#the people handling david bowie's legacy are doing it way better

[wp100]

mj estate remaster more videos challenge (impossible)

[firefield]

DAVID BOWIE - Earthling (1997) from the 2021 Brilliant Adventure box set

Each and every one of the four box sets that came before this one, I blew through pretty quickly. A weekend usually. All of them excellent and filled with sonic revelations. This one is different and like working through the tastiest molasses you’ve ever had. I keep relistening and soaking them all in and marveling at the incredible mastering work involved. Tonight I finally make it to Earthing, and based on what I’ve heard so far (BTWN, TBOS, Outside) I’ve absolutely revamped my expectations. In fact, I wasn’t even entirely sure Earthing would even get a remaster, it’s so well recorded and clean, it wouldn’t have surprised me if the box just reissued it. Now, hell yes they better remaster it. Frankly I want to see what John Webber can do with anything they give him from here on out.

From the first note, the way that bass sounds, you know you are in for it. This remaster is just madness. Particularly the treatment on Reeves Gabrels riveting guitar parts. I literally feel like I know him better as a guitarist and an artist after closely listening to this new edition. Holy shit. Madness I tell you.

All that joy you can feel in Webber’s punchy, kinetic, sunlight approach to BTWN is here. All that sense of texture and harmonics and fabric of TBOS is here too. And all that clinical, precise space and detail carved into Outside is here too. I keep thinking of kaleidoscopes when I hear Webber’s work and that fits once again with Earthing. Shimmering and elegant. Just perfection. This man should be up for a Grammy for this audio engineering. It’s absolutely outstanding.

Unlike the already great sounding 2013 MOV vinyl edition of Earthing, this one is spread out over 3 sides (with a cool etched 4th side) in order to better handle increased dynamic range and amplitude, therefore lowering the noise floor that all vinyl has. Running this thing through a warm tube amp is just perfection.

No other release has packed my email box like this set. Audiophile friends, musician friends, studio friends… all of us talking back and forth about what this guy is doing to make these simple stereo mixdowns sound practically like remixes instead of remasters. A friend of mine nailed it a few days ago with this: Webber is treating each and every single sound as important to the whole. Absolutely every instance of sound is being considered carefully. Elevated, heard, and recognized as a critical part of completing the puzzle. Nothing is buried unless it should be. It’s all beautifully delineated for your ear holes, and it’s disarming and feels very new and completely fresh and alive.

Whatever your preferred music delivery method; vinyl, CD or streaming, get your hands on these editions if you care about this music. The attention paid is equal to the greatness of the artist and it saddens me every time I listen that DB will never hear these. He’d be bouncing off the walls with joy.

At this point is his career, DB is already a legacy artist. His work is sectioned off, "period"-ized, written about in books, and fans and critics draw their lines and boxes and compare, rank, assess and argue. It's always struck me as a weird thing humans do, and musicians seem more subject to these habits then painters/writers/sculptors/photographers - where we seem more open to accepting their work as part of a continuum, a life lived and reflected upon, less prone to top ten lists and black/white arguments of what goes in the shit box and what goes in the brilliant box. Trying not to be cynical, you could look at this as evidence of the impact of music as an art form above other art forms in its ability to shape and directly impact our lives at a greater level than a statue, a photograph, a painting can, with its ability to time stamp and imprint our surroundings on us, and it's ability to mirror back to us ourselves in all our messy glory. Other art forms do this of course, but for many people music as art is akin to mainlining. It hits hard and fast and it's effects are unmistakable.

A work like Earthing is absolutely guaranteed to divide people, or at least make old fans challenge themselves to hear and relate to new musical forms from an artist they love - which is easier for some than others. I love the record - Bowie's music rises and falls on the strength of the songwriting in my opinion, largely because his performances and talents are so well honed - and on that front the record succeeds. It's an interesting record for me in that I literally watched this music create a big Bowie fan in my little brother, 12 years my junior, who grew up hearing me blast Bowie and didn't give a shit. A huge industrial and NIN fan in his early teens, Earthing and their tour together put Bowie on his radar, and his perspective was not one of DB co-opting a modern sound and mimicking it, but he felt the record was leading and driving the genre itself - a very different perspective from criticism at that time. I specifically remember him asking me where to go with Bowie from there, and I gave him copies of Scary Monsters and Heroes and that sealed the deal.

I know it's difficult for some to accept sampling/processing/computers/machinery in their music, but I hope with DB's passing Earthing gets a relook from people who slagged it off at the time. He was on fire, the band is tight as hell, the songwriting is heavy - and if you listen close, it's less "electronic" than you remember. It's packed with incredible live drumming, alien guitar work, saxophones and one incredible and very acoustic voice above the din with a lot to say about the world.