Bowie's Outside: C or D?

Also, the 'best album since Scary Monsters' talk started with Never Let Me Down from what I remember. And was then repeated for every album he released after that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB7Tg3-r88w

it's difficult, you see!

Said to me: “you only like Outside because it’s Bowie pretending to be Scott Walker”

Me: “yes but he made it before Scott Walker. He made Tilt before Tilt and nobody got it”

I recall a mention of this in Eno's diary, about the time Tilt was released and they were both on the phone discussing how relieved they were that it tread slightly different ground from Outside.

The respective artists’ masterpieces.

My memory wasn't that they were relieved but heartbroken. But maybe it was relief once they listened more closely.

I'll confess to finding Outside a bit of a slog. I much prefer Earthling.

It’s Bowie trying to be Scott Walker (as forensically reconstructed from his apparent trajectory circa Nite Flights/Climate of Hunter) with all the gaps in that facade filled in by other cool stuff happening in music at the time/musicians Bowie wanted to be friends with like Reznor and Tricky. That happened to be a pretty potent blend but I’d hardly simplify it to pure Scott imitation. Even the Leon demos - which maybe inch a little closer to that designation - are hardly one-for-one in their influences.

& of course Earthling picks up on a lot of these threads, particularly “hip musicians Bowie wanted to be friends with”

I hear Bowie trying to be Scott Walker exactly once ("The Motel") and bits of "A Small Plot of Land." And the bowiesongs blog traced the genealogy exhaustively

The Motel is my favorite tune on Outside by a significant margin.

Heat from The Next Day is pretty significantly Bowie in Scott Walker Mode innit?

So much so that Walker might have cocked a wry eyebrow.

"A Small Plot Of Land" and "The Motel" are amazing, ya

The first time I heard Outside it was on a cross country car trip with a bunch of jazz players I was going to college with at the time. Chemicals may have been in play. Possibly the best way to hear this record – and likely responsible for why I have such an abiding affection for it.

What did the jazzbo's think of it?

I only came to this after Bowie died. First listen was intriguing, second listen more so and then on the third it all clicked, even the interstitial bits.

I was really hard on his 90s work, it felt like he had gone from leading the musical changes to following them, especially on "Heathen". But now I realize he was consuming them and putting his own spin on grunge, drum & bass, etc. "Outside" is his best of that period, hands down. Except "I'm Afraid Of Americans", which is so goddamn good and feels like it fits better with "Outside".

it's an eno cowrite so there is that, but I like it on Earthling.

I haven't listened to the original version (with eno actually on it) from Showgirls in a long time; how does it compare?

Is the Showgirls version different than the LP version? I can't choose between the LP version and Trent's remix, they're both fantastic in different ways.

yes, it's an earlier version than the LP version recorded during the Outside sessions or around then, I think (hence Eno being on it and not on the Earthling one)

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrtH3vcTwVg

just started giving it a relisten, def. more clattery.

Very pleasantly surprised by the Ouvre Le Chien live album that came out a few days ago - looked like yet another fired-out Bowie release but it presents most of the best Outside stuff in a great light, when I was not expecting too much at all. The performances surpass the album versions for me. The album itself will always be overlong for me and peppered with a lot of daft stuff (i.e. the segues, although I am sort of glad they exist), but I'm more assured that definitely was onto something good back then, even if a bit of editing wouldn't have hurt.

so that sounds pretty cool but am i correct that Ouvrez le Chien can only be streamed on Spotify, Amazon Music etc and no one sells it as a digital download? Is this how things work now?

What did the jazzbo's think of it?

The jazzbos loved it -- between Mike Garson's skyscraping piano lines, Joey Baron doing Joey Baron things on drums, and Bowie's supremely confident, operatic vocals, as well as snippets of the improvised Leon material, they had a lot to chew on.

POOOOOOOOOOOOR
dunce

POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR

dunce

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 12, 2017 6:55 AM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

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.