And so the time had come once more for another David Bowie box. For the fifth time the David Bowie Archive had collected his recordings from a certain era of his career – {1992-2001} in this case. The set with the ghastly amateurish self portrait was duly bought, and over the following year or so I listened to it, examined and enjoyed the book, the side projects, the extra discs… compared and reacquainted myself with some tracks, and put together playlists with different themes for outside listening. You all know the music, but what about the box and its content? So what have we got? Is it any good? And what went wrong this time?

In the accompanying book the writing and recording process of the main albums – BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE, BUDDAH OF SUBURBIA, OUTSIDE, EARTHLING and HOURS – is explained at length in essays by the respective producers, and this is fascinating reading. It was new to me that Bowie didn’t »write« a single song in these ten years: he merely commissioned loops, rhythms and chord progressions from his musical directors (mainly Reeves Gabrels and Mark Plati, with Nile Rodgers in 1992/1993), which he then chopped up, » Continue Reading.