A year ago today we woke up to the news that David Bowie had died. After that, the whole year went to shit.
Station To Station is my number one Bowie album, one I've been listening to since a very cold winter in a student house in Childwall, Liverpool in 1989. The album is only six songs long, marking a transition from the Bowie of the USA to the Bowie of Europe, from Young Americans to Low. The influence of West German bands, mechanical rhythms, detachment, the flight to Berlin, the after-effects of years of cocaine use, a Bowie who needed change and to be saved are evident. All this and more- and plenty of things that even now I haven't got under the skin of.
Station To Station
And just after the The Last Five Years documentary finished on Saturday night a new e.p. was released online, the last recordings including this sax and vocals dominated piece No Plan.
Oh look, Newton Electricals...
Forty years on and Station To Station remains absolutely stunning.
ReplyDeleteI bought 'Station to Station' in the week of release - can it really be 41 years ago? Terrifying. 'No Plan' is fantastic.
ReplyDeleteStation To Station is, in my mind, David Bowie's highest artistic achievement. It's an album who's story surrounding its development is as important as the music itself. For me, Bowie tapped into a new artistic vein and allowed the music held within to flow. It was the album that closed the door to one period of his work and opened another to the next. Station To Station is adventurous, darkly inward, chemically influenced, magically brilliant. It's an album that I've always thought shook even it's author to the bones and led him to seek out a new musical path.
ReplyDeleteYep, Station to Station. Thanks for putting up that video clip.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite too. Then, 'Low'.
ReplyDeleteIsn't 'No Plan' wonderful?
Low too for me after StoS I think.
ReplyDeleteSwiss Adam