BLISS PRO FONT MOD
But these seasoned pros often fail the material, losing the ramshackle charm of the originals-turning the Swinging London, proto-reggae sound of “I Dig Everything” into a preening rocker, or smoothing out the rough edges of sexed-up, pill-popping mod tracks like “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving” and “Baby Loves That Way.” In many cases, the original versions sound more avant-garde than the remakes, despite Bowie’s intervening decades in the art-rock trenches. Bowie and his band gel well: “It’s the sound of people happy to be playing music,” as co-producer Mark Plati puts it. Songs from the sessions dribbled out as B-sides, digital exclusives, and, in 2011, a full-fledged leak Brilliant Adventure-and the forthcoming set Toy:Box-is the first time this material has been officially made available as a complete album. Rather than fixate on the cancellation, Bowie moved on to brand-new work, and Toy was relegated to the stuff of fan legend. The album was subsequently lost in the scheduling shuffle by Bowie’s then-label EMI/Virgin, before being shelved altogether. It speaks to both Bowie’s restlessness as an artist and willingness to risk embarrassment in service of that restlessness that he’d revisit his juvenilia at all, much less make a whole record out of the project. One of Bowie’s proverbial lost albums, Toy was originally recorded in 2000 with members of his touring band playing fast and loose new versions of some of Bowie’s earliest songs, mostly predating his post-“Space Oddity” stardom.
The centerpiece of the 18xLP box set, and its selling point, is Toy. With each album it collects taking a bold left turn from the sound of its immediate predecessor, Brilliant Adventure makes an inarguable case for the former viewpoint: This Bowie took a lot of risks-and those risks largely paid off.
By contrast, the ’90s continue to be a live issue, dividing fans as to whether Bowie was doing vital new work by engaging with prevailing trends or simply cosigning them in hopes their success would rub off. Consensus prevails for the earlier decades: The 1970s were brilliant, the ’80s initially brilliant, then naff.
BLISS PRO FONT SERIES
Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001), the latest edition of David Bowie’s ongoing series of box sets spanning each era of his career, is a defining document for fans of a certain stripe.
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