'"Heroes"' by David Bowie

An interesting way to start. This appears first on my mp3 player, as the ordering system presumeably struggles with the speech marks in the title. A good one to begin with though, as I've never quite got to grips with it.

I can't quite remember how I got hold of this album, but it was certainly at the point where I was plugging the few remaining gaps in my Bowie collection. I've certainly listened to it a few times, but I've never given it much attention 'til now.

It was never going to be a conventional record. Recorded in Berlin as a follow-up to Low, Bowie was in the middle of a very expermental phase of his career, but there's no easy beginning here. 'Beauty and the Beast' is a relentless one-chord wall of noise, with backing vocals apparently contributed from a sackful of cats. The record company must have loved putting it out as a single - even now, it's surely one of his most ambitious attempts to break the charts. There's no let up after it either - 'Joe The Lion', and 'Blackout' both sound like each instrument is playing a different song to everyone else, while Bowie appears to be making up his melodies on the spot. It's surprising, then, that 'Heroes' itself manages to be so good - at track 3, it's the first point at which every contributor realise they should be working together. Bowie's vocal, part crooning and part wail-of-despair, is surely one of the best he ever did. 'Sons Of The Silent Age' is the only other vaguely normal song on the album, though quite what it's about is anyone's guess.

As with Low, half of the album is instrumental. The first such track - 'V-2 Schneider' is surprisingly well structured, with a discernable bass-line, and a repeating saxophone motif. The others are far more abstract, though all very atmospheric in differing ways. The album finishes with 'The Secret Life of Arabia', which sounds like a left-over from the first half, and is an odd way to finish, being neither a fitting end to the instrumental section, or a particularly good song in it's own right. All of which may very well have been deliberate.