DAVID BOWIE Buddha Of Suburbia Arista. Not exactly the soundtrack of the current BBC drama, but more of an extrapolation based upon the ideas therein.

.....And if that sounds like a poncy sentence, you should read Bowie´s own hugely entertaining and mockacademic discourse on contemporary pop culture in the booklet accompanying this surprisingly excellent record.

.....Apperantely written and recorded in six days, this is Bowie at his most liberated and wierd. Aside from the majestic title song (unnecessarily duplicated here with a guest apperance by Lenny Kravitz) and the superb "Dead Against It" and "Untitled No.1" - which recall his late '70s heyday - there's all kinds of semi-instrumental fun. "Sex And The Church" is mad and funny, "South Horizon" is a kind of corrupted modern jazz and "Ian Fish, U.K. Heir" has an opaque, ambient atmosphere. If Dave carries on like this he's in grave danger of becomming cool again. (4/5)

There'll be the odd debate about whether this is a kosher David Bowie album. As the soundtrack to Hanif Kureishi's BBC2 series (shown throughout November), it's not exactly the full-scale follow-up to Black Tie White Noise. But it's full of David Bowie songs, which Pin-Ups wasn't for a start, and it's got fewer instrumentals than Low, so it looks like we might be in business.

.....David Bowie and collaborator Erdal Kizilcay-who was on the Sound + Vision tour-have composed eight wildly different pieces here (the title track re-appears twice, once retitled Strangers When We Meet, and again in a rock mix at the end to round the tally up to a reasonable hour or so). Whack them all together and they add up to an intriguing little album. The moods vary from suburban malaise- which, you may be delighted to know, he writes about uncannily like Damon Albarn of Blur-through druggy tranquillity to outright spookiness.

.....The title track is a swishy ballad set in South London amid teenage dreams, frustration and quotes from Space Oddity and All The Madmen; it's very evocative of the '70s, and very aware of being a David Bowie song. A kind of historical double-bluff, it's probably his best song since Loving The Alien. Sex And The Church is its polar opposite: a moody little shuffle with deadpan electronic vocal tricks a la Kraftwerk's Pocket Calculator.

.....Of the three instrumentals, The Mysteries is semi-pastoral English space music, like Erik Satie meets The Orb, while Ian Fish UK Heir really unsettles: a muted, haunting, Harold Budd-like drone with crackling static all over it. It sounds like a secular incantation on pre-war vinyl. David Bowie lightweights won't want to go anywhere near it.

.....Back in the vocal zone, Bleed Like A Craze, Dad (ooh dear) is funked-up like Let's Dance, with David Bowie spouting what could be the clues to that day's Guardian crossword over the top. Over in electropop land, Dead Against It is a breezy early '80s thing, while Untitled Number 1 suggests a speeded-up Warszawa cross-fertilised with Brian Eno's No One Receiving, proving the Berliner side of David Bowie's brain has yet to be fully lobotomised.

.....All this and the vocal style that inspired Brett Anderson. If the key is ambience, then it's an ambience of danger and tension. For the purposes of Hanif Kureishi's series, David Bowie's music walks a knife-edge once again.
Q Rating: ****