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  1. 1001 Other Albums @[email protected] ·

    Our next spotlight in our new “Thursday, What A Concept” series is on number 21 on The List, submitted by @dan.

    Similar to Bowie’s Outside album (as noted in the previous TWAC post), Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid is but one of an ambitiously planned yet unfinished cycle of concept albums. Unlike with Bowie’s cycle, however, we have thankfully been gifted more than one part for Monáe’s cycle – five of seven to date, in fact, plus some change.

    While Monáe’s 2007 debut EP, Metropolis: The Chase Suite, is considered the official beginning of the cycle, its roots can be found in Monáe’s 2003 demo album, The Audition (also called Metropolis: Point Zero), via two tracks. The setting – inspired by the silent film of the same name – as well as the general storyline and themes/concepts that are found in the releases that follow, are set out in “Metropolis”:

    Population, ten zillion and six
    Where signs say, “Welcome to the Star Core Metropolis”
    Me, I live on the wired side of town
    Reaching and searching for a space called paradise found…

    And it’s a common thought
    That wired folk can be sold and bought
    That we have no feelings, no memories or minds
    That we’re bionic strumpets, only worth a dime
    To some it’s a surprise when I smile
    And when I hold your hand
    They say, “How can a wired thing understand?
    Love is too deep, it’s too wide to feel
    When your soul is a button and your foot glows in heels”…

    Hey, Anthony Greendown from Sector Nine…
    The love when I hold your hand
    I wanna take you
    Take you with me to another land

    In the next track, “Cindi”, Monáe briefly introduces Cindi as their alter ago, who we will then follow in the Metropolis cycle: a time-travelling android named Cindi Mayweather, who is sentenced to disassembly because she fell in love with a human (the Anthony Greendown mentioned above). In running from the bounty hunters and seeming to die and being reincarnated at least once, Cindi transforms into something of a messianic figure for other oppressed androids, known as the ArchAndroid.

    Following the brief 17-minute Metropolis: The Chase Suite (suite I of the cycle), The ArchAndroid (suites II and III of the cycle) has over a hour of room to really get into the story, which is then continued in the 2013 The Electric Lady (suites IV and V), also over an hour long. So, with that much material, it’s unsurprising that a lot could be said about the concept behind The ArchAndroid and its companion albums. The cycle is an absolutely brilliant, multi-layered piece of Afrofuturistic sci-fi that asks for (and deserves) repeated listening sessions. And, in fact, as quickly found in doing a brief search, many blog posts, articles, and at least a few academic papers have been devoted to the Metropolis/Cindi Mayweather cycle; The ArchAndroid in particular has a 33 1/3 volume published on it, and, as heard via discussion on Mastodon, has even been included in the curriculum for at least one course on contemporary Black literature. So, if you want to dig into the storyline more, there’s a lot out there to peruse.

    As for the music? Even if you weren’t paying attention to the lyrics and story at all, this album takes you places. The breadth of styles/genres covered in The ArchAndroid (and the others in the cycle) – and, obviously, Monáe’s talent – is simply staggering. Monáe also uses a performance device that I really love in the work of other musical experimenters such as Bowie (and, to a lesser extent, Prince), that of using multiple distinct singing voices, either to indicate a different character or simply to match the style of the song – e.g., compare the dreamy classic musical/cinematic-type voice in “Sir Greendown” and “BaBopBye Ya” vs. what might be considered Monáe’s more “normal” voice in “Cold War” vs. the robotic/computery voice in “Wondaland” vs. the ethereal/folk tones in “57821” (The Chase Suite EP also has some operatic stuff going on in the glorious but short “Cybertronic Purgatory”). There are some fun cameos as well, including Saul Williams and Big Boi (of Outkast).

    So, musically, you can’t go wrong with just listening to The ArchAndroid, but my suggestion would be to start from the beginning and listen to everything we have so far of the cycle. At least make sure you also get to what is currently the last entry in the cycle, The Electric Lady, both to hear the Prince cameo and the really fun radio interludes (…not to mention appearances by Erykah Badu, and Solange, et al.). It’s been over 10 years since The Electric Lady, but there’s still hope we’ll get the final instalments of this great cycle.

    The ArchAndroid – what a concept!

    https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/06/27/thursday-what-a-concept-janelle-monae-the-archandroid-2010-us/

    #1001OtherAlbums #2010s #BigBoi #conceptAlbum #funk #JanelleMonáe #neosoul #psychedelic #SaulWilliams #ThursdayWhatAConcept

    #1001otheralbums #2010s #bigboi #conceptalbum #funk #janellemonae
  2. 1001 Other Albums @[email protected] ·

    Thursday, What A Concept! | David Bowie – The Leon Suites (1994, UK)

    Next up in our series spotlighting rock operas or other concept albums from The List is number 423, submitted by yours truly.

    With the first album in our “Thursday, What A Concept” series being Nine Inch Nail’s The Downward Spiral, David Bowie’s so-called “Leon Suites” is basically the logical next choice…if you’ve ever heard of it, that is. While not an official release, “Leon Suites” represents what is left of the “improvised opera” titled Leon, an absolutely batshit collaboration with Brian Eno – Bowie is always at his most interesting when he gives in to his experimental side, and you can’t get more experimental than this. Recorded in 1994, Leon was reworked to become Bowie’s 1995 concept album, 1. Outside; it was between these original 1994 recordings and the release of Outside when the NIN/Bowie co-headlining “Dissonance” tour started, which was part of the NIN touring cycle for Downward Spiral.

    For those who are interested in all the details behind Leon/”Leon Suites”/1. Outside, I highly recommend reading Chris O’Leary’s work, either via his fantastic Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog (links to relevant entries at bottom of this post) or the collected/edited versions in his second Bowie volume, Ashes to Ashes: The Songs of David Bowie, 1976-2016. There are a few versions of the story floating out there; here I provide just a summary, based on O’Leary’s book.

    The road to Leon began when Bowie and Eno reconnected at Bowie and Iman’s wedding in 1992. Setting out to make an album that wasn’t just an addendum to their Berlin trilogy, the pair wanted to create some sort of incomplete and interactive work where the listener ultimately had to figure out (or make up) the story. The writing/recording process began in March 1994 and was highly improvisational, relying heavily on role playing, Eno’s directions (including secret character sheets for all musicians and engineers), and Bowie’s vague sketch of a Twin Peaks-inspired narrative that involved a murder mystery, the art world, the Internet, and a handful of characters including Leon Blank, who was (either from the start or, in the process of Leon being reincarnated into Outside, became) an homage of sorts to both Tricky* and Jean-Michael Basquiat. The band jammed for weeks with the tape rolling, Eno ensuring the jam didn’t stray into the conventional or coherent. Bits of the resulting 25 to 35 hours of recordings were then further developed over the next few months, and everything was edited down to end up with a 3-hour long album called Leon…which no label wanted to distribute.

    The “Leon Suites”, then, is the result of someone getting a hold of that 3-hour piece and editing it down further, to 3 tracks that are each over 20 minutes. Though both Eno and Reeves Gabrels (guitarist on the recordings) wanted Bowie to ignore the disinterest in Leon and still release it in some form – even if as a quasi-bootleg release without his name on it – Bowie stopped shopping Leon around at some point in 1994/5. It’s possible that the bootlegged “Suites” made Bowie lose interest in pushing Leon in its original form; however, since the bootlegs didn’t leak until 2003, perhaps they had no bearing on Bowie’s decision to rework Leon (Bowie was known, after all, to start huge brilliant projects, only to completely abandon them and move on). Whatever the case may have been, at the end of 1994, Bowie’s assignment to keep a diary for 10 days for the 100th issue of Q magazine kickstarted the rewriting/fleshing out of the Leon storyline and then reincarnation of the work into the more commercial 1. Outside (this diary then became the liner notes of Outside). In fact, Bowie expanded the storyline to the point that Outside was meant to be the first in a series of 5 albums totalling 8 hours of material that would (or, maybe, would not) complete the story he had roughly sketched out for Leon. As the other 4 albums never happened, and as only snippets of the “Suites” exist in Outside, one can’t help but wonder whether more/the rest of the “Suites” would’ve popped up in those albums, or if they would’ve largely been new post-“Suites”/Leon material. At any rate, without Leon we wouldn’t have Outside, and, without Outside, who knows what other gems we would never have been gifted – there probably wouldn’t have been the NIN Dissonance tour, and then probably no Earthling, probably no Mike Garson on NIN’s The Fragile…who knows.

    So, my recommendation? Set aside time to listen to both the “Leon Suites” and Outside, ensuring you can listen to each one in a single sitting, both in one go if you have the capacity. While you can read about what parts from “Suites” did or didn’t make it into Outside, it’s a lot more fun to do a close listen of both and figure that out for yourself. The key is to consider the “Leon Suites” and Outside as companion albums, not thinking of the “Suites” as Outside demos or outtakes (as they’re sometimes labelled) or Outside as a polished version of the “Suites”. Listening to “Suites” is more like finding only 3 issues of an out-of-print highly conceptual comic book series that later inspired a brilliant TV series (…that was then inexplicably cancelled after the first season); so, if you’re the type of nerd who loves finding all the connections and easter eggs, a double bill is best. At the very least, if you have a spare hour and want to listen to Bowie yell out a whole bunch of random words and phrases in a bunch of ridiculous accents (and/or at least want to hear him predict in 1994 that “someday, the internet may become an information super-highway”) over top of Garson’s absolutely brilliant piano playing, give “Leon Suites” a try.

    The “Leon Suites” – what a concept!

    * Some fun extra Bowie/Tricky stuff: In 1995, Q magazine asked Bowie to interview Tricky for an issue. The two hadn’t yet met, and Bowie instead wrote a piece of fiction that essentially featured himself as the Leon/Outside character Nathan Adler and Tricky as Leon. Bowie then wrote Tricky a letter after him and Iman saw a Maxinquaye show in August 1995 (a month prior to the release of Outside), letting him know about the Q piece that was to be published in their October 1995 issue. See also the “Leon Takes Us Outside” blog post from O’Leary.

    #1001OtherAlbums #1990s #BrianEno #conceptAlbum #DavidBowie #experimental #MikeGarson #ReevesGabrels #ThursdayWhatAConcept #Tricky

    #1001otheralbums #1990s #brianeno #conceptalbum #davidbowie #experimental
  3. 1001 Other Albums @[email protected] ·

    Thursday, What A Concept! | David Bowie – The Leon Suites (1994, UK)

    Next up in our series spotlighting rock operas or other concept albums from The List is number 423, submitted by yours truly.

    With the first album in our “Thursday, What A Concept” series being Nine Inch Nail’s The Downward Spiral, David Bowie’s so-called “Leon Suites” is basically the logical next choice…if you’ve ever heard of it, that is. While not an official release, “Leon Suites” represents what is left of the “improvised opera” titled Leon, an absolutely batshit collaboration with Brian Eno – Bowie is always at his most interesting when he gives in to his experimental side, and you can’t get more experimental than this. Recorded in 1994, Leon was reworked to become Bowie’s 1995 concept album, 1. Outside; it was between these original 1994 recordings and the release of Outside when the NIN/Bowie co-headlining “Dissonance” tour started, which was part of the NIN touring cycle for Downward Spiral.

    For those who are interested in all the details behind Leon/”Leon Suites”/1. Outside, I highly recommend reading Chris O’Leary’s work, either via his fantastic Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog (links to relevant entries at bottom of this post) or the collected/edited versions in his second Bowie volume, Ashes to Ashes: The Songs of David Bowie, 1976-2016. There are a few versions of the story floating out there; here I provide just a summary, based on O’Leary’s book.

    The road to Leon began when Bowie and Eno reconnected at Bowie and Iman’s wedding in 1992. Setting out to make an album that wasn’t just an addendum to their Berlin trilogy, the pair wanted to create some sort of incomplete and interactive work where the listener ultimately had to figure out (or make up) the story. The writing/recording process began in March 1994 and was highly improvisational, relying heavily on role playing, Eno’s directions (including secret character sheets for all musicians and engineers), and Bowie’s vague sketch of a Twin Peaks-inspired narrative that involved a murder mystery, the art world, the Internet, and a handful of characters including Leon Blank, who was (either from the start or, in the process of Leon being reincarnated into Outside, became) an homage of sorts to both Tricky* and Jean-Michael Basquiat. The band jammed for weeks with the tape rolling, Eno ensuring the jam didn’t stray into the conventional or coherent. Bits of the resulting 25 to 35 hours of recordings were then further developed over the next few months, and everything was edited down to end up with a 3-hour long album called Leon…which no label wanted to distribute.

    The “Leon Suites”, then, is the result of someone getting a hold of that 3-hour piece and editing it down further, to 3 tracks that are each over 20 minutes. Though both Eno and Reeves Gabrels (guitarist on the recordings) wanted Bowie to ignore the disinterest in Leon and still release it in some form – even if as a quasi-bootleg release without his name on it – Bowie stopped shopping Leon around at some point in 1994/5. It’s possible that the bootlegged “Suites” made Bowie lose interest in pushing Leon in its original form; however, since the bootlegs didn’t leak until 2003, perhaps they had no bearing on Bowie’s decision to rework Leon (Bowie was known, after all, to start huge brilliant projects, only to completely abandon them and move on). Whatever the case may have been, at the end of 1994, Bowie’s assignment to keep a diary for 10 days for the 100th issue of Q magazine kickstarted the rewriting/fleshing out of the Leon storyline and then reincarnation of the work into the more commercial 1. Outside (this diary then became the liner notes of Outside). In fact, Bowie expanded the storyline to the point that Outside was meant to be the first in a series of 5 albums totalling 8 hours of material that would (or, maybe, would not) complete the story he had roughly sketched out for Leon. As the other 4 albums never happened, and as only snippets of the “Suites” exist in Outside, one can’t help but wonder whether more/the rest of the “Suites” would’ve popped up in those albums, or if they would’ve largely been new post-“Suites”/Leon material. At any rate, without Leon we wouldn’t have Outside, and, without Outside, who knows what other gems we would never have been gifted – there probably wouldn’t have been the NIN Dissonance tour, and then probably no Earthling, probably no Mike Garson on NIN’s The Fragile…who knows.

    So, my recommendation? Set aside time to listen to both the “Leon Suites” and Outside, ensuring you can listen to each one in a single sitting, both in one go if you have the capacity. While you can read about what parts from “Suites” did or didn’t make it into Outside, it’s a lot more fun to do a close listen of both and figure that out for yourself. The key is to consider the “Leon Suites” and Outside as companion albums, not thinking of the “Suites” as Outside demos or outtakes (as they’re sometimes labelled) or Outside as a polished version of the “Suites”. Listening to “Suites” is more like finding only 3 issues of an out-of-print highly conceptual comic book series that later inspired a brilliant TV series (…that was then inexplicably cancelled after the first season); so, if you’re the type of nerd who loves finding all the connections and easter eggs, a double bill is best. At the very least, if you have a spare hour and want to listen to Bowie yell out a whole bunch of random words and phrases in a bunch of ridiculous accents (and/or at least want to hear him predict in 1994 that “someday, the internet may become an information super-highway”) over top of Garson’s absolutely brilliant piano playing, give “Leon Suites” a try.

    The “Leon Suites” – what a concept!

    * Some fun extra Bowie/Tricky stuff: In 1995, Q magazine asked Bowie to interview Tricky for an issue. The two hadn’t yet met, and Bowie instead wrote a piece of fiction that essentially featured himself as the Leon/Outside character Nathan Adler and Tricky as Leon. Bowie then wrote Tricky a letter after him and Iman saw a Maxinquaye show in August 1995 (a month prior to the release of Outside), letting him know about the Q piece that was to be published in their October 1995 issue. See also the “Leon Takes Us Outside” blog post from O’Leary.

    #1001OtherAlbums #1990s #BrianEno #conceptAlbum #DavidBowie #experimental #MikeGarson #ReevesGabrels #ThursdayWhatAConcept #Tricky

    #1001otheralbums #1990s #brianeno #conceptalbum #davidbowie #experimental
  4. 1001 Other Albums @[email protected] ·

    Thursday, What A Concept! | David Bowie – The Leon Suites (1994, UK)

    Next up in our series spotlighting rock operas or other concept albums from The List is number 423, submitted by yours truly.

    With the first album in our “Thursday, What A Concept” series being Nine Inch Nail’s The Downward Spiral, David Bowie’s so-called “Leon Suites” is basically the logical next choice…if you’ve ever heard of it, that is. While not an official release, “Leon Suites” represents what is left of the “improvised opera” titled Leon, an absolutely batshit collaboration with Brian Eno – Bowie is always at his most interesting when he gives in to his experimental side, and you can’t get more experimental than this. Recorded in 1994, Leon was reworked to become Bowie’s 1995 concept album, 1. Outside; it was between these original 1994 recordings and the release of Outside when the NIN/Bowie co-headlining “Dissonance” tour started, which was part of the NIN touring cycle for Downward Spiral.

    For those who are interested in all the details behind Leon/”Leon Suites”/1. Outside, I highly recommend reading Chris O’Leary’s work, either via his fantastic Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog (links to relevant entries at bottom of this post) or the collected/edited versions in his second Bowie volume, Ashes to Ashes: The Songs of David Bowie, 1976-2016. There are a few versions of the story floating out there; here I provide just a summary, based on O’Leary’s book.

    The road to Leon began when Bowie and Eno reconnected at Bowie and Iman’s wedding in 1992. Setting out to make an album that wasn’t just an addendum to their Berlin trilogy, the pair wanted to create some sort of incomplete and interactive work where the listener ultimately had to figure out (or make up) the story. The writing/recording process began in March 1994 and was highly improvisational, relying heavily on role playing, Eno’s directions (including secret character sheets for all musicians and engineers), and Bowie’s vague sketch of a Twin Peaks-inspired narrative that involved a murder mystery, the art world, the Internet, and a handful of characters including Leon Blank, who was (either from the start or, in the process of Leon being reincarnated into Outside, became) an homage of sorts to both Tricky* and Jean-Michael Basquiat. The band jammed for weeks with the tape rolling, Eno ensuring the jam didn’t stray into the conventional or coherent. Bits of the resulting 25 to 35 hours of recordings were then further developed over the next few months, and everything was edited down to end up with a 3-hour long album called Leon…which no label wanted to distribute.

    The “Leon Suites”, then, is the result of someone getting a hold of that 3-hour piece and editing it down further, to 3 tracks that are each over 20 minutes. Though both Eno and Reeves Gabrels (guitarist on the recordings) wanted Bowie to ignore the disinterest in Leon and still release it in some form – even if as a quasi-bootleg release without his name on it – Bowie stopped shopping Leon around at some point in 1994/5. It’s possible that the bootlegged “Suites” made Bowie lose interest in pushing Leon in its original form; however, since the bootlegs didn’t leak until 2003, perhaps they had no bearing on Bowie’s decision to rework Leon (Bowie was known, after all, to start huge brilliant projects, only to completely abandon them and move on). Whatever the case may have been, at the end of 1994, Bowie’s assignment to keep a diary for 10 days for the 100th issue of Q magazine kickstarted the rewriting/fleshing out of the Leon storyline and then reincarnation of the work into the more commercial 1. Outside (this diary then became the liner notes of Outside). In fact, Bowie expanded the storyline to the point that Outside was meant to be the first in a series of 5 albums totalling 8 hours of material that would (or, maybe, would not) complete the story he had roughly sketched out for Leon. As the other 4 albums never happened, and as only snippets of the “Suites” exist in Outside, one can’t help but wonder whether more/the rest of the “Suites” would’ve popped up in those albums, or if they would’ve largely been new post-“Suites”/Leon material. At any rate, without Leon we wouldn’t have Outside, and, without Outside, who knows what other gems we would never have been gifted – there probably wouldn’t have been the NIN Dissonance tour, and then probably no Earthling, probably no Mike Garson on NIN’s The Fragile…who knows.

    So, my recommendation? Set aside time to listen to both the “Leon Suites” and Outside, ensuring you can listen to each one in a single sitting, both in one go if you have the capacity. While you can read about what parts from “Suites” did or didn’t make it into Outside, it’s a lot more fun to do a close listen of both and figure that out for yourself. The key is to consider the “Leon Suites” and Outside as companion albums, not thinking of the “Suites” as Outside demos or outtakes (as they’re sometimes labelled) or Outside as a polished version of the “Suites”. Listening to “Suites” is more like finding only 3 issues of an out-of-print highly conceptual comic book series that later inspired a brilliant TV series (…that was then inexplicably cancelled after the first season); so, if you’re the type of nerd who loves finding all the connections and easter eggs, a double bill is best. At the very least, if you have a spare hour and want to listen to Bowie yell out a whole bunch of random words and phrases in a bunch of ridiculous accents (and/or at least want to hear him predict in 1994 that “someday, the internet may become an information super-highway”) over top of Garson’s absolutely brilliant piano playing, give “Leon Suites” a try.

    The “Leon Suites” – what a concept!

    * Some fun extra Bowie/Tricky stuff: In 1995, Q magazine asked Bowie to interview Tricky for an issue. The two hadn’t yet met, and Bowie instead wrote a piece of fiction that essentially featured himself as the Leon/Outside character Nathan Adler and Tricky as Leon. Bowie then wrote Tricky a letter after him and Iman saw a Maxinquaye show in August 1995 (a month prior to the release of Outside), letting him know about the Q piece that was to be published in their October 1995 issue. See also the “Leon Takes Us Outside” blog post from O’Leary.

    #1001OtherAlbums #1990s #BrianEno #conceptAlbum #DavidBowie #experimental #MikeGarson #ReevesGabrels #ThursdayWhatAConcept #Tricky

    #1001otheralbums #1990s #brianeno #conceptalbum #davidbowie #experimental
  5. 1001 Other Albums @[email protected] ·

    Thursday, What A Concept! | David Bowie – The Leon Suites (1994, UK)

    Next up in our series spotlighting rock operas or other concept albums from The List is number 423, submitted by yours truly.

    With the first album in our “Thursday, What A Concept” series being Nine Inch Nail’s The Downward Spiral, David Bowie’s so-called “Leon Suites” is basically the logical next choice…if you’ve ever heard of it, that is. While not an official release, “Leon Suites” represents what is left of the “improvised opera” titled Leon, an absolutely batshit collaboration with Brian Eno – Bowie is always at his most interesting when he gives in to his experimental side, and you can’t get more experimental than this. Recorded in 1994, Leon was reworked to become Bowie’s 1995 concept album, 1. Outside; it was between these original 1994 recordings and the release of Outside when the NIN/Bowie co-headlining “Dissonance” tour started, which was part of the NIN touring cycle for Downward Spiral.

    For those who are interested in all the details behind Leon/”Leon Suites”/1. Outside, I highly recommend reading Chris O’Leary’s work, either via his fantastic Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog (links to relevant entries at bottom of this post) or the collected/edited versions in his second Bowie volume, Ashes to Ashes: The Songs of David Bowie, 1976-2016. There are a few versions of the story floating out there; here I provide just a summary, based on O’Leary’s book.

    The road to Leon began when Bowie and Eno reconnected at Bowie and Iman’s wedding in 1992. Setting out to make an album that wasn’t just an addendum to their Berlin trilogy, the pair wanted to create some sort of incomplete and interactive work where the listener ultimately had to figure out (or make up) the story. The writing/recording process began in March 1994 and was highly improvisational, relying heavily on role playing, Eno’s directions (including secret character sheets for all musicians and engineers), and Bowie’s vague sketch of a Twin Peaks-inspired narrative that involved a murder mystery, the art world, the Internet, and a handful of characters including Leon Blank, who was (either from the start or, in the process of Leon being reincarnated into Outside, became) an homage of sorts to both Tricky* and Jean-Michael Basquiat. The band jammed for weeks with the tape rolling, Eno ensuring the jam didn’t stray into the conventional or coherent. Bits of the resulting 25 to 35 hours of recordings were then further developed over the next few months, and everything was edited down to end up with a 3-hour long album called Leon…which no label wanted to distribute.

    The “Leon Suites”, then, is the result of someone getting a hold of that 3-hour piece and editing it down further, to 3 tracks that are each over 20 minutes. Though both Eno and Reeves Gabrels (guitarist on the recordings) wanted Bowie to ignore the disinterest in Leon and still release it in some form – even if as a quasi-bootleg release without his name on it – Bowie stopped shopping Leon around at some point in 1994/5. It’s possible that the bootlegged “Suites” made Bowie lose interest in pushing Leon in its original form; however, since the bootlegs didn’t leak until 2003, perhaps they had no bearing on Bowie’s decision to rework Leon (Bowie was known, after all, to start huge brilliant projects, only to completely abandon them and move on). Whatever the case may have been, at the end of 1994, Bowie’s assignment to keep a diary for 10 days for the 100th issue of Q magazine kickstarted the rewriting/fleshing out of the Leon storyline and then reincarnation of the work into the more commercial 1. Outside (this diary then became the liner notes of Outside). In fact, Bowie expanded the storyline to the point that Outside was meant to be the first in a series of 5 albums totalling 8 hours of material that would (or, maybe, would not) complete the story he had roughly sketched out for Leon. As the other 4 albums never happened, and as only snippets of the “Suites” exist in Outside, one can’t help but wonder whether more/the rest of the “Suites” would’ve popped up in those albums, or if they would’ve largely been new post-“Suites”/Leon material. At any rate, without Leon we wouldn’t have Outside, and, without Outside, who knows what other gems we would never have been gifted – there probably wouldn’t have been the NIN Dissonance tour, and then probably no Earthling, probably no Mike Garson on NIN’s The Fragile…who knows.

    So, my recommendation? Set aside time to listen to both the “Leon Suites” and Outside, ensuring you can listen to each one in a single sitting, both in one go if you have the capacity. While you can read about what parts from “Suites” did or didn’t make it into Outside, it’s a lot more fun to do a close listen of both and figure that out for yourself. The key is to consider the “Leon Suites” and Outside as companion albums, not thinking of the “Suites” as Outside demos or outtakes (as they’re sometimes labelled) or Outside as a polished version of the “Suites”. Listening to “Suites” is more like finding only 3 issues of an out-of-print highly conceptual comic book series that later inspired a brilliant TV series (…that was then inexplicably cancelled after the first season); so, if you’re the type of nerd who loves finding all the connections and easter eggs, a double bill is best. At the very least, if you have a spare hour and want to listen to Bowie yell out a whole bunch of random words and phrases in a bunch of ridiculous accents (and/or at least want to hear him predict in 1994 that “someday, the internet may become an information super-highway”) over top of Garson’s absolutely brilliant piano playing, give “Leon Suites” a try.

    The “Leon Suites” – what a concept!

    * Some fun extra Bowie/Tricky stuff: In 1995, Q magazine asked Bowie to interview Tricky for an issue. The two hadn’t yet met, and Bowie instead wrote a piece of fiction that essentially featured himself as the Leon/Outside character Nathan Adler and Tricky as Leon. Bowie then wrote Tricky a letter after him and Iman saw a Maxinquaye show in August 1995 (a month prior to the release of Outside), letting him know about the Q piece that was to be published in their October 1995 issue. See also the “Leon Takes Us Outside” blog post from O’Leary.

    #1001OtherAlbums #1990s #BrianEno #conceptAlbum #DavidBowie #experimental #MikeGarson #ReevesGabrels #ThursdayWhatAConcept #Tricky

    #reevesgabrels #tricky #thursdaywhataconcept #mikegarson #experimental #davidbowie
  6. 1001 Other Albums @[email protected] ·

    Next up in our series spotlighting rock operas or other concept albums from The List is number 423, submitted by yours truly.

    With the first album in our “Thursday, What A Concept” series being Nine Inch Nail’s The Downward Spiral, David Bowie’s so-called “Leon Suites” is basically the logical next choice…if you’ve ever heard of it, that is. While not an official release, “Leon Suites” represents what is left of the “improvised opera” titled Leon, an absolutely batshit collaboration with Brian Eno – Bowie is always at his most interesting when he gives in to his experimental side, and you can’t get more experimental than this. Recorded in 1994, Leon was reworked to become Bowie’s 1995 concept album, 1. Outside; it was between these original 1994 recordings and the release of Outside when the NIN/Bowie co-headlining “Dissonance” tour started, which was part of the NIN touring cycle for Downward Spiral.

    For those who are interested in all the details behind Leon/”Leon Suites”/1. Outside, I highly recommend reading Chris O’Leary’s work, either via his fantastic Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog (links to relevant entries at bottom of this post) or the collected/edited versions in his second Bowie volume, Ashes to Ashes: The Songs of David Bowie, 1976-2016. There are a few versions of the story floating out there; here I provide just a summary, based on O’Leary’s book.

    The road to Leon began when Bowie and Eno reconnected at Bowie and Iman’s wedding in 1992. Setting out to make an album that wasn’t just an addendum to their Berlin trilogy, the pair wanted to create some sort of incomplete and interactive work where the listener ultimately had to figure out (or make up) the story. The writing/recording process began in March 1994 and was highly improvisational, relying heavily on role playing, Eno’s directions (including secret character sheets for all musicians and engineers), and Bowie’s vague sketch of a Twin Peaks-inspired narrative that involved a murder mystery, the art world, the Internet, and a handful of characters including Leon Blank, who was (either from the start or, in the process of Leon being reincarnated into Outside, became) an homage of sorts to both Tricky* and Jean-Michael Basquiat. The band jammed for weeks with the tape rolling, Eno ensuring the jam didn’t stray into the conventional or coherent. Bits of the resulting 25 to 35 hours of recordings were then further developed over the next few months, and everything was edited down to end up with a 3-hour long album called Leon…which no label wanted to distribute.

    The “Leon Suites”, then, is the result of someone getting a hold of that 3-hour piece and editing it down further, to 3 tracks that are each over 20 minutes. Though both Eno and Reeves Gabrels (guitarist on the recordings) wanted Bowie to ignore the disinterest in Leon and still release it in some form – even if as a quasi-bootleg release without his name on it – Bowie stopped shopping Leon around at some point in 1994/5. It’s possible that the bootlegged “Suites” made Bowie lose interest in pushing Leon in its original form; however, since the bootlegs didn’t leak until 2003, perhaps they had no bearing on Bowie’s decision to rework Leon (Bowie was known, after all, to start huge brilliant projects, only to completely abandon them and move on). At any rate, at the end of 1994, Bowie’s assignment to keep a diary for 10 days for the 100th issue of Q magazine kickstarted the rewriting/fleshing out of the Leon storyline and then reincarnation of the work into the more commercial 1. Outside (this diary then became the liner notes of Outside). In fact, Bowie expanded the storyline to the point that Outside was meant to be the first in a series of 5 albums totalling 8 hours of material that would (or, maybe, would not), complete the story he had roughly sketched out for Leon. As the other 4 albums never happened, and as only snippets of the “Suites” exist in Outside, one can’t help but wonder whether more/the rest of the “Suites” would’ve popped up in those albums, or if they would’ve largely been new post-“Suites”/Leon material. At any rate, without Leon we wouldn’t have Outside, and, without Outside, who knows what other gems we would never have been gifted – there probably wouldn’t have been the NIN Dissonance tour, and then probably no Earthling, probably no Mike Garson on NIN’s The Fragile…who knows.

    So, my recommendation? Set aside time to listen to both the “Leon Suites” and Outside, ensuring you can listen to each one in a single sitting, both in one go if you have the capacity. While you can read about what parts from “Suites” did or didn’t make it into Outside, it’s a lot more fun to do a close listen of both and figure that out for yourself. The key is to consider the “Leon Suites” and Outside as companion albums, not thinking of the “Suites” as Outside demos or outtakes (as they’re sometimes labelled) or Outside as a polished version of the “Suites”. Listening to “Suites” is more like finding only 3 issues of an out-of-print highly conceptual comic book series that later inspired a brilliant TV series (…that was then inexplicably cancelled after the first season); so, if you’re the type of nerd who loves finding all the connections and easter eggs, a double bill is best. At the very least, if you have a spare hour and want to listen to Bowie yell out a whole bunch of random words and phrases in a bunch of ridiculous accents (and/or at least want to hear him predict in 1994 that “someday, the internet may become an information super-highway”) over top of Garson’s absolutely brilliant piano playing, give “Leon Suites” a try.

    The “Leon Suites” – what a concept!

    * Some fun extra Bowie/Tricky stuff: In 1995, Q magazine asked Bowie to interview Tricky for an issue. The two hadn’t yet met, and Bowie instead wrote a piece of fiction that essentially featured himself as the Leon/Outside character Nathan Adler and Tricky as Leon. Bowie then wrote Tricky a letter after him and Iman saw a Maxinquaye show in August 1995 (a month prior to the release of Outside), letting him know about the Q piece that was to be published in their October 1995 issue. See also the “Leon Takes Us Outside” blog post from O’Leary.

    https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/06/20/thursday-what-a-concept-david-bowie-the-leon-suites-1994-uk/

    #1001OtherAlbums #1990s #BrianEno #conceptAlbum #DavidBowie #experimental #MikeGarson #ThursdayWhatAConcept #Tricky

    #1001otheralbums #1990s #brianeno #conceptalbum #davidbowie #experimental