Music

Everyone has a favourite Bowie, whether it’s the innovative alien of ‘Low’, the homme fatale of ‘Hunky Dory’ or the endearing amateur of his podcasts. Despite the fact he was doing cultural chameleonics before Madonna was even hatched, few people, will admit to a preference for the ‘Laughing Gnome’ years or the ever-maligned Tin Machine. And so this box set is destined to be seen as the underweight twin to ‘Sound & Vision’, packing together as it does the dame’s last five studio albums, from ‘Outside’ to ‘Reality’.  It’s a great way for the lapsed completist to get hold of all Bowie’s latter albums. There is a vast wealth of unreleased material to nerd out over, although a disproportionate amount of it seems to be Trent Reznor remixes.

Of course, if you genuinely like Bowie because he’s controversial, experimental and out-there, these should probably be your favourite of his records. Even the most revisionist of Bowie fans admit that 2002’s ‘Heathen’ was a return to form, albeit a pretty depressing one. But this era also takes in Bowie’s flirtations with industrial music and, of course, his drum ’n’ bass ‘hit’, ‘Little Wonder’. Taken out of chronological context, it stands up better than you might expect.