David Bowie - Reality (LP)
- LP
- 1 piece(s)
- 2003
- 14 tracks
- 59 min
- glam rock
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4.0
Average of 19 reviews
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As of November 8, 2018, this item can be found at Barnes & Noble for the price of $29.99.
Absolutely loving the tracks from the album, especially "Bring Me The DIsco King" and "Days" – they sound fantastic! The vocals, keyboard, and piano are crystal clear, with a powerful bass and fantastic drums. The artwork is stunning, and the colored vinyl is a nice touch. I'm really pleased with my purchase. By the way, I received my copy today, and the sleeve and shrink wrap are in perfect condition. I took off the shrink wrap, carefully removed the record, put the shrink wrap back on, and then packaged it in a thin cellophane outer sleeve. It's much better than regular plastic sleeves. You can even put the record back between the folded sleeves without having to open it again.
Unopened, brand-spanking-new Indonesian Sony Music edition. The cassette works perfectly and sounds great, but it's a tad slower than the original recording — the songs are a bit more laid-back, and Bowie's voice is ever so slightly deeper. Probably down to local production quirks or tape tension. It's still an official pressing and a cool collectible, even if the playback speed's not quite like the European ones.
Alright, let me give you a heads-up: I'm probably the worst person to take Bowie advice from. I'm a massive Bowie fan; I saw him live and lost it as soon as he started singing. Not that I think everything Bowie does is brilliant, some of it's actually pretty terrible. But Tin Machine aside - let's just say I love the albums that no one else seems to until 20 years later, when they suddenly realize that yes, once again, Dave was way ahead, humming his cleverly disguised trailblazer tunes to a world full of tone-deaf mutants. Also, unlike way too many music experts and other pretentious types, I think Bowie's last 15 years of work have been his best, with a couple of pre-Let's Dance albums aside. So I finally went and bought 'Reality'. Let me put it this way: picture the world's best DJ playing 8 different records at once, perfectly mixing them into one album, then cutting it into tracks and remixing; and then Bowie provides all the vocals. Got it? No? Okay. Imagine tuning into a radio on a parallel Earth. You sort of recognize all the songs you hear, but you also know you've never heard them before; plus, the pitch control at the station seems to be broken, as none of the songs follow a strictly 'correct' harmonic pattern, but they still all make perfect pop sense. See, Bowie gets the value of grit and distortion, and here's what he does: he doesn't get influenced by musicians like the rest of us; being a true pop genius (and - unlike all those instrument-bashing, pimple-faced idiots who make up 99% of any music scene these days - a MUSICIAN), he understands what his favorite artists do, and simply absorbs them. Resistance is futile, the Bowrg is here. THEN, he processes them, and out the other end they come, fully Bowieized, to be incorporated into his own material according to his sensibilities. He is the most convincing form of musical parasite that ever existed, a human sampler, a walking musical collage, and everyone from Your Favorite Crooner through Tricky & Co., Bird, Sting, the Beatles and Angelo Badalamenti to Sonic Youth, Bowie himself and Bowie-only-knows who else, is effortlessly featured in this album - reflected through his internal hall of mirrors. That's the first stage. Then, I would imagine, he writes and arranges 20-30 straight pop tunes, cuts them up into pieces like he says he does with his lyrics, throws everything into a cylinder-hat, spins it on a table and pastes them back together pretty much randomly. Having done the basic work, he cleans up the residue and visible seams, plays around with whatever it is he has there, and distorts some of the resulting harmonies so as to not be too confident with the end result. Now that the structure is clear, he'll insert the lyrics into his musical hybrids and bring it to his (phenomenal) band and producer to play with, and when everyone's had their fun and the song is recorded, he'll just create some more internal soundscapes, noise layers and time-machine substructures you can barely notice and plant them in there, carefully layered in order to disorient you just a bit without any real damage to your brain. Yup. So, this is Reality. Seeya.
In my opinion, this could very well be the finest vinyl record in my collection. While I typically consider Reality to be David Bowie's most middle-of-the-road album, this particular pressing is truly exceptional. As I'm typing this, I've just completed listening to Never Get Old. Some standout features are the audible sound improvement over CDs and streaming, the absolutely stunning vinyl itself, and the tri-fold jacket (though, it's worth noting that the jacket is quite large). This pressing does an incredible job of bringing Reality to life.
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