I thought I'd ask what others have asked before -- did any more of the Outside/Eno sessions leak out?

Outside is one of my absolute favorite Bowie albums, and about the only one on which I can stand Reeves Gabriels' guitar. The story goes that, during the sessions, Eno handed out cards to each member of the band that instructed them to play a role like "Spaced-out jazz guitarist from Pluto" or something in order to get everyone to play a little unlike how they'd normally play. So maybe that's why I like his guitar playing on this album -- he's not playing like Reeves Gabriels, but some fictional guitarist.

Also, the album features Mike Garson (oh man... "Small Plot of Land" is good stuff) and Joey Baron (!!)

As for the segues... whatever. I kind of like them, even if they do interrupt the flow of the album a bit.

Still, "Heart's Filthy Lesson," "Small Plot of Land," "I'm Deranged," "No Control," and, especially, "Strangers When We Meet" are among my favorite Bowie songs. "Oxford Town" and "Spaceboy" are up there, too. Really, an underrated album, and one that towers over everything he's done since then.

Yep. And here's a link to said instructions. If I had to pick but one track from this album, it would probably be "A Small Plot Of Land".

For me, the most outstanding track would easily be Leon Takes Us Outside/Outside. Also, the Baby Grace (A Horrid Cassette)/Hallo Spaceboy sequence.

1) It's been revived several times, despite a really lazy opening post by yours truly.

2) There exists virtually unanimous consensus that there are at least a few good songs on this.

3) There exists absolutely zero consensus as to which songs those good songs are.

Revive...again!

Eight years to the month later (it appears I spend a lot of time over holiday breaks on ILM), going thru a bit of an Eno phase and I still feel the same way about this record. But there are a few other things to note:

1. Of the many little bits of melody on this record, the coda to "The Voyeur Of Utter Destruction (As Beauty)" (awesome title, fwiw)...the "Research is...etc....call it a day" part is a particularly great and overlooked one that hasn't yet been mentioned.

2. It's odd to me there aren't more people praising the hell out of "Thru' These Architects' Eyes" -- it's an unbelievable climax to the record and one of the most majestic and, er, heroic things he's ever done. Fairly monsterous dub bassline, too.

3. Of all the records in the Berlin Trilogy, it seems to me Outside hews closest to Lodger -- stuffed full of melodies, places and references that are individually impressive and, often, overwhelming.

4. "Strangers When We Meet" is one song I always everyone say they like. Other than the kind of hilarious "Gimme Some Lovin'" bass riff that starts it, the song's never struck me before (it's also from Buddha of Suburbia, IIRC). Am listening now -- enjoying it.

I may have said it before: "Strangers When We Meet" is top fifteen Bowie for me, the best example of his lyrical cut-up technique resulting in a beautiful, unsettling statement.

I still like it a lot (interludes included).
Probably overcooked, but still the best Bowie album since Scary Monsters.

Does anyone have a decent boot of the Outside sessions? Apparently, Reeves Gabrels talks about this "4-hour improvised opera" that ended up being used for the interludes on the record. I dl'd something the other night on slsk which sounds like it may be part of it, but whose sound quality is crap, has tons of rough edits, and of the 9 tracks or so, appears to replay the same one at least 3 or 4 times.

― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Friday, July 15, 2005 12:35 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark

I have this, a gift from a Bowie diehard.

Lucky.

"We Prick You" = my secret favorite.

I'll stand by this judgment of mine (nearly ten years on!). Who all saw the tour?

I DID. It was my first-ever concert that wasn't high school hardcore. I don't remember anything about the set list but was so impressed by Reeves Gabrels.

at the time the reviews were horrid for the most part

Really? I only read the review of the show I went to, in Toronto, and it was positive. They did note that the crowd thinned dramatically after NIN.

In LA the Forum crowd remained pretty strong through the end. He was still in his 'I'm not doing the back catalog the old way' phase so I remember the revamps of "The Man Who Sold the World" and "Andy Warhol" in particular. Great staging as well.

I saw the Bologna show and was GREAT.
I remember they started with Look Back In Anger and I almost fainted - just like Ned said, there were great versions of Man Who Sold The World (super icy), Andy Warhol and Nite Flights (Hello Spaceboy was also impressive).

Here in the States it was the NIN/Bowie set-bleed-over thing -- the collaborative tracks were Bowie emerging while Trent was doing some saxophone, Bowie and NIN doing "Scary Monsters," Bowie and NIN doing "Reptile," Bowie and his band *and* NIN doing "Hello Spaceboy," then "Hurt," then NIN bowing out. Pretty crazy great.

I saw this show, it was awesome. saw bowie on the reality tour again a few years later, also awesome. I don't remember any reviews of the outside tour being horrid. the glass spider tour, yes,

And so the Outside era begins.

:-D

Now that I no longer like things that make sense, I'll have to go listen to it again.

daria g OTM.

He correctly pointed out that "Strangers When We Meet" is the classic of his autumnal years.

Decided to put this on tonight... First words on the album are "2015...16".

think i'm at the point where this is my favorite bowie album but idk

just listening to this properly and it's even more 'early/mid 90s trip-hop' than i'd have guessed. some of it sounds like Madonna's Human Nature. The Motel for one.

*Erotica i mean

Baby Grace is the victim
she was fourteen years of age

this record is definitely divisive, I know people who just think it's the worst thing ever.

I like it a heck of a lot more than Black Tie White Noise, which I don't like much at all apart from Jump They Say (or at least I didn't last time I listened to it which was years ago. It's probably my favourite of his 90s albums.

I only saw Bowie live twice, in 1996 and 2000, and both times he played Hallo Spaceboy and both times it was awesome.

the Pet Shop Boys remix was a hit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjYHTCR0qBk

this record is definitely divisive, I know people who just think it's the worst thing ever.

― akm, Thursday, January 14, 2016 1:58 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean one can see why they'd think so! the whole vertigo-comics-at-its-worst nature of its aesthetic, the programming and guitar tones that register as dated in a bad way to a lot of ppl ...

i listened to the bootlegged 'leon' for the first time today. it's ... probably less cohesive than the '1. outside' version, even.

I remember being so bummed, this being a reunion of Eno and Bowie and Eno being on a real winning streak as a producer. He never really recovered. Outside is so weird and chaotic, and just about everything he's produced since has been boring and safe. Nu-U2, Coldplay ...

I really loved this record when it came out, well, "really" might be strong...I hadn't listened to it in yrs and tried the other night, I could not hang with it

this was my first real bowie purchase in 1995, and i loved it. I think it still holds up.

think i'm at the point where this is my favorite bowie album but idk

Same, pretty much. I wouldn't claim that it's his best, but I wore it out in high school and it's the one I've internalized the most.

I think Earthling remains my preferred listen, drawing on the band that toured Outside, but I admire the fact that Outside even exists. Following the demi-retrench of Black Tie and the formal exercise of Buddha of Suburbia this seemed to be a striking way forward. A lot of the songs still stand up and to quote myself again from 2002 on here: "We Prick You" = my secret favorite.

just listened to this again this morning minus the segues, I think it's still awfully good. certainly better than Earthling.

hey i would like to suggest black tie anticipates both this and buddha in subtle ways. it's kind of an avant garde sophistipop record

reeves is way more subdued on this than earthling so it's kinda automatically way better imo, but earthling has some of bowie's best tunes

earthling feels super perverse to me in that, according to bowiesongs, bowie wanted to capture the sound of his band, and the result sounds like everyone fed their instruments through a bank of effects and then triggered them with a synthesizer

I wasn't aware of Reeves Gabrels as menace until Earthling.

That Earthling tour is closer to that capture-the-sound-of-his-band ideal. Shit was fire, from what I've seen (I've told my story about missing his epic 3-hour-plus Ft Lauderdale show).

When Reeves joined the Cure I was all ugh. He has the worst guitar tone ever, like the guitar equivalent of a Simmons drum.

He follows me on Twitter, oddly enough. So when I saw him favoriting some of my Bowie tweets this week I was all 'That seems a little strange, somehow.' (Roger O'Donnell also follows me as well so I'm waiting for Simon Gallup to show up on my doorstep.)

i forgot reeves was in the cure now until the other day and then instantly felt less enthusiastic about the show this spring.

Reeves is just doing the job in the Cure. Took it down a notch from Porl, so you'll be fine.

This is the first Bowie album I heard: I was lent it by my English teacher. I lent him Screamadelica in return. Finally bought my own copy a few years ago. Right now it's in the loft though, so I can't revisit it despite a strong desire to (knackered knee = no ladder climbing).

When Reeves joined the Cure I was all ugh. He has the worst guitar tone ever, like the guitar equivalent of a Simmons drum.

Jason C00per has been in The Cure for two decades as of this year.

that is weird

This was noted on another Bowie thread recently, but Eno to the Beeb right after he passed:

"About a year ago we started talking about Outside - the last album we worked on together. We both liked that album a lot and felt that it had fallen through the cracks. We talked about revisiting it, taking it somewhere new. I was looking forward to that."
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35279642

Hadn't realized that a decent quality Leon Tapes bootleg finally leaked last year. By no means an easy listen, but a real feast when combined with the outstanding PAotD analysis linked upthread. One unique angle pursued there is that Outside, for all its virtues, wasn't so much a comeback or a new direction for Bowie but rather a compromised "conceptual art project Eno and Bowie carried out in the press," the record itself merely a public record of the occasion before Bowie flitted onto new things. It's really an amazing piece that I'd recommend to anyone who found themselves fascinated by this era.

From my end, one interesting piece in this story is that for such an outsized project, it ended up being strongest as a set of songs. Where I saw there record as this incomplete masterpiece when I was younger, it seems so much more like Diamond Dogs (as PAotD notes) or even Young Americans in its earnest but failed pursuit of Philly Soul -- a product of massive but ultimately unrealized ambitions that ends working best as something else altogether.

BTW, the title track of this doesn't get enough love.

outsiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidddde

Got it from the loft yesterday. Better than I remember. Needs more listens.

I never thought this album was bad, just a little ... much.

Young Americans in its earnest but failed pursuit of Philly Soul

Wait did I miss a vote on this?

What is the best Leon bootleg?

the one that's only three tracks long

ah i c

young americans is one of my least favorite bowie albums; it comes right after the obvious bad ones like tonight, never let me down, the labrynth soundtrack. I think it's generally worse than tin machine 1 and 2; and that's all because of 'across the universe' being so lame.

so difficult to listen to an album with one terrible song, throw it in the trash and set it on fire

if you replaced "across the universe" with "who can i be now" it'd be a 100 percent perfect album so like...."across the universe" can hardly ruin the whole thing

It's crazy that Who Can I Be Now didn't make the cut, but indicative of how massive a hot streak he was on at the time.

well actually the rest of the album doesn't measure that much for me either aside from the title track; it's just not very memorable. but it's also the last bowie album I ever got so that might have something to do with it.

If it's any consolation, it's not in my Bowie top five.

and that's all because of 'across the universe' being so lame

I find Across the Universe objectively atrocious but at the same time weirdly enjoyable to listen to.

well, the guitars sound terrific for one thing

man diamond dogs as a comparison for outside is pretty interesting and dead on. at the time i enjoyed outside (always loved 'strangers when we meet' and was happy that 'hallo spaceboy' was a big hit)(in iceland at least) but kinda dismissed it as a failure and a mess (just way way too busy to my ears, bowie chasing too many trends at once). years after i'd meet ppl whose favorite bowie album was outside and have to stifle my shock and urge to mock, it seemed so clueless and bizarre and based in ignorance, i'd always have to say 'look outside is fine but there is no way in hell it is bowie's best album'. i enjoyed earthling more (a lot more) and thought it corrected many of the mistakes of outside - clearer vision, better hooks, no damned skits. i revisted it after he died and it was a revelation. there's still a lot there that doesn't work and i still have no use for the skits but it strikes me as pretty clearly his strongest late album. some of this might just be a result of the dnb influence but it also strikes me as much more jazzy than i would have noticed at the time. between lester bowie on btwn and the last album there's part of me that imagines bowie spending his last two decades (or at least more of his last two decades) doing these more focused less stunt casty kind of laswell albums.

"The Heart's Filthy Lesson" through "No Control" is one hell of a sequence.

"Across the Universe" sucks, but the drums on that track are killer and weirdly 90s R&B, especially the breaks and fills toward end around 3:15 and beyond.

Thanks thread for the notice that a decent version of the sessions leaked last year. I downloaded the audio of the three suites from YT and am just finishing the first suite now. This is straight up amazing.

More talk about 1. Outside, please.

So I've played this 3 or 4 times since I got it down from the loft, although always pretty distractedly - in part because it's so long. Read the wiki page for it this morning and the concept/conceit is just ridiculous, but the music, and some of the songs, as noted above, is excellent. If you culled it down to 50 minutes, deleted the skits, it'd be roundly recognised as excellent, I think. As it is, it's too long, and the whole mythology/narrative built up around it almost seems like a deliberate attempt to prevent people getting it. But A Small Plot Of Land, Spaceboy, Oxford Town, Filthy Lesson, Destruction, the title track, and especially Strangers are all amazing. And everything else is at least interesting. I guess in 1995, next to Blur and Oasis and Pulp and The Bends, it just seemed like a crazy, OTT mess.

Bonkersly, this was the first Bowie album I ever heard, way back when it came out. For a 16/17 year old I think it was just too much.

to 20-year-old-me, Blur was the only competition. 1. Outside was my favorite album of 1995.

This album sounds particularly good at the moment, I feel.

I guess in 1995, next to Blur and Oasis and Pulp and The Bends, it just seemed like a crazy, OTT mess.

Hmm, maybe. The record seems more in keeping with what was going on in 1997 rather than 1995.

In 1995 it just didn't seem as cool as the Berlin records/Before and After Science, ime

yeah the 'eno and bowie! back together! to make a new trilogy!' hype didn't help

like i enjoyed that last byrne/eno record but i think if it had been presold as 'get ready for another my life eating bush' i would have been let down. unfair to hold an album's hype against it i know but it definitely influenced my perspective, was something i had to work past.

I bought Buddha of Suburbia the other day, too. There aren't any threads about it that I can see on here. Any major discussion in any other threads that anyone knows of? I'm very intrigued by it. It does in retrospect seem to sit very neatly between BTWN and this.

it's really good (buddha). title track is one of his best songs and all the instrumentals are super interesting; if not quite on par with side 2 of low or heroes, they show bowie really stretching out and doing something different.

Buddha>Outside.

I think Buddha is one of the reasons people were let down/confused by Outside. Buddha (along with BTWN) broke his losing streak - I remember at the time people really excited it marked a return to "experimental" Bowie - and then came the announcement he was reconvening with Eno (on his own winning streak as producer) for a full collaboration. And then the album was this unfocused sprawl with a crazy concept that embraced both weird improv and then fashionably ugly electronica/industrial tropes. I recall my introduction to "Outside" via the end credits to "Seven" the week before.

No one heard Buddha at the time though, did they?

I kinda admire the fact that Bowie used electronica/industrial tropes, and later on some jungle tropes... could you imagine McCartney/Jagger/Ferry going "jungle"!?

It was hard to find. I think it was pulled in England, sneaked out in December 1993? In the USA it didn't get a release until fall '95.

I mean, christ, the Stones' idea of broadening their palette at the time was getting in The Dust Brothers and ripping off k.d. lang!

It's true, trip hop seemed more Mick's speed. Though Bowie dipped into that, too.

i can imagine ferry going trip-hop

he flirted with it mildly on his '90s solo albums.

No one heard Buddha at the time though, did they?

Got an MM review I'm pretty sure. I've heard good things about the series itself. Kurieshi wrote a piece that ran in the Times but (precisely because it's in the Times and thus paywalled) I've not read it beyond the introduction.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/article4662362.ece

Never cared about the story or reading the liner notes or anything, but I love the spoken tracks. He does good voices over nice music and I like the mangled sci-fi syntax (though I'm sad to learn the "something is about to be heard" I've always got before Hallo Spaceboy is a mishearing.

The two songs people often mention as classics, Have Not Been to Oxford Town and Strangers When We Meet, are maybe the most underwhelming for me on this record.

I love A Small Plot of Land most. It could easily fit on Blackstar - very similar to Tis A Pity She Was a Whore.

I had to buy buddha as an import when it was released; yeah it got no airplay or attention in the US outside of bowie fans.

Wrote this on the RIP thread because it felt more appropriate there but selfishly I want to talk about this record.

A lot of has been written about Bowie’s legacy since his passing, but for me, the thing I keep coming back to is the fact, or perception anyway, that Bowie was /the/ guy who spotted trends before they were trends and brought them into the mainstream. /Outside/ very clearly—and very self-consciously—was designed to explore that side of Bowie's persona. Yes, it was a celebration of “outsider” art and the sordid characters that produce it, but even more than that, a tribute to Bowie's own mythology for championing, popularizing, consuming, and, ultimately, discarding those artists and movements before moving on to something else.

Candidly, I think Bowie understood the significance of that role—as Lester Bangs wrote about /Young Americans,/ Bowie's best work often seemed to be when he failed at something so wildly that it became something else entirely—but don’t think he was ever entirely satisfied playing it. Deep down, Bowie really did wish he could be a pop hermit like Scott Walker or a performance artist like Chris Burden physically harming himself for his art. But as his copious interviews on the talk show circuit reveal, he also wanted to be loved, admired and appreciated.

I realize now that this is one of the reasons I have always found /Outside/ so fascinating, because it not only self-consciously exploits that tension — but the project itself was consumed by it, transforming from the ambitious, careening, improvised opera about “outsider" art it was initially conceived as into a messy, overstuffed “gothic non-linear hyper-cycle” into an art rock concept album, the subject of which is "David Bowie."

That’s why, even tho PAotD judges /Outside/ to be something of a failure … I’m not sure it actually is. The songs are great. The bootlegged /Leon/ sessions that started it off are completely unique. The story is intentionally batshit and incomprehensible. Not everything works and some of it is baffling, but it’s never boring. As a result, the project as a whole feels like…pretty much everything Bowie ever did. And on those terms, I feel like it has to be judged as one of his most important releases.

I love A Small Plot of Land most. It could easily fit on Blackstar - very similar to Tis A Pity She Was a Whore.
― Eyeball Kicks, Tuesday, February 2, 2016 10:51 PM (seven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Donny McCaslin covers it (and "Warszawa") on his upcoming album.
http://www.ew.com/article/2016/07/29/donny-mccaslin-small-plot-land-cover

This is on Spotify. It's a nice thread from the Blackstar era to its roots in Bowie's catalogue. I like the instrumental sax solo section, perhaps unsurprisingly. Makes me think that some enterprising person could make an interesting cover of the whole record.

Tho it was recorded later in NYC, 'Small Plot' always struck me as a bit of a head nod to the Leon sessions (PAotD agrees). Joey Baron and Mike Garson are amazing on it. There's another mix of it that Eno supposedly did on the Basquiat OST that mixes them both out – but I prefer the original.

Listening to this again after a long while, I'd say this is up there with Blackstar as one of his very best post-Let's Dance LP's.

Or "classic", in other words.

no doubt, IMO anyway. I can kind of see how people find it overly indulgent and maybe, story-wise, even silly, but I really like basically all of it.

The "indulgent" nature of it is a huge part of why it rules so much, IMO.

Combined with Leon Sessions, maybe some other working pieces and anything that survived from the aborted followups, this would make a *great* boxed set. I wonder if Eno, who has fashioned himself in the press as something of a a keeper of Bowie's legacy since his passing, would consider curating such a thing.

Dud, but I appreciate the effort.

Classic as far as I'm concerned. Outside is my second favourite Bowie album (Diamond Dogs is no. 1).

It might come off as somewhat indulgent but it's so energetic and diverse that it also sounds to me like Bowie, and everyone else involved, were having a real blast with it.

POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR

dunce

Nice piece about this era of Bowie’s career:

David Bowie: No Control in RECORD COLLECTOR PRESENTS BOWIE December 2016 #BrianEno #Outside #PetShopBoys https://t.co/eJ7W9S0M1b pic.twitter.com/bw1xbSvGvh

— Brian Eno (@dark_shark) January 7, 2018

Tennant's talked about that remix often, but I like the thought of him being nervous about Bowie's approval, like a schoolboy who's disappointed his favourite schoolteacher.

Anyone read the Swollen Appendix book?

Other thought about Outside: (for me, anyway) it's the only bowie record that *needs* gabrels, whereas everywhere else i kinda just tolerate him or wish he wouldn't ruin the song by doing that

Anyone read the Swollen Appendix book?

― Chuck_Tatum,

Essential reading -- lots of offhand sundry insights, reflections on his urine, valentines to his wife and daughter, revelatory bits about recording James, Bowie, U2..

For those who have HBO, there is a new Bowie documentary on tomorrow, focusing on the end of his life, The Last 5 Years.

xpost

Turns out it's out of print and sixty quid on eBay. Used to see that thing all the time in used bookstores. Oh well.

I read A Year With Swollen Appendices!

I am a secret enormous James fan and mostly absorbed the parts about that band. I'd been frustrated with all of Saul's violin contributions to that band and was delighted to read passages of Eno slagging him off as a musician, heh

I don't remember much about what he said about Bowie tho, oddly enough-- probably because it was just uniformly positive?

This album, to me, is his actual "best since Scary Monsters" ... Blackstar is even better, though.

That Bowie doc is okay, I watched it on a long flight a few months back. The best thing about it is just him being in a good mood and goofing around at truck stops and stuff.

There's a quote on the back of the Eno book I think about Bowie calling him one day to express admiration for the new Scott Walker album, which at the time was Tilt, and Eno being relieved that it was totally different from what they were up to.

Also, re Gabrels, I hate this dude's guitar playing, even the sound of his guitar. I much prefer the boring ambient stuff David Torn provided Bowie.

Bowie might have been the world's only Reeves Gabrels fan.

Robert Smith seemed to like him for a minute. Or is he still in the Cure?

I've always kinda of loved this ridiculous record. The "Leon Suites" boot is fantastic, just got hipped to it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06wXwgGpO9c

xpost -- He's still in the Cure.

And I have to say when I saw them last year that Gabrels's tendency towards 'let me art-deconstruct this 'solo' you speak of' has shifted more towards actually good, creative solos that fit well within the arrangements.

so people do learn then

Anyway how dare you mock someone who found love

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/fashion/weddings/maybe-in-another-life-becomes-now.html

(Seriously, this is a story about Gabrels from the other day.)

I just saw that on my twitter feed the other day. Good for him. I guess.

Remember when this came out some review describing "another unlovely Gabrels solo" and the phrase has stayed with me to this day.

Baby Grace is the victim

Reeves Gabrels is my favourite of Bowie's guitarists tbh!

Also for a relatively hideous middle-aged man he makes a dapper older gentleman

This is his actual "best since Scary Monsters", IMO.

Between the players (Joey Baron!) and Eno on board as a full collaborator, during his '90s imperial phase (Achtung Baby!, Laid, Wah Wah, Bright Red, Zooropa, Passengers) this came as and remains to me a huge disappointment. Lots of great ideas, little I want to return to with any regularity.

This was shared by bowiesongs earlier this week, on the origin of "Outside" (the song)

a new interview with Kevin Armstrong, DB/Tin Machine guitarist, which has a fascinating tidbit: https://t.co/QxP577Rsel

— Bowiesongs (@bowiesongs) March 12, 2019

as you may know, "Outside" came out of a DB/Armstrong composition called "Now," which Tin Machine played in '89. but its origins on the Armstrong side date earlier, to a piece called "Love is Essential" written ca 1980: https://t.co/3DQdvg561R

— Bowiesongs (@bowiesongs) March 12, 2019

That was interesting because it was the first time I met Brian Eno. Five minutes after being introduced to him I found myself standing next to him at the console with a guitar round my neck and being asked to play along to ‘Architects’ without ever having heard it before with Bowie looking on.

Eno manipulated the sound of my guitar with a multi-harmonizer as I was playing and my first impressions were what ended up on the record, so it was a collaborative effort between Brian Eno and me, really. I was a bit confused as to what was going on at first but I guess that Bowie and Eno’s method of working fitted in with the whole experimental ethos of that record. They wanted to capture the moment of discovery and mess with it at the same time. That was the last session I did with Bowie but I have since become friends with Brian and we still meet up.

Huh. This is just what Bowie and Eno did with Belew on "Lodger," right? And Fripp on "Scary Monsters?"

Come to think of it, Outside came at the peak of Eno coaxing bands into looser improvisation. Wah Wah, Zooropa ... both were famously recorded in two studios, iirc, the second one manned by Eno. The band would bash stuff out with one engineer and move on, then Eno worked and tweaked the stuff in his parallel studio. I assume much of Passengers was recorded much the same way.

I believe it was.

Anyway, that’s a great story, I hadn’t heard it – Architects is the climax of the album and one of my favorites on the record. Just a soaring tune anchored by one of Bowie’s most thrilling vocals and some extraordinary Mike Garson piano.

And yeah, that’s more or less the same thing he did in the 70s (the clearest example is Manzanera’s solo on Cale’s “Gun”) but instead of running things thru an EMS Synthi A suitcase by the 90s he was using an Eventide H3000.

It's difficult you see

The story I'd heard is that Manzanera is a particularly chill and ego-less lead guitarist, and that he was relatively non-plussed by Eno's aggressive Putney-tronics! I'm surprised more bands don't do stuff like this live, or at least have someone tweak their pedals while they solo.

"Eno on board as a full collaborator, during his '90s imperial phase (Achtung Baby!, Laid, Wah Wah, Bright Red, Zooropa, Passengers) this came as and remains to me a huge disappointment" weird, I prefer outside by a fair margin to most of those.

Ooh, I dunno. I love Outside, but Achtung Baby and Zooropa are all-time for me. I'm not arsed anywhere near as much about the James albums.

Lol I love the James albums but I love James

I'm surprised more bands don't do stuff like this live, or at least have someone tweak their pedals while they solo.

Yer man Edge does. But he also has ghost guitarists offstage too.

Yeah, I was about to say this. Edge always has someone offstage/under the stage switching his pedals for him because he can't be arsed to!

He def. has pedals, but they're not being manipulated in real time (like they are on "Gun"). So Edge has effects, yes, but always the same effects in the same place.

Speaking of which, sort of, here's a great story I recently heard from my guitar teacher, whose cousin is a Nashville producer. Way back when that shitty '70s band Firefall, who had some connection to the Burrito Brothers and/or Byrds, had a hit with or on their first album. But when it came time to record album number two, at home in Colorado, they apparently blew the entire budget on cocaine in the first few days or something and the producer/engineer had to call in someone to help them get their shit together. So they find this quiet guy named Dallas who knew everything about guitars and amps, and he helped them push through this session from hell. At the end, the producer was so impressed he goes to Dallas and says, man, if you ever need work just give me a call.

Years go by and my friend's cousin is working a session in Nashville with this other aforementioned producer, and they get a call. "Hey, man, it's Dallas, got anything going on?" They immediately fly the guy out to work with them in the studio. Apparently it goes so well that within months he's working as a (the?) guitar tech with Andy Summers, then later Paul McCartney, and not long after that The Edge c. "Joshua Tree." And apparently he's been working with The Edge ever since. This was pretty good, or at the least it gave me a little more respect for the Edge's instincts and knowledge even if I don't think very much of him as a guitarist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDYfXvGuaL4

Ha, just looked it up and I think the main beats of the story are pretty legit! But again in defense of the Edge and his hidden people, it sounds like the deal is that Edge is in control of his effects and stuff when he is (obv.) at his pedalboard, but when he starts roaming or moves away then Dallas takes over. Which makes sense, I guess. Otherwise Edge ain't going nowhere.

The other funny Dallas story via my teacher and his cousin was that apparently he got a call from Dallas one night, and Dallas just whispers "you hear that ...?" then lets the background noise come into focus. "That's the Beatles, man!" It turns out he was there for the "Free as a Bird" session. Found that story backed up, too!

There was the time in 1995 when Steve Miller invited him to his home studio in Idaho to service his guitar collection. Miller then warned him: He had some people coming to use his studio and Schoo had to promise to not freak out. Schoo rolled his eyes; he had seen it all.

Two days later, a fleet of SUVs pulled up and out get Paul and Linda McCartney, Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach, George and Olivia Harrison, and Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick. They were there to mix "Free As A Bird," the final new Beatles music that was made using a John Lennon demo tape of an unrecorded song, and they asked Schoo to maintain their guitars.

Schoo freaked out.

At one point, McCartney leaned over to Schoo during a break and struck up a conversation.

"So you're with that U2?"

"Yes, yes, sir, I am."

"That's meant to be a big deal, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"But they didn't change the world did they?"

Schoo erupts in laughter. "Then he looked at Harrison and said, 'If it wasn't for us, you'd still be walking around in Buddy Holly glasses.' That story I've taken all over the world, man, and Paul and I have remained friends to this day."

I love "Outside", but I feel sorry for Bowie: here he wanted to offer a vast vision, a whole universe around the album, yet he was forced to record "Outside" at a time when concept albums were totally pasee in the industry and there was just no room to promote something like that.

yeah no

Outside would not have sold diddly in 1985 either. He was a victim of releasing it as his First Serious Album when he had no American cachet to speak of. By 1997 the turnaround was remarkable. I was there. Suddenly Bowie went from laughing stock to a touchstone (Liv Tyler did the we're-not-worthy on Letterman when he and his band performed "Dead Man Walking"). If he'd released it in 1999 instead of hours it might have gotten a better reception.

At the same time...who cares? I loved Outside in 1995. So did lots of people. We still love it. Its cult remains intact.

Alfred otm... between Nirvana's cover and NIN agreeing to open for Bowie at the height of their fame the 90s were a period of immense rehabilitation for him. "Heart's Filthy Lesson" got radio play iirc, as did "Little Wonder" and (especially) "I'm Afraid Of Americans". There was the Sound+Vision boxset followed by the big Ryko reissue, Bowie going public (and making a fortune? I seem to recall?), the Omikron thing, the marriage to Iman, and the 50th birthday celebration... the 90s was a remarkable turnaround!

The Ryko box plus Belew tour was the big event (when he famously allowed fans to vote on the setlist and then struck certain songs from setlist circulation). The Bowie Bonds thing was intriguing (my friend worked on that!). But iirc the NIN tour was coheadling, and in fact I recall lots of talk at the time at Bowie's lack of ego for playing sort of second banana to Reznor.

It's difficult for people to remember how delicate Bowie's reputation was in the rock canon before the Ryko reissues in 1990-1991. Because Station to Station and the Berlin Trilogy were out of print for years, his reputation rested on memories of Ziggy Stardust -- the only album of his to be a part of Rolling Stone's '87 best-of list. It took a while for young'uns like us, who were buying the reissues in mall record stores, to argue for him as a world-historic artist. By 1997, thanks to the Pumpkins, Nirvana, and NIN, it was happening.

he really was the "Let's Dance" guy for too many years because nothing else was available.

That's insane. Were used OOP Bowie records rare treasures?

Yes. Not everyone was shopping in used record stores. I don't remember seeing , say, Low on used vinyl during my younger, more formative years.

RCA cds were— and still are, apparently— costly too

RCA cds were— and still are, apparently— costly too

Bowie and Elvis Costello Ryko reissues were a) essential and b) did much to rehabilitate both of these acts. '90s were the, erm, golden years of reissues.

(Technically Sound + Vision was 1989, but still. The tour was 1990.)

Man, just got so wistful for they heyday of Ryko and Rhino. I used to have a Rhino promo code. I would look at the website, check out all the awesome boxed sets, type in the code, and the giant impeccably compiled box set would just show up.

I don't really recognise any of this, maybe it was different in the UK, OK Tin Machine was derided but Bowie was cool in the early 90s as far as I knew. Lots of people I knew had the Changes compilations and the Ryko reissues, Black Tie White Noise was a "return to form" (although I didn't like it much), bands like Suede were aping him, etc etc.

America, yes. I remember the warmth with which the press greeted BTWN in England.

I remember buying my then girlfriend the Sound & Vision box for Christmas '89 and the thing was like this luxury item.

I don't recall 70's albums being scarce at all in the 80's or early 90's.

Also, the 'best album since Scary Monsters' talk started with Never Let Me Down from what I remember. And was then repeated for every album he released after that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB7Tg3-r88w

it's difficult, you see!

Said to me: “you only like Outside because it’s Bowie pretending to be Scott Walker”

Me: “yes but he made it before Scott Walker. He made Tilt before Tilt and nobody got it”

I recall a mention of this in Eno's diary, about the time Tilt was released and they were both on the phone discussing how relieved they were that it tread slightly different ground from Outside.

The respective artists’ masterpieces.

My memory wasn't that they were relieved but heartbroken. But maybe it was relief once they listened more closely.

I'll confess to finding Outside a bit of a slog. I much prefer Earthling.

It’s Bowie trying to be Scott Walker (as forensically reconstructed from his apparent trajectory circa Nite Flights/Climate of Hunter) with all the gaps in that facade filled in by other cool stuff happening in music at the time/musicians Bowie wanted to be friends with like Reznor and Tricky. That happened to be a pretty potent blend but I’d hardly simplify it to pure Scott imitation. Even the Leon demos - which maybe inch a little closer to that designation - are hardly one-for-one in their influences.

& of course Earthling picks up on a lot of these threads, particularly “hip musicians Bowie wanted to be friends with”

I hear Bowie trying to be Scott Walker exactly once ("The Motel") and bits of "A Small Plot of Land." And the bowiesongs blog traced the genealogy exhaustively

The Motel is my favorite tune on Outside by a significant margin.

Heat from The Next Day is pretty significantly Bowie in Scott Walker Mode innit?

So much so that Walker might have cocked a wry eyebrow.

"A Small Plot Of Land" and "The Motel" are amazing, ya

The first time I heard Outside it was on a cross country car trip with a bunch of jazz players I was going to college with at the time. Chemicals may have been in play. Possibly the best way to hear this record – and likely responsible for why I have such an abiding affection for it.

What did the jazzbo's think of it?

I only came to this after Bowie died. First listen was intriguing, second listen more so and then on the third it all clicked, even the interstitial bits.

I was really hard on his 90s work, it felt like he had gone from leading the musical changes to following them, especially on "Heathen". But now I realize he was consuming them and putting his own spin on grunge, drum & bass, etc. "Outside" is his best of that period, hands down. Except "I'm Afraid Of Americans", which is so goddamn good and feels like it fits better with "Outside".

it's an eno cowrite so there is that, but I like it on Earthling.

I haven't listened to the original version (with eno actually on it) from Showgirls in a long time; how does it compare?

Is the Showgirls version different than the LP version? I can't choose between the LP version and Trent's remix, they're both fantastic in different ways.

yes, it's an earlier version than the LP version recorded during the Outside sessions or around then, I think (hence Eno being on it and not on the Earthling one)

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrtH3vcTwVg

just started giving it a relisten, def. more clattery.

Very pleasantly surprised by the Ouvre Le Chien live album that came out a few days ago - looked like yet another fired-out Bowie release but it presents most of the best Outside stuff in a great light, when I was not expecting too much at all. The performances surpass the album versions for me. The album itself will always be overlong for me and peppered with a lot of daft stuff (i.e. the segues, although I am sort of glad they exist), but I'm more assured that definitely was onto something good back then, even if a bit of editing wouldn't have hurt.

so that sounds pretty cool but am i correct that Ouvrez le Chien can only be streamed on Spotify, Amazon Music etc and no one sells it as a digital download? Is this how things work now?

What did the jazzbo's think of it?

The jazzbos loved it -- between Mike Garson's skyscraping piano lines, Joey Baron doing Joey Baron things on drums, and Bowie's supremely confident, operatic vocals, as well as snippets of the improvised Leon material, they had a lot to chew on.

POOOOOOOOOOOOR
dunce

POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR

dunce

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 12, 2017 6:55 AM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's a good'un!

Gonna spin the Ouvrez le Chien show today on Spotify, haven't heard it before and apparently a physical copy costs stupid money.

A Small Plot of Land is maybe my favourite Bowie song between (makes up some rough numbers) 1977 and 2016

But picking a song without melody feel wrong somehow so Jump They Say as well

I remember hearing "Hallo Spaceboy", the album version, in the local HMV and buying the album on the spot - as many other people have pointed out it's far too long, and I'm not keen on the "Peak ProTools" production. It's really fussy! I remember publicity videos where he was showing off his new Macintosh Quadra (or whatever). He used it to write the lyrics, by chopping up bits of text and then throwing it all away and writing lyrics normally. It also sounds as if Eno and Bowie had just bought ProTools and a bank of samplers.

On the other hand the editing of e.g. "Heart's Filthy Lesson" makes sense, and the video is great as well. I've never heard The Buddha of Suburbia and I wonder if it's at all like Outside. As with Tin Machine it sounded like a man who had read a description of Nine Inch Nails and Front 242 and was trying to recreate that sound without hearing the originals, so it's obviously still X-as-processed-by-Bowie, but in my opinion the end result is a much better synthesis than Tin Machine. "We Prick You" is really perfunctory thought and I remember it has slap bass on it, so there's still this awkward link with 1980s naffness.

It strikes me as the kind of thing that probably had a promotional CDROM or early website with tiny tiny little video thumbnails. I'm slightly surprised to find out it was released on LP. A single LP as well. I always thought it was too long, and it came out at a point when LPs were dead and gone. But it was indeed released on LP, with an LP-sized booklet.

Out of interest, what is 'Peak ProTools' production?

This is a mammoth read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_(David_Bowie_album)

Wow, Ouvrez Le Chien is amazing ❤️

Feeling very secure in my “Gabrels is the best” stanning rn. He and Garson are duelling beasts

What is his accent here? Moonage Daydream: “I’m the spice inviter”. It’s absolutely affected and kinda delicious

I just A/B’d the Outside remaster (2003 vs 2021) and I usually like the most recent masters of albums! Not in this case. “A Small Plot Of Land” is all voice and no bass, no ambience

The only bad thing I have to say about Outside is that it’s a shame this perfect album is interrupted by “Hallo Spaceboy” but the ffwd button is right there, so, 10/10

Whaaat? I love "Hallo Spaceboy" and the PSB remix

Can't believe how long it took me to discover Outside. I had enjoyed some of his more well-known albums for years but... I mean, it's a big catalog to listen to everything. now the album is possibly my favorite of his

I've never heard The Buddha of Suburbia and I wonder if it's at all like Outside.

Not at all. Bowie and Erdil Kizilkay playing and writing cool noodles and instrumentals.

POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR

dunce

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 12, 2017 6:55 AM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

― flamenco drop (BradNelson),

I'm pretty sure this album was not recorded with protools. protools had been out for a few years but wasn't Kid A the first bit album to be totally recorded in protools some years later?

big album, not bit.

ProTools was in its infancy in 1994, 16 inputs perhaps.

The internet says Outside was recorded on two 48-track machines, but I'm not sure that's correct either, perhaps it was Mitsubishi 32-track digital recorders.

i'd be surprised if there wasn't some digital recording involved

Digital editing of mixes and takes, certainly

btw saw an announcement that the albums from this last box set (including Outside) are finally being released on vinyl independently from the box, next month I think

I'm pretty sure this album was not recorded with protools. protools had been out for a few years but wasn't Kid A the first bit album to be totally recorded in protools some years later?

If I'm not mistaken, the Beach Boys album "Summer In Paradise" (1992) has this distinction.

"Digital recording" includes ADATs and DA-88s and what have you so certainly some of it was involved. Could also involve RADAR, which is arguably classifiable as a DAW (albeit with no independent computer).

Logic and ProTools were used in conjunction with linear recording tech (i.e. reel-to-reel and its descendants) for editing and sampling and MIDI and sync and processing and what have you. I absolutely think Eno was using Logic on Outside, but in conjunction with other recording tech, Logic likely being used for sampling and/or controlling samplers and so on

still never heard this one

Love Outside. For some reason, it was the most-loved Bowie album among my friends in high school (early 2000's) - I think that came from the Nine Inch Nails connections.

"Out of interest, what is 'Peak ProTools' production?"

I think of a certain kind of big-budget, fussily-produced album from the 1990s, when studios gravitated to ProTools - which was very expensive, and initially required specialised hardware, so the smaller acts didn't have a chance to really exploit it. It allowed producers to edit audio down to the individual sample level and move chunks of audio around. That could be done with samplers and sequencers, but it was a lot easier to go completely wild with ProTools because it was drag-and-drop. There's a certain type of album from that period where the production is objectively excellent, with every individual note and sound sample lovingly crafted, but it's too fussy for my taste. Once the novelty wore off producers toned things down.

Avid has an interesting list here, which makes me realise that Outside (and Zooropa, Amused to Death, Tubular Bells 2, The Division Bell etc) were probably pre-ProTools:
http://www.avidblogs.com/7-seminal-records-made-with-pro-tools/

But apparently its ancestor, Sound Tools, was released in 1989, and my hunch is that Brian Eno was the kind of man who would buy things on day one of release - he probably spent a lot of time on the phone to DigiDesign's customer service department - so dating things is hard. Sound Tools worked on the late Motorola 68K Macintoshes.

The first example they give is Garbage's debut album, from 1995. The silent chop-out in "Supervixen" could have been done by any number of methods, but with ProTools all Butch Vig had to do was highlight that chunk of sample -> insert silence -> maybe fade out/fade in the edges and voila. And from that point onwards it would have been a simple matter to cut out all extraneous ambient sounds, make reverb tails stop dead, apply reverb to individual guitar notes, and do it at lighting speed, without having to ride a mixing desk or edit tape. Avid's article links to this interview from 1999 with a chap who engineered Bjork's Homogenic:
https://www.soundonsound.com/people/spike-stent

"What I also enjoyed with that Björk album was that there were no definite arrangements on most of the songs. I'm talking about the way the beats came in and out, where certain hooks were, and so on. A lot of that was created during the mix. They brought the material in on analogue tape and DA98, and a few things that were run live. We moved many things around in Pro Tools. I would start at 10 in the morning, and by four in the afternoon Björk would come in and give me feedback. I had a lot of freedom. I did drop-ins and cuts and rearranged things, and could go wild with my effects. Just like with the Massive Attack albums, Protection (1994) and Mezzanine (1998) — I got to use many guitar effects pedals. I used them on the breaks, vocals, keyboards, all sorts of things. Björk and her producer Mark Bell had already manipulated the sounds a lot, and then I manipulated them again."

It's also fascinating for the casual mention of Auto-Tune in its original context as a way of correcting bum notes, because "Believe" was only a year old at that point.

I'm digressing wildly but essentially my thesis is that Outside sounds over-engineered, as if Bowie had just realised he could edit literally everything in close to real time.

Eno wanted the record to be a lot sparser.

"Sparse" is not a word I typically associate with Brian Eno.

He's notorious for erasing contentious individual tracks to circumvent mix-related arguments.

XXP - I thought that's what you were leaning toward.

While I agree that digital audio production enables those tempted to go all in with overdubs and on-grid tendencies, I can't get behind the idea of ProTools as the sole pejorative culprit.

I do see PT used as a worrisome adverb from time to time, and while it shouldn't, it kinda bugs me, perhaps because I sit in front of it every day.

The irony is, of all the DAWs and standalone digital recording systems I've used over the years (since around the same time Outside was being recorded, funnily enough) it is easily one of the most 'tape-like' of all.

People like Steve Lipson and Trevor Horn were achieving the same over-the-top results 10 years previously with Fariights and Synclaviers, it just took much longer and required a more mathematical mindset.

So...I went big here.

https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/david-bowie-scott-walker/

Fantastic. Thank you Ned.

Yer welcome!

One album I've heard maybe twice and will never listen to again, another album I wouldn't listen to on a dare... and yet the piece itself is fascinating. Really good stuff.

I’ll take that compliment, thanks indeed!

Looking forward to reading that, Ned!

Reading through that epic Wikipedia entry makes me think that this record would make a terrific subject for a deluxe box – collecting a properly mixed Leon Tapes, all the remixes, outtakes, and live material obv. But also an Eno mix (perhaps decluttering things), and some great essays by Eno about the recording itself and their plans for a series, maybe others from Gabrels and someone like Chris O’Leary explaining it all and providing the historical context for this record within Bowie’s work.

Would it happen? Dunno. Eno has never shown much interest in revisiting this (or much of his past work TBH), plus I’m not sure it really fits into the series that they’ve been doing to date (Who Can I Be Now?, etc.). But it would rule.

It definitely doesn’t fit the career spanning box sets that they are more or less done with, minus Tin Machine. Those didn’t really have much in the way of outtakes.

But they are now putting out sets that tie in with the different albums that are loaded with unreleased stuff. Aladdin Sane/Pinups should be next, so eventually there may be an Outside set. Who knows if the series will continue that long though.

I don't think society will last long enough for an outside box if they go at the rate they're going

I have the Leon Sessions bootleg somewhere on CD (it was an apropos gift from a friend) and it's interesting!