Bowie's Outside: C or D?

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?

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.