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Listened - album of the week: How to play Trivial Pursuit with David Bowie

2021-11-26T10:23:37.890Z


The fifth anniversary of David Bowie's death is approaching and the memorabilia machine is running: The previously unreleased »Toy«, contained in a new box set, is our album of the week. And: news from DAF.


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Musician David Bowie: helpless and restless at the turn of the century

Album of the week:

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Cover of »Toy«

Speaking of toys: Did you know that there is a David Bowie commemorative coin (9.95 euros) and a Monopoly edition where you can

hop

from

station to station

(52.99 euros)

, so to speak

?

The teeming 500-piece puzzle "Where's Bowie in 70s Berlin" is also funny, in which you first have to discover the Thin White Duke while puzzling in his former adopted home.

At the beginning of this century, Bowie's record company Virgin / EMI didn't find it so funny that their creatively volatile superstar artist wanted to release an album with revamped versions of old, once discarded songs from the sixties and early seventies: "Toy". Official justification of the label at the time: No place in the release plan. Bowie, however, probably sensed a lack of interest in his nostalgic finger exercise - and dragged his next, more experimental album »Heathen« to Sony, where he stayed with his own ISO label until his death in January 2016.

Since it is the fifth anniversary of Bowie's death, the memorabilia machine starts up. The first serve is the box set “Brilliant Adventure (1992–2001)”, which depicts another decade of the British musician's creative career on eleven CDs or 18 LPs. It contains light and shadow from the 1990s, the albums “Black Tie White Noise”, “Outside”, “Earthling” and “Hours”, as well as the soundtrack for “The Buddha of Suburbia”, outtakes and a live BBC recording from London. And the previously unreleased album »Toy«, which this is supposed to be about.

The pretty things are all going to hell

(see "Hours", 1999) Bowie may have thought at the beginning of the new millennium when he got into the archive. Perhaps, at that time in his early 50s, he was looking for answers to the question of how things could go on by studying the outtakes, B-sides and nuggets from his early career. Perhaps he was at a crossroads: Should he continue on the arduous path of the avant-garde and offend even the most loyal fans again and again - or become a rock icon gradually frozen in old hits and nostalgia, like the Stones or other survivors of the sixties and Seventies?

"Heathen" showed in 2002, of course, that Bowie's willingness and urge to innovate predominated. »Reality«, released another year later, was then again a very traditional rock album, the actual successor to »Toy«, if it had been released back then. "The Next Day" and "Blackstar", Bowie's last albums, later underpinned his reputation as perhaps the most intelligent and versatile rock star of the 20th century in a fascinating and touching way.

But in order to avoid long-term frowning, one should approach »Toy« with this transfigured claim. "I Dig Everything", which was brutally placed at the beginning of the album, was disturbed: The original from 1966 was one of Bowie's very first singles, a feather-light pop number. But the swinging "charming Jeannie" feeling and the gentle Caribbean touch of yore - buried by pork skirt in the 2000 version. In contrast, "You've Got a Habit of Leaving", released as a single by Davy Jones & The Lower Third in 1965, was deprived of its boisterous frustration in Bowie's new version and reinterpreted as a melancholy anthem.

It continues in a similarly transformative way: the B-side "The London Boys" is driven out the dramatic musical-like in favor of a rather smooth pop rock, the beautiful organ now has to simmer in the background until shortly before the end. Bowie now sings this early piece with an older, serene voice, no longer with the existentialist fragility of the young man from 1966 - one can find it a shame. Or

fair enough

. »Karma Man«, on the other hand, another B-side from the same period, still deliberately breathes a lot of sixties spirit (the spinet!).

"Conversation Piece", a holdover from the "Space Oddity" sessions, would have looked good on the original album, especially in this somewhat age-riddled version, it is one of the highlights of "Toy".

Just like "Shadow Man" from the "Ziggy Stardust" sessions from 1971, it was already included on the deluxe edition of "Heathen".

And when Bowie, still helpless and restless in the middle of life, performs the "Silly Boy Blue" of his debut album again with full orchestral pressure and pathos, there is no holding back, and no quarrel with these 12 from the Time fallen pieces.

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This dozen, turned by the Zeitwolf, does not add any new knowledge to the Bowie canon, it is above all a pleasure for collectors and exegetes to look at these long-scattered Bowie artifacts, to sort them into the 20-year-old era of their creation and Compare the post-processing with the originals (if available).

It's nothing more than a slip of paper full of footnotes.

But if you actually look at it playfully, like Bowie back then, you can still turn it into a wonderful trivial pursuit quiz among pop nerds.

Always more exciting than Monopoly.

By the way, in January »Toy« will be released again as a single box set.

(7.0)

Listened briefly:

Jasss - "A World of Service"

From this album should, no: must!

you definitely need to buy the vinyl, because the inner shell is supposed to smell of wet earth, wood and flowers, analogous to the cover artwork, whose floral splendor could easily be mistaken for a bloodbath.

Berghain DJ Jasss releases her second, very good album on the club's own label Ostgut Ton: With experimental sounds and dissonant noise, but also gentle electronic pop, the Spaniard researches the interfaces between nature and body, gender identity and digital technology.

Enya in the engine room.

(7.7)

Arca - »Kick II« (from December 3rd)

Where artists like Jasss are still doing research, the non-binary Latinx trans woman Arca has long since turned her laboratory into an internationally admired showroom. The Venezuelan worked with FKA Twigs and Björk, modeled for Bottega Venetta and Calvin Klein, likes to show herself as a gender-fluid techno mutant and experiments with AI for her cathedral-like sound buildings. "Kick II" consistently continues the liberation and delimitation of traditional Latin music begun on the groundbreaking previous album: It is posthuman future reggaeton with a sacred vibe, interwoven noise sculptures, guaranteed without macho behavior, if you will. This time guests include Sia and indie pop avant-garde Mica Levi. Everything is great, but the second kick is rarely as effective as the first. Arca may have noticed that herself,because "Kick III" and "Kick IIII", the last two episodes of this daring emergence performance, will be released simultaneously on December 3rd - for maximum impact. Or a quick sell-out before the next incarnation.

(7.8)

Robert Görl & DAF - »Just one more«

These inclined sound sequences that make the body twitch appear familiar, at least if you are of a certain age; they want to let the "Mussolini" dance. In fact, some of the programming on this album is 40 years old, even if it sounds amazingly fresh and contemporary. The electronics pioneers Robert Görl and Gabi Delgado, connected in a creative love-hate relationship since the early breakup of their band DAF in the early eighties, wanted to make a new album with these preserved sounds, but then Delgado died in spring 2020. Görl, otherwise never responsible for vocals or lyrics, brought the project to a close on his own - and placed the slogan or cut-up lyrics, which were often improvised in the past, in the spirit and style of Delgado. "Letting go" is moving and pulsating,"Das Pur Pur Rot" is reminiscent of the early gay ballad "The Robber and the Prince", "A Child from the Ratinger Hof" on the early days in Düsseldorf. "We are different. We are wild And we are strong. Because we love each other, «states Görl while his sequencer pounds and whips. My heart goes boom.

(8.2)

Richard Dawson & Circle - "Henki"

Anyone who appears on stage naked in dead fish or skin-tight spandex costumes can also record an album about extinct plant species: The unpredictable metal / herb rock band Circle from Finland, founded 20 years ago, has worked with the British folk Nerd Richard Dawson let in - only an

odd couple

at first glance

: After all, both the Finns and the Middle Ages fan from Yorkshire speak languages ​​that no one outside of their regions understands.

On »Henki«, Dawson often sounds as if Bob Mold from Hüsker Dü had discovered his heart for hippies and tried too much Celtic nature mysticism in the lockdown.

The Bevis Frond have been doing this for decades, of course, but that should by no means diminish the fascination of this sympathetically twisted folk metal madness.

(7.9)

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2021-11-26

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