David Bowie Box

Before even looking at the merits of the music within this limited-edition box set of David Bowie's five studio recordings, Outside, Earthling, Hours..., Heathen, and Reality, with accompanying bonus discs, it is worth stating that serious Bowie collectors probably have all of this material, because these titles were all released as double discs in Sony International editions in 2004. For those who are simply big Bowie fans and not collectors, this ten-disc box includes the aforementioned recordings by Bowie, dating between 1995 and 2003. Each album, packaged in a nicely designed mini-LP sleeve, also contains a bonus disc pertaining to that particular recording, full of remixes, alternate takes, edits, special versions, and other rarities. In total, there are 60 bonus tracks. The CD replicas and discs were all manufactured in the EU, making this effectively an import box set. As to why any of this should matter, one can ask that question of Bowie eternally. He's re-licensed his catalog a couple of times between Rykodisc and EMI. The first time with bonus cuts, the second time without. (Can anyone see Elvis Costello's reflection in this mirror as well? Different record companies, same stunt, only Costello will make fans buy over and over again because there are different bonus tracks with each new release.) Packaging and marketing strategies aside, for most people it all comes down to the music itself, which is how it should be. Bowie is iconic enough in his big shelf of work to have it revisited over and again. Apologists will argue, but after Let's Dance in 1983, Bowie was lost for most of the rest of the '80s until the Tin Machine project with Hunt and Tony Sales and guitarist/producer Reeves Gabrels in 1989. Live records -- and a pair of dreadful studio outings -- Tonight and Never Let Me Down (with a couple of decent singles on each) were followed by the embarrassing Glass Spider Tour, and finally Black Tie White Noise in 1993. The Tin Machine recordings and this LP showed that the time in the creative desert was finally past him. Excerpts from Outside (subtitled "The Nathan Adler Diaries: A Hyper Cycle") issued in 1995 offered the first sign that something was about to happen. Originally intended to be the first in album in five installments, the ambition proved greater than the result. But Bowie returned to persona mode -- something he'd left behind after killing off Ziggy Stardust in the '70s. It's a futuristic aural noir thriller complete with a twisted detective as its narrator and anti-hero. It was supposedly the first of five concept records and while Bowie inhabits no less than seven different characters on the record, it (shockingly enough) holds together beautifully, with help from old mate Eno who worked with him on his classic "Berlin Trilogy" (e.g., Low, Heroes, and Lodger), and producer Tony Visconti; it was the first in a series of two post-human albums by Bowie. The sound is big, displaced, industrial, fragmented, and full of drama. The alternate mixes on the bonus disc -- five remixes of "The Heart's Filthy Lesson" (with one by Tim Simenon and Trent Reznor), and four of "Hallo Spaceboy" make up nine of its 14 cuts -- offer more proof that would be fleshed out even more on 1997's Earthling, which featured Gabrels and his army of sounds and Bowie's working live group. While more inherently "musical" in some ways, it is also more cybernetic -- and sounds more dated today -- because of its deep reliance on drum'n'bass rhythmic structures. The intense programming and sampling by Gabrels and Mark Plati (and, to a lesser extent, Bowie himself) all but displaces the human voice inherent in the best of these songs. Even Gabrels' guitar doesn't sound like one most of the time. Yet, for all of its "futurism," Earthling is the sound of Bowie in reaction prediction. Bjork kicked his butt when it came to incorporating the many shifting rhythmic styles of pre-millennial club culture. That said, this to be continued...