Send "David Bowie " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 1977 found one David Bowie and one Brian Eno holed up in Berlin, laying the sonic foundations for the brilliant trio of albums known by their single-word titles of Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger. Filled with Eno’s space-age synthesized palette, Bowie’s oft-atonal song structures, and Robert Fripp’s absurd guitar sounds, the “Berlin Trilogy” [as it has since come to be called] represents to many the most perfect wedding of pure musical artistry with a rock and roll spirit: tracks such as “Sound and Vision”, “Heroes”, “Joe the Lion”, “Red Sails”, and “Look Back in Anger” remain seminal in every sense of the term.And so it was to great excitement in 1995 that Bowie announced to the world a soon-to-be-released trio of albums co-created in post-Berlin Wall Europe with one Eno. Conceived as a “non-linear Gothic Drama Hyper-cycle” [capitals belonging to the guy whose name was originally Davey Jones], the Nathan Adler Cycle was to trace a series of art-crimes [mostly inspired by the violent work of Damien Hirst] from [coincidentally] 1977 Berlin through the turn of the millennia [in 2000, in case you needed the help]. Especially for a man who promised in a 1987 album title never to let the listener down—and then released the three absolutely worst albums of his solo career—it was with excited anticipation that Outside, officially stamped first of three on its cover, arrived that fall. This spring, Outside arrives again, to remind Bowie aficionados of the two-faced truth we’ve been forced to face about our hero: as much as he can raise our spirits, so, too, can he break our hearts. Outside is the perfect example of both. Following on the heels of the failed Nile Roger’s collaboration called Black Tie, White Noise, this new work with Eno promised that Bowie found the muse that had mostly been eluding him for the previous decade. But even that promise was broken as New Year’s Eve broke turning 2000 into 2001 without the release of any further work in the art-crime cycle. And so Outside remains a prelude to a work never written; the first chapter of a potential masterpiece whose core has been summarily tossed in the trash by its oft-distracted creator....full text |
| Sputnikmusic |
| Isn't it funny how a negative review can inspire you to check out an album much more than a positive one sometimes? I heard about 1. Outside in a brief guide to Bowie's catalogue that skimmed over all of his albums and ranked them, and despite the waves of positivity aimed at Ziggy Stardust, Hunky Dory, and Low, this apparent 2-star album stood out by a mile as the most interesting thing on the list. 'Too dense', 'too arty', 'too conceptual', 'too ambitious', said the reviewer. 'Sounds great', said me, having also been persuaded by the presence of Brian Eno as producer. Okay, I was just 15 years old at the time, and was still at the stage where I thought progressive metal was the best music in the world and that complexity, rather than tunefulness or restraint, was a virtue. Reading the same review now, I'd probably have thought nothing of it (most of the people reading this will already know that you can't spend more than 3 months listening to bad prog without realizing that 'too dense' and 'too conceptual' are genuine insults rather than backhanded compliments), but it was enough at the time to encourage me to seek this album out and make it the first Bowie album I ever bought. The problem I have with judging how good this really is is that I don't know how I'd have reacted to it if I'd heard it later. 1.Outside (which is catchily subtitled The Ritual Art-Murder of Baby Grace Blue: A Non-Linear Gothic Drama Hyper-Cycle, by the way) really does beat you about the head with its concept - the CD inlay is one of the most carefully-presented and ridiculous in my collection. The concept, detailed in the short story The Diary of Nathan Adler which makes up most of the inlay, revolves around a dystopian world where murder has become an art form and corpses are being used as canvases, and the government have responded by legislating all art and heavily restricting its creation - the titular Nathan Adler is a government official employed to investigate art and decide what is legal and acceptable, and what is not. This leads him to invesigate the murder of a 14 year old girl which appears to be linked to an underground art collective. If this all sounds like a mish-mash of Minority Report and 1984 to you, then you've pegged it. Yet it's important to note that if you don't read the inlay, you probably won't understand the story - unlike an album like Queensryche's Operation:Mindcrime (Outside's most obvious rock-as-dystopia competitor) the songs themselves are reasonably vague and don't tell a story as such, creating a mood instead. I actually find it a little surprising that this came out in 1995, rather than 2005; I don't own any other album where the inlay adds so much to the music, which would seem like a pretty great way of discouraging illegal downloading if downloading has actually existed back then....full text |
| Bowiewonderworld |
| Strange days indeed. The struggle for creative rebirth that has been Bowie's career since Let's Dance has finally and inexorably drawn him back to his '70s heyday. Welcome back Eno, control room conjuror of the innovative, though largely feeble-selling, Berlin period; Mike Garson and his spidery piano tumblings, first heard on Aladdin Sane; Carlos Alomar, slick guitar charge from Young Americans on. It is, in essence, as if the '80s never happened. This is not to suggest Outside should in any way be considered a regressive move, since it is a clear statement of Bowie aligning himself with the times to produce (and let's not be coy about this) a concept album. First, apparently, in a series of works centred around fictional "art detective" Nathan Adler (as previewed in Q100) and the inhabitants of the Lynchian Oxford Town, America, the narrative of Outside concerns itself with the "art murder" (a notion inspired by Damien Hirst's animal carcass in formaldehyde prank) of 14-year-old runaway Baby Grace. In between-song narrative segues, by way of voice synthesis, he assumes the roles of not only the victim, but suspects Algeria Touchshriek (a shady 78-year-old man) and - get this - body parts jewellery store owner Ramona A. Stone. In the album artwork Bowie's face is imprinted into weirdly brilliant computer collages featuring each of characters. So far out, so good, and all this before you've heard a note. Clearly the music on Outside is not designed for heavy commercial rotation, and as a whole it's wildly eclectic, veering wide-eyed and sometimes hare-brained from techno (Hallo Spaceboy) to avant-jazz (A Small Plot Of Land) to the meandering epic of the title track. The entire back catalogue of Bowie vocal styles are employed to full, schizophrenic effect, often in the space of a few lines of lyrical cut-ups that frequently border on the impenetrably enigmatic. In the best moments, he offers the hypnotising noir balladry of The Motel and the stylised collage funk of I Have Not Been To Oxford Town, easily the stand-out, while deflatingly, our 14-track trawl through a seedy end-of-millenium landscape of interest drugs, brain patches and concept mugging leads us to the stodgy rocker Strangers When We Meet, perhaps a Tina Turner duet had it featured on the grim Tonight. A bold and fascinating trip to offer his devoted listenership, Outside is undoubtedly Bowie's most dense and uncompromising work since Scary Monsters & Super Creeps, and, as suggested on Black Tie White Noise, it's clear that he is once again imaginatively sparking with life. Even so, regulars might feel short changed on the tune front, and those legions who came in on Let's Dance will most certainly be left completely and utterly bewildered. Perhaps though, that's entirely the point....full text |
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