David Bowie – 1. Outside (The Nathan Adler Diaries: A Hyper Cycle)

Can anyone tell me the difference between 1-12 and 2-11? The "album version" of I Am With Name doesn't seem any different from, er, the version on the album - the mix name makes things even more confusing (which album if not this one?).

Snag also the contemporaneously reissued The Buddha of Suburbia soundtrack for its original, superior rendition of "Strangers When We Meet", which oozes a ion-anxiety-exultation energy that the Outside version lacks.

Great pressing! Mine is super quiet, sound is dynamic and open. The bass slams. Sleeve is OK, art looks nice but the sleeve itself isn't heavy duty or anything. And you'll want some new inner sleeves. I'm very happy with this copy.

Purchased this new in 1995 - my copy came with lyric insert, the 'diary' booklet but also 5 x Art Postcards not mentioned in these listings? Anyone else have these?

On look out for Leon Suites after ; un or official .
Not so much out takes ; cohesive .

maybe it sounds great, I don't know, but it bought itbrand new, but ticks, clicks all over the album, okki nokki washing doesn't help. so be carefull to pay a lot for it ..

One of the least approachable, but most interesting, of later Bowie output. Production by Eno really makes this into a t release, in my opinion. Eno tends to have such a strong influence that it practically makes his productions duets -- Eno as co-creator.
In my opinion, the clearest way to understand this collection of somewhat hodge-podge tunes is to see it as a concept album.
Concept albums probably had their heyday decades ago, so they are hard to evaluate in the current era, but this has all the characteristics. And I believe the artists did contemporaneously describe Outside as such.
The occasional narrated interludes conspire to almost ruin the album. But those kinds of incongruous vignettes are not unexpected for a concept album. Is that a feature or a bug? The interludes presumably act as a glue to hold together the over-arching concept, serving as segues that together disparate musical sentiments whether they want to transition into each other or not. I think these buffering separators, or "diaries" perhaps, help obscure the fact that the narrative of the concept is not really continuous. In other words, if all the songs were put together, they would seem (perhaps typically for Bowie) disted in theme or tone. Put a real zinger of a narrative interlude (Bowie with an effect that transforms him into a kidnapped little girl) in between the songs, and one nearly forgets that the songs before and after don't dovetail together nicely.
Gabrels's guitar is characteristically non-melodic. This adds another dimension of intangibility. The drums are occasionally scalding rhythmically. The piano appears out of nowhere from time to time with virtuoso runs. The lyrics are generally typical late-career Bowie, where it seems most of the words are pulled randomly from a hat, maybe chosen for their sound only. And another feature not atypical of concept albums is a hit tune shoehorned in. The "hit" on the last track does not exactly light my fire, but I wouldn't want to pick out a favorite track out of the remainders because there are several that are really good. Here is the big hit, which you'd hope would be most lyrically intelligible (forgive me if I deviate from what is the accepted lyrics. This is what I hear):
You (repeats 6x)
[I've got] my friends
Now seem so fun 'n frail
Slinky secrets
Hotter than the sun
No peachy prayers
No trendy rechauffé
I'm with you
So I can't go on
All my violence
Raining tears upon the sheets
I'm bewildered
For we're strangers when we meet
Blank screen TV
Preening ourselves in the snow

I could go on...
I think the lyric "Heel head over" could strictly be called poor songwriting.

Though none of the pieces fit together cleanly, they all belong with each other sort of. If this really is a concept album, it's not far off from the worst abuses of the concept albums of decades ago, where the "concept" becomes an excuse to throw together a bunch of disparate pieces, and to try to them off as segments that make up a whole. One gets the sense here of Bowie embracing chaos. A deliberate lack of oeuvre. That can happen when an artist makes a contractual obligation album -- the twin of the concept album.
This is "a hyper cycle" after all, which has got to be at least a small evolution from a concept album. The extended subtitle in the front of the booklet defines this as "A non-linear Gothic Drama Hyper-cycle," which is the worst kind of hyper cycle. (As is not unusual for discogs) there are a lot of head-scratcher styles listed for Outside. Though "Gothic" in the subtitle is apparently used in another sense here, in my opinion, if you could objectively strip this album's songs out of their context, and play them for a visiting alien, I think they'd call this stuff Goth, or at least in the neighborhood.

My Copy is MM still in shrink #23/500 never played. Have a different release for playing. Brilliant concept, brilliant album. I love it

When I saw the previous vinyl edition with such a cumbersome trifold cover (I *HATE* trifold covers for double/triple albums, as they are not practical at all, horrible to handle), I decided to , even though "Outside" has been my favorite Bowie album since it came out back in the 1990s. I still have my old CD. I thought: if they want to include the original artwork, why not a large pocket with two inners, maybe printed, plus a big book with those lyrics and photos? Then... my prayers have been answered! This is it!
I love the large single pocket with the big book inside and the two inners.
The records sound superb! But do clean them before you play them the first time. They come dirty from the factory. And add some polyethylene inners for the records. Those glossy paper inners gather static.

I kind of wish that, instead of the Brilliant Adventures box set, they had made a five-record box set for Outside alone, including this + a record with the single B-sides ("Get Real", "Nothing to be desired", some of those remixes) + finally releasing "The Leon Suites" officially. That would be a dream! I think the releases from the "Outside" period were Bowie's best of his whole career! It's such a shame that era was not very successful. To this day, I think a musical movie with Nathan Adler's story would have been awesome, albeit most likely very controversial. (Some say the movie "Seven" is not far from this idea, but, apart from including one of this album's tracks and being a very dark story, I'd same it's much "tamer" than Nathan Adler's Diary.)

If you want this album in vinyl format: I strongly recommend this edition.

If you like CDs, there is a single-disc jewel-case version with the complete original 24-page *readable* booklet that includes "Get Real" as a bonus track, which is currently my favorite version, although I still keep my old original mediabook-like edition.

A sturdy mediabook with a triple CD, including the album + B-sides + Leon Suites would be a *dream*, but I seriously doubt such a thing will ever come out, unfortunately.

What are the chances?

I just found a still sealed copy at a local store for $200.

First record sounded fantastic. Put on the second record and all of a sudden I had a case of deja vu!

Why? I got two Record 1’s.

It’s now five years out of print and there’s nothing that can be done. Goodness gracious - so much for hunting for a grail.