21 - Heathen
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_laYhBfj8AOinavNDDeRDukyOMly4X186M
So, we've officially made it to the 21st century. Bowie lives in New York, he's got some old friends and some new friends (all famous, every Bowie album is pretty much a supergroup), and they are making their typical angsty Bowie in New York kind of album. It's a comeback album, because we left off at the standard Bowie imagines where society at large is headed (spoiler alert, it's war and death and pointless destruction), and he doesn't want to be on that bus (he's already been on that bus, because he lives ahead of us, remember).
The recording is pretty much done, and wouldn't you know it some lunatic crazy people fly airplanes into the World Trade Center, so now he has to mix and master and distribute this premanatory apocalyptic new stuff while the city around him sifts through the rubble.
Right place, right time is almost always coincidence. That's because whatever came out today was written basically a year ago. There's no such thing as "psychic," just people who are very in tune with the way a particular Zeitgeist will logically unfold. Humans, for all their apparent instability and chaos, are inherently logical creatures. If we're going down, we're going down with gusto. Here's Heathen, for our lunch-nap dining displeasure.
You know the airplane scene in Hackers where Orbital's Halcyon + On + On starts playing as he looks out over the clouds. Yeah, it could just as easily have been Sunday. Cactus sounds like a leftover Blur song. Oooh, that haunting 40s nostalgia of Slip Away is just gorgeous.
I won't spoil the rest of the joy of hearing them for yourself. Well, other than to say it's a split personality album like all the rest. America vs Europe, reminiscence vs foreboding unease, everything is the same and everything is different, i lived it all before but knowing that doesn't change the experience of living it again, and more. It's a very full and complex piece of art, coincidentally published at a time when the whole world was ready to hear it (maybe misunderstand it slightly; it's about Bowie, not the world). An album for an America that didn't exist yet, but inevitably would. Zeitgeist.
22 - Reality
So, we've officially made it to the 21st century. Bowie lives in New York, he's got some old friends and some new friends (all famous, every Bowie album is pretty much a supergroup), and they are making their typical angsty Bowie in New York kind of album. It's a comeback album, because we left off at the standard Bowie imagines where society at large is headed (spoiler alert, it's war and death and pointless destruction), and he doesn't want to be on that bus (he's already been on that bus, because he lives ahead of us, remember).
The recording is pretty much done, and wouldn't you know it some lunatic crazy people fly airplanes into the World Trade Center, so now he has to mix and master and distribute this premanatory apocalyptic new stuff while the city around him sifts through the rubble.
Right place, right time is almost always coincidence. That's because whatever came out today was written basically a year ago. There's no such thing as "psychic," just people who are very in tune with the way a particular Zeitgeist will logically unfold. Humans, for all their apparent instability and chaos, are inherently logical creatures. If we're going down, we're going down with gusto. Here's Heathen, for our lunch-nap dining displeasure.
You know the airplane scene in Hackers where Orbital's Halcyon + On + On starts playing as he looks out over the clouds. Yeah, it could just as easily have been Sunday. Cactus sounds like a leftover Blur song. Oooh, that haunting 40s nostalgia of Slip Away is just gorgeous.
I won't spoil the rest of the joy of hearing them for yourself. Well, other than to say it's a split personality album like all the rest. America vs Europe, reminiscence vs foreboding unease, everything is the same and everything is different, i lived it all before but knowing that doesn't change the experience of living it again, and more. It's a very full and complex piece of art, coincidentally published at a time when the whole world was ready to hear it (maybe misunderstand it slightly; it's about Bowie, not the world). An album for an America that didn't exist yet, but inevitably would. Zeitgeist.
22 - Reality
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