Month: January 2016

 

“C’mon and get it soon…”

 

Reviews for ★ are coming thick and fast and weֺ’ll be posting excerpts from some of them in the run up to the release of ★ on Friday.

Here are the concluding paragraphs of reviews from the February 2016 British GQ and the January 8th edition of US magazine, Entertainment Weekly.

 

+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +

 

BRITISH GQ: FLOATING IN A MOST PECULIAR WAY – The Thin White Duke is back, bold and free to experiment as only he can. Story by Dorian Lynskey

 

If there’s a criticism, it’s simply that seven songs are too few but they contain more new ideas than most artists, of any age, could manage in 17.

It’s likely that Bowie will neither explain nor perform this artistic coup, and that leaves its wonder intact: light from a distant star. “Lazarus” is presumably narrated by a character from the stage show but the sentiment suits perfectly this bold, liberated album from a man who has shed all extraneous obligations: “I’ll be free/Ain’t that just like me?”

 

+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +

 

Entertainment Weekly: DAVID BOWIE’S BOLD RETURN – How the rock legend reinvented himself once again on Blackstar. Already one of the best albums of 2016. By Kyle Anderson

 

[Regarding Bowie] McCaslin explains, “He’s a guy who could do anything at this point. I didn’t notice him reaching back. I just felt like he’s pushing to do something new.” With Blackstar, Bowie is squarely in his comfort zone – which is light-years ahead of anyone else.

 

+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +

 

#Blackstar  #imablackstar  #BlackstarAlbum  

 

“And I’ve got to write it down”

 

The Johan Renck-directed video for David Bowie’s latest single, Lazarus, has been revealed at: http://smarturl.it/DBLazarus

Keep reading for the press release and a quotation from Renck about working with Bowie on this deliciously disturbing new film.

 

#Blackstar  #imablackstar  #BlackstarAlbum  #LazarusSingle  #LazarusVideo

 

+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +

 

DAVID BOWIE

“LAZARUS” VIDEO DIRECTED BY JOHAN RENCK LIVE NOW AT http://smarturl.it/DBLazarus 

 

★ ALBUM OUT JANUARY 8th ON ISO/COLUMBIA RECORDS

 

 

Having been teased earlier this week, the full lucid nightmare brilliance of the video for David Bowie’s current single “Lazarus” has been revealed at http://smarturl.it/DBLazarus 

 

“Lazarus” is the second single from Bowie’s 28th album ★ out January 8 on ISO/Columbia Records. Director Johan Renck, who also directed the 10-minute short film for the album’s title track, commented on the experience of visually interpreting that song and “Lazarus”:

 

“One could only dream about collaborating with a mind like that; let alone twice. Intuitive, playful, mysterious and profound… I have no desire to do any more videos knowing the process never ever gets as formidable and fulfilling as this was. I’ve basically touched the sun.”

 

Meanwhile, early critical notices on the about-to-be-released ★ album continue to amplify the universal acclaim that greeted its lead track (recently hailed as one of the best songs of 2015 in THE NEW YORK TIMES):

 

“His best anti-pop masterpiece since the Seventies… Bowie’s most fulfilling spin away from glam-legend pop charm since 1977’s Low. ★ is that strange and that good.”—ROLLING STONE

 

“Already one of the best albums of 2016… The Thin White Duke continues to make some of the most forward-thinking music around… the songs on his 28th studio album sound like nothing else in pop music right now… Bowie is squarely in his comfort zone—which is light years ahead of anyone else.”—ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

 

“These are diabolical earworms, all the more creepy for their singsong lucidity. But hasn’t that always been Bowie’s genius, knowing exactly how much sugar is needed to smuggle in the strange?”—VULTURE

 

“The delicious conceit of David Bowie conspiring with modern jazz artists is fulfilled beautifully… emerges as an album to savor as well as admire.”—WALL STREET JOURNAL

 

 

★ is released January 8, 2016 on ISO/Columbia Records.

 

Pre-order links:

 

CD: http://smarturl.it/blackstar_amazon

Vinyl LP: http://smarturl.it/blackstar_vinyl

Digital album: http://smarturl.it/blackstar_itunes

Limited Edition Special Clear Vinyl LP: http://smarturl.it/blackstar_clearvinyl

 

www.imablackstar.com

www.davidbowie.com

 

“Look up here, I’m in heaven”

 

Last month we told you about another huge billboard in London at the corner of Hammersmith Road / North End Road (next to Olympia exhibition centre).

As you can see from our snap, a third Jonathan Barnbrook ★ design has gone up overnight at the same location.

We’ve also included the actual artwork for a little more clarity.

 

#Blackstar  #imablackstar  #BlackstarAlbum  

 

“I can’t give everything, I can’t give everything…”

 

BBC Radio 4’s Frontrow programme in the UK will be talking about the ★ album from 19:15 this evening.

If you listen in, you may even be privy to an exclusive snippet of a track that we haven’t previewed yet.

Here’s the blurb from the Frontrow page.

 

David Bowie’s new jazz-influenced album Blackstar will be released on Friday to coincide with the singer’s 69th birthday. Critic Kate Mossman gives her response to Bowie’s 25th studio album, produced by long-term collaborator Tony Visconti, which has been described as ‘the most extreme album of his career’.

 

This programme will be available online shortly after broadcast.

 

 

#Blackstar  #imablackstar  #BlackstarAlbum  

 

“She opened strange doors that we’d never close again”

 

January 2nd 1981 saw the release of an edited version of the glorious, Britpop-blueprint title track from the Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) LP in the UK, with the single also being released in Germany and France.

The Bowie/Visconti produced track was the third single from the album and its release shortly after the 45 on the brand new cassette single format (now defunct), may have been what helped it enter the UK singles chart Top 20 later in the month.

Pictured here is one of the UK press adverts for the release and the German 12″ 45 Super-Sound-Single, which contained the full length version of Scary Monsters. Listen here.

The B-side was Because You’re Young in the UK and Germany and Up The Hill Backwards in France. The latter became the fourth A-side from the album in the UK and Germany a couple of months later.

The frenetic energy of the song and its singalong outro chant, made Scary Monsters a popular live number on various Bowie tours over the years.

 

#BowieScaryMonsters

 

“‘tis my curse I suppose”

 

The Sunday Times CULTURE supplement has ★ as the album of the week today in the Rock, Pop and Jazz section…an appropriate umbrella for ★ perhaps.

The review, by Dan Cairns, was teased last week with lines such as: “Some of the songs are staggeringly beautiful, vocally he hasn’t sounded this strong for decades.”

It seems an overzealous sub-editor has chopped that particular sentence for this week’s version of the review, but here are some of the surviving observations made by Mr Cairns.

 

In his unrivalled career, Bowie has teased us – or so we like to believe – with moments when lines between his life and the roles he plays seem to blur. Yet still he eludes us; slippery, unknowable. That these are the qualities that make Bowie so intriguing seems to madden some fans. We can Google an answer to just about anything, after all, so why not Bowie? Well, good luck with that.

 

This late-period Bowie, more insistent than ever on the right to roam where he will, has delivered another masterclass in experimentation and reinvention. The alt-jazz quartet he saw in a Manhattan club in 2014 clearly touched a nerve; a few days later, their saxophonist received an email from the man himself, and the band’s sprawling playing, which marches in step with breathtaking musicianship and iron discipline, lights a fire beneath Bowie. Vocally, he could be back in 1971-72, recording Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust: when the title track shifts into the major at the halfway point, you struggle to believe you’re listening to a 68-year-old veteran, rather than a fresh-faced torch singer. The effect is hair-raising.

 

Throughout, Bowie comes across as charged up, focused, both enslaved to and master of the music he is creating. “Everybody knows me now,” he sings on Lazarus. Well, no; no, we don’t. But that’s good, right?

 

Read the full review here.

 

#Blackstar  #imablackstar  #BlackstarAlbum  

 

“I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies”

 

The February 2016 edition of UNCUT has a list of what the magazine reckons are the 200 Greatest Albums Of All Time.

The poll, compiled by 59 writers and editors, contains seven Bowie albums, four of which are in the Top 30. Here’s how they rank:

 

185 The Man Who Sold The World

114 “Heroes”

105 Diamond Dogs

30 Station To Station

19 Low

12 Ziggy Stardust

11 Hunky Dory

 

We’ll leave you with the Top 10 individual artist rankings with the number of their LPs that made the 200.

 

David Bowie 7

The Beatles 6

The Cure 5

Bob Dylan 5

Neil Young 5

The Rolling Stones 4

The Velvet Underground 4

Prince 3

Radiohead 3

The Smiths 3

 

The February edition of UNCUT is out now.

 

 

#Best200LPsUNCUT  #DavidBowieUNCUT  #UNCUT  

 

“A very strange enchanted boy”

 

Andrew Harrison has written an interesting piece on David Bowie for the regular Guardian Profile piece in today’s paper.

The full page feature is titled: “Turn and face the strange: time may change him, but not his mystique”, while the online version is headed: “David Bowie: Back in the spotlight, still refusing to play along”.

Here are a few edited paragraphs from it.

 

As Bowie discarded Ziggy for a succession of personae – the cadaverous, cocaine-addled soul boy of Young Americans, the austere European man-machine of his trilogy of Berlin albums – it became a cliche to describe him as a chameleon of pop. But this was to miss the point.

 

“The idea that he puts on a mask simply to market what he’s done is mistaken,” says Paul Trynka, author of Bowie biography Starman and a former editor of Mojo magazine. “Actually, he creates the mask in order to make the art. A chameleon changes to mimic its background. Bowie forces the background to change to mimic him. His great achievement is not to market himself with a persona, it’s to create a persona with which to make art.”

 

In an overmediated time where social media robs everything of its mystery, Bowie’s obstinate refusal to play along is almost a work of art in itself. Sphinx-like, he may infuriate. But at least he’s consistent.

 

“All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience,” Bowie admitted to Paul du Noyer of The Word magazine in 2003. “My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.”

 

Which leaves us with only the music to go on. “There’s usually an inexorable drift to the centre as time goes on,” says Du Noyer. “Bob Dylan makes Christmas albums nowadays. Not so David Bowie. He’s rediscovered his gift for strangeness.”

 

Now on Friday, the day he turns 69 comes Blackstar, his 26th album, which is as startling as anything he has done, taking in hip hop, Brechtian theatre and abstract jazz.

 

Read the full profile here.

 

#Blackstar  #imablackstar  #BlackstarAlbum  #BowieGuardian

 

“I’ve got Friday on my mind”

 

Happy New Year, Bowie Freaks! Here’s to an exciting 2016.

Before the young Americans among you reading this get too distressed, ★ hasn’t been delayed, that’s an advert currently running in the UK music monthlies with the European date format.

And, as somebody observed on January 8th 2013 with the release of Where Are We Now?, what better way to start the new year than with a new release from David Bowie?

As well you know, on the same date this year (his 69th birthday), Bowie will issue the ★ album worldwide. (His 28th studio LP, including the two Tin Machine releases)

Go here for more.

 

#Blackstar  #imablackstar  #BlackstarAlbum