David Bowie – Hours...

Whilst I, like many others, heard Bowie's work before The Nomad Soul, it was that game that piqued my interest as prior to that Bowie's work wasn't all that important in my collection.

But then 1999 and playing the demo (PC original version), the main credits start to roll and the correct version of New Angels of Promise starts to play. Note what I said there: the correct version as even the second CD just contains a duplicate version of the edit from the original release with the lyrics "suspicious minds" instead of "Omikron", along with a difference in speed and length. From what I can gather, no release after this ever corrected this error. Of course, the game version is available in-game and accompanying a trailer for the game with the full theme (and Windows "ding!" error just about audible roughly half way through), as well as out there on the interwebs.

With that elephant in the room (at least for me) dealt with, let's look at the rest of the album. The first three songs from the original release presented on the first CD (Thursday's Child, Something In The Air, and Survive) offer Bowie's style of stories where he channels an introspective mix of sadness; hope; and realisation of the character/hero, all are good but compared to the opener, Something In The Air pulls me more on intensity of the music and Bowie's performance and Survive is the better soulful piece with a more interesting melody than Thursday's Child offers. -- The second CD presents two versions of Thursday's Child, the rock mix and the Omikron version. The rock mix is interesting but Bowie's otherwise excellent vocals are misplaced here and could have done with rerecording back in the day, whereas the Omikron version is virtually identical save for the extra few seconds. Whereas the American Psycho remix of Something In The Air is interesting with the changed intro, additional backing vocals, and piano along with other little tweaks makes it an interesting and worthy addition (although I do prefer the original cut). What is arguably the best of the three originally, Survive fares the worst here with the Marius De Vries mix and adds nothing of value and takes away from the effectiveness of the original.

If I'm Dreaming My Life brings us rock and soulful or it at least tries to, but the song doesn't seem to know what it really wants to be and to my mind it is the kind of song that you either think is a work of genius or not and I'm of the latter mind in this. Seven is a return to form with lovely acoustic guitars, Bowie's warmth quality, and a coherent story that overall touches upon being country blues. Not a bad thing at all. -- Seven is represented with four entries: the demo version which is very welcome; a not unlistenable Marius De Vries mix; and two Beck mixes that feel as though you're trying to get a good reception on the radio.

Moving on back into rock territory, What's Really Happening? has interesting lyrics but it also manages to be somewhat bland wallpaper pop music. It could be on in the background in a shop and you wouldn't necessarily notice, however it does gain points back if you're looking for a mellow song to relax to at home with the headphones on. On that basis, it's hard to knock What's Really Happening? so take it for what it is.

Completely the opposite tonally speaking, The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell goes towards hard rock and is one of the "play it loud or go home" songs. Depending on your persuasion, you may find yourself doing air guitar to this one and/or bouncing about the room. -- The second CD has three versions: the (radio presumably) edit; Stigmata film version that is little changed from the original cut; and the Stigmata film only version that has the repetitve house/trance nonsense drumbeats front and centre, which just ruins the song but no doubt made sense only to those of a teenager mindset that thinks repetitive drumbeat sequences should be in everything.

Whilst I've already spoken about New Angels of Promise and the not actually the Omikron version that appears on the second CD, I will only add that I feel it is the most unique song on the entire album and presents we listeners with Bowie's experimental side. As I'm entirely biased, this is my favourite of them all.

Brilliant Adventure is an Far East/of the Orient/Oriental sounding ambient instrumental that is remarkably not brilliant and nor is it an adventure, which makes it not a wonder that it didn't make the cut as incidental music and it would not have been missed if it hadn't have been included. Thematically, it has a tenuous link with the final song of the original CD release: The Dreamers which is so named because of the in-game version of Bowie, Reeves Gabrels, and Gail Ann Dorsey being presented as the illegal band The Dreamers within the world of Omikron. The Dreamers as a song is nice enough to listen to, but not one that is necessarily worth a relisten. -- The Dreamers (Omikron longer version) is only longer due to the added windchimes before and after the song, otherwise it's the same.

To cover the remaining songs from the second CD: 1917 is a mish-mash of rejigged versions of instrumental music composed for The Nomad Soul that is curious perhaps, but skippable. We Shall Go To Town and No One Calls feel out of place, both are very melachonly songs that have no little life to them at all when compared and contrasted to the rest of the album. Of course, the stand out is We All Go Through AKA what was used for the ending credits for The Nomad Soul and should - in my opinion - have been on the original release (it was on the Japanese release as a bonus track). Back in the day I was annoyed about that and the incorrect version of New Angels of Promise on the original release, but when 2004 came along and this 2CD release came out? Whilst I was doubly annoyed with the aforementioned bungling of New Angels of Promise, I was very happy that I could have We All Go Through on CD at long last.