A 50-year-old David Bowie--the Thin Grey Duke--visits upon us an otherworldly album that blends up-to-the-minute electronica with good old-fashioned popcraft.

... Pop's newest cutting edge isn't coming from its young. It's emerging from a growing number of seasoned artists who, after losing their muses, managed to snatch them back at the waning age of 50. Eric Clapton didn't get up the nerve to make his first pure blues album until he was facing down the Big Five-O with 1994's From the Cradle. At 51, Joni Mitchell released Turbulent Indigo (1994), her most searching album since 1976's Hejira. And now, one month after David Bowie blew out 50 candles, he's unveiling his first smart, exciting, and...well, Bowie-esque record since Scary Monsters more than16 years ago.

... The long stall only makes this payoff that much sweeter. On Earthling (Virgin) Bowie at last locates a mean between the two treacherous paths that threw his career off course. If his mid-'80s records (Lets Dance, Never Let Me Down) cynically cashed in on bland pop, his subsequent output veered too far in the direction of uncompromising "art." From his tin-eared late-'80s band Tin Machine to his cockamamy 1995 concept album Outside, Bowie proved that it isn't enough to write songs some grudgingly admire; he should write music some pine to hear.

... Bowie accomplishes that on Earthling--an album as playable as it is startling. To his credit, he avoids recycling sounds from his golden years (1971-80). Instead, he finds their current equivalents. Bowie seeks inspiration in "electronica," that clutch of underground dance rhythms now affecting the mainstream, bridging the fury of techno, the swish of drum-and-bass, and the whir of ambient music. Just as 1975's Young Americans reconfigured the "new" rhythms of disco into Bowie's own chic pop, Earthling rewires electronica for his more recent take on industrial rock.

... "Little Wonder" kicks off the album with the most alarming opening volley heard on a record in some time--a careening whine of guitars skidding into a wall of blood- smattered synths. Sampling the sounds of chugging trains, bleating whistles, and collapsing metal, Bowie's music mines every ear-piercing shriek missed by Ministry six years ago. Crucial credit for this should go to guitarist and Bowie loyalist Reeves Gabrels. While his earlier collaborations with Bowie veered into the indulgent and ugly, here their racket invigorates. Gabrels has found a way to marry the squealing thrash of a Steve Vai to the architectural sweep of a Robert Fripp.

... The electronica beats give Gabrels' guitar shards bracing movement. As dance subgenres go, techno and drum-and-bass represent the fastest styles yet invented, making this, by definition, Bowie's briskest album. A sprint of slapping snare drums and shimmering cymbals brightens nearly every track.

... If such sounds give Bowie a claim to the future, his melodies connect him to the past. He's writing tunes that catch the ear again. Songs like "Seven Years In Tibet" and "Looking For Satellites" recall the fluid psychedelia of Hunky Dory. You'll find melodies you can hum even amid the album's wildest clamor.

... Bowie's words side with the assault. At their most jarring, he indulges a technique, learned from William Burroughs, of splicing random words together. But he also risks direct statements, like an attack on cultural imperialism in "I'm Afraid Of Americans," or a send-up of people who fear the unknown in "Law (Earthling On Fire)." The folly of feigning control serves as the album's recurring theme, something well suited to Bowie's age.

... If such themes ground Bowie, another new release paints him in more arty terms. Composer Phillip Glass has reworked six pieces from Bowie's (and Brian Eno's) 1977 album Heroes into a HEROES SYMPHONY (Point Music). In 1993, Glass did the same thing with Bowie's Low. His version of Heroes previously accompanied a dance piece by choreographer Twyla Tharp, but even without Tharp's visual cues the symphony has a chilling Germanic simplicity. Bowie's old synthetic mood pieces gain a new richness and severity told through Glass' swelling orchestra.

... It's juicy meat for Bowie scholars, but, ironically, his pop work holds greater substance. Not only does Earthling help him reconnect with the rock zeitgeist, it counts Bowie among those artists--like Clapton, Mitchell, and Neil Young--who are pushing the age barrier of a vital pop career. For that, they should all be called heroes. Earthling: A Heroes Symphony:B

"DAVE'S NEW WORLD Warning for anybody of a cynical disposition: this review contains favourable sentiments towards David Bowie and his new album, "Earthling". It includes the words "jungle" and "glam" in close proximity, the description, "A brave and frequently startling collusion of the forever and the now", and even (hold tight), "Best since 'Scary Monsters'". Like the album this review contains the words "cock" and "tits", although here they're in a factual, not mischievous context. This review includes vivid depictions of strange and confrontational noises: "death slammer metal", "Motorhead techno", "pulverising rhythmic hypnotism" and "a robot with his zipper caught up with his 'willy'". But it steadfastly refuses to wallow in sentiment or nostalgia and tries to confront the present while making nothing more than a few, fleeting obligatory references to His past.

... This is a review of "Earthling": frenetic, fractured, urgent, exitable (flawed? certainly), neon, chaotic, cyberreal...sexy? GRREAAWW, CAKKADadaDADA. Here we have a rigorous roughing-over of The Rock Dynamic. TIKKA-didaw-A-CHEEKA. With a drum'n'bass rhythm section. Bowie hasn't stooped to cloning (he never stoops-it's terrible for the posture). Bowie absorbs. Bowie assimilates. Then Bowie advances. Thus "Low": the immaculate fusion of punk nihilism and Kraftwerk steel. "Young Americans": Philly Soul plus LA plasticity. "Earthling" = glam + industrial + jungle (- Shakatak) x Bromley boy-turned-Noo Yawk sooperstar restlessness + Prodigy + Gerald x Placebo (who inc "Diamond Dogs"/10 per cent "Lodger")= 1997 and he knows it. "Feels like something's gonna happen this year".

... "Earthling" is an optimistic album about death. Judgement day can go to hell ("I've never been a sinner, la di dah")... age can go to blaze(r)s. "It's just the rain before the storm." Mortality is inevitable ("Dead Man Walking"), God, no answer (yes, David, we do remember "The Lord's Prayer"): "I pray to you/ Nothing ever goes away." But there's gotta be something at the end of humanity's consumerism. "Nowhere-shampoo-TV-comeback-shorter hairstyle-where do we go from here?" ("Looking For Satellites"). Bowie seems to conclude that man's eventual fate lies in chromosomes, cybergenics, technologies and space, boy and thus reveals himself to be the same adventure-hungry, cosmic-exploring phuturephantasist who dreamt up "Ziggy Stardust" all those years ago. I'm sure he loves being reminded of that. "I don't want knowledge, I want certainty."David Bowie is 50 years old. Apparently."

Oh HOW they'll laugh at you, come the 21st century , as they fly past on their jetpacks . See , everyone's off to the virtual love cybercum-club-interactive art gallery on the wheel in the space , inducted into a bright an eclectic fututre by their guru , Dancing Dave Bowie . And , as you trudge on despondently in their wake , listening to crackly old-flanged guitar music-Oasis say- on your prehistotic walkman , the same damned thought will occur to you for the hundredth ,, thousandth , millionth time : "Why ? Why ? Why did I laugh at Bowie in the 90's ? "

... Why indeed . Perhaps because , back here in 1997 , David Bowie is preoccupied with appearing futuristic - with being the space-age Renaissance Man - as only the very old can be. He tries to be mates with Tricky! He refines his sub-Burroughsian cut-up method of writing lyrics by - cool! - randomly generating words on his computer! He cross-pollinates rock, and industrial, and techno, and drum'n'bloody bass, and says things like, "I can distil what is basically the Zeitgeist by not being one thing obsessively." He's so paranoid , so acutely conscious of his 50 venerable years , that he thinks he'll appear past-it if he tries to be anything other than rigorously modern .

... Of course he tries far too hard . 'Earthling' isn't the future: it's what your dad might knock up with a fat advance, a couple of Goldie and Nine Inch Nails albums, a nice computer... And, one grudgingly must concede, with a fair amount of residual talent.

... For, in spite of the ridiculousness, the pretension and the overwhelming essence du naff that prevails over it, 'Earthling' is actually - though it galls to admit it - not a bad record. Perhaps it's Bowie's stunningly resilient inability to see his own preposterousness that makes it all so entertainingly funny. But it's a lot harder to grasp exactly why this dance-rock hybrid, ostensibly as ground breaking and credible as , ahem , Jesus Jones , is actually almost exciting .

... What the Prodigy discovered last year is that you can start off with adrenalised cutting-edge techno noises and make a rock anthem- "firestarter"-out of them . What David Bowie and his professiorial fretwanking henchman (and tragically , Tin Machine alumnus) Reeves Gabrels have discovered here is that you can start off with a rather hackneyed rock anthem and end up with adrenalised , cutting-edge-ish techno noise. A bit like "firestarter" . Clever , eh ?

... Hence "Little Wonder" , and "Telling Lies" , and much things on "Earthling" . There is something about Bowie's perennial dilettante enthusiasm that's rather engaging this time round, as he grafts careering breakbeats on to his familiar portentous tracts. Clearly "earthling 's done on the hoof , with less conceptualising : unlike last years' hight art , hight arse 'Outside', he hasn't thought this one to death, hasn't over-calculated every last clank , dissipating all the spontaneity and energy it may once have had .

... So it's a bit shabby and a bit clumsy, as if it were banged together one long, inspired night and then released double quick. Unlike U2 current flirtation with club culture on "discotheque" , the result hasn't been streamlined and glossed in the pursuit of good taste. Battle For Britain (The Letter)' is a hilarious mash-up of sludge-rock riffing, manic jungle breaks, 'Space Oddity'-style dissolute drawling, apocalyptic sixth-form poetry and - hey! Why not? - an atonal modern jazz piano solo that's curiously stirring. 'Seven Years In Tibet' introduces 'Young Americans'-era sleek soul to trip-hop and substantially less sleek industrial stompy rock and gets away with it, more or less. And 'The Last Thing You Should Do' is one of the best things he's done for years: top beats, nice, 'Low'-esque synth-string reveries, thunderous ROCK! bits - 'Earthling''s good intentions distilled into five minutes. Again, it's not the future, but it's pretty fine.

... Let's not be too carried away, mind. This is still a David Bowie album, remember, and David Bowie hasn't made an unequivocally good album since 'Scary Monsters' in 1980. For all its relative spontaneity and half decent ideas , there is a reassuring shitload of pretension and awful ideas. 'Looking For Satellites' is typical: decent, bouncy trip-hop built around a rather jaunty and hypnotic mantra marred by a dreadful squalling solo from the oaf Gabrels and allegedly random lyrics that involve the names "Shampoo" and "Boyzone" being intoned again and again, ironically invoking what Bowie doubtless sees as temporal pop careers compared with his immovable, genius-stained one.

... When David Bowie really mattered, when what he did actually made a difference -throughout the '70s, effectively - he initiated musical fashion rather than gleefully exploiting it, defined modernity rather than postmodernity.

... And crucially he defined modernity effortlessly . For all 'Earthling''s merits, he's still trying far, far too hard, still desperate to book his place in the Hologram Hall Of Fame on that wheel in space. Come the future, we - and maybe even he - may well look back on all this pre-millennial pretension and laugh.

Over the last two years, the linguistically convoluted, gauche trickster David Bowie has been prolific and cockernee-confident in his splurge of Laura Ashley wallpaper, art installations, "non-linear" industrial rock and bizarre magazine articles. Now, the karmic chameleon's "culture vulture" placing between populist and underground "art" hardly elevates him above anyone with the slightest curiosity about '90s culture, but, at 50 years old, he is at least a moving target.

... Although jazz-lite popsters Everything But The Girl beat him to the breakbeat, Bowie "does" drum'n'bass with more guts on Earthling, splicing Reeves Gabrels's omnipresent guitar squeal into churning loops on four songs. The remaining five tracks are underpinned with some meaty drumming from tour regular Zachary Alford, recalling the heavy, invigorating dynamics of 1977's Heroes. Bowie has always cannibalised his own music for inspiration, but he's using this technique increasingly in the '90s. Thus Earthling reshuffles the avant-Broadway piano stylings of Mike "Aladdin Sane" Garson with textured, Low-era electronics and soft, breathy jazz leanings. One of the most radio-friendly tracks, Dead Man Walking, features an inspired guitar solo from Gabrels which echoes both Robert Fripp's work on Heroes and the lesser-known Dead Against It from Buddha Of Suburbia. Meanwhile, I'm Afraid Of Americans returns to the travelogue imperialism of Lodger.

... Much of this backward glancing is executed with a restrained playfulness, although the Laughing Gnome-meets-jungle Little Wonder is crammed with sniggering self-references. Much better are the buddhatorial Seven Years In Tibet, Internet single Telling Lies, the Brian Eno co-written I'm Afraid Of Americans and The Last Thing You Should Do , which are shot through with a gnarly atmospheric chill not encountered since Scary Monsters.

... Lyrically, Bowie's random cut-ups look forward to a new tech-wise, pagan, alien-born spirituality visiting Mother Earth. Major Tom's tin-foil mysticism and Bowie's sky-gazing for "supermen" on The Man Who Sold The World are only a breath away; the middle-aged, angsty humanism of Never Let Me Down and Tin Machine have been crashlanded - hopefully for good - on another planet entirely.

If there was any doubt which artist made the biggest impression on the David Bowie/Nine Inch Nails tour, Bowie's new album offers a clue. Nearly every song on "Earthling" gets its charge from the kind of loud, industrial power riffs and electronically treated vocals that Trent Reznor is so fond of. Bowie may have been the headliner of 1995's dream billing, but like most of the fans who went to the shows, it seems he was there primarily to catch the opening act. Which is not a bad thing. Bowie's 1995 comeback album, "Outside," was an ambitious mix of futuristic conceptualizing and industrial mayhem, but it went way over the top artistically. On that album, Bowie and collaborator Brian Eno bogged down the songs with a forced story line. What Outside needed was some of the musical restraint and pop smarts that Reznor gave to Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral. And that's exactly what Bowie brings to the new record, his best since 1980's "Scary Monsters."

... "On Earthling," Bowie lets the songs tell the story. Gone are the spoken interludes and overblown avant-garde flourishes that marred "Outside;" instead, the tracks on "Earthling" are linked only by the power of the turbocharged guitars, the energy and intensity of the skittering drum-and-bass rhythms, the spiritual-technological tug of war in the lyrics and Bowie's signature baritone croon.

... Bowie begins "Earthling," his first self-produced album since 1974's "Diamond Dogs," with an explosion of clattering beats and screeching electronics that coalesce into the album's dramatic single, "Little Wonder." He uses drum-and-bass music - the current rage among British techno DJs - as a rhythmic foundation throughout, upping the intensity of songs like "Telling Lies" and the classic The Man Who Sold The World vibe of "Battle For Britain (The Letter)." Bowie reaches back to his '70s catalog for several tracks - including the slow-grooving, horns- and Hammond-fueled "Seven Years In Tibet " - but also borrows licks and samples from other spots on the musical map. A jerky, atonal piano break in the middle of "Battle" sounds like John Cage filtered through Mott the Hoople, "Little Wonder" lifts a bass line from the O'Jays, and the refrain of "Seven Years" gets the juices flowing with a blast of Pixies-like loud-soft dynamics.

... If Bowie undermined his ominous warnings of a technological future gone haywire on Outside with a trite, sci-noir plot line, he comes off more convincingly this time. "On Earthling" he returns to the subject of space, a fascination for Bowie since 1969's "Space Oddity." In the shuffling, carnivallike "Looking For Satellites," he sings, "There's something in the sky/Shining in the light/Spinning far away," before his voice conjures up the ghost of John Lennon in the final line, "Who do we look to now?" What remains from Outside are Bowie's attempts to reconcile technological progress with spiritual growth. Over the sound of squealing pigs in "Seven Years in Tibet," he sings that it's "Time to question the mountain/Why pigs can fly" before screaming out the chorus, "I praise to you/Nothing ever goes away."

... It's not until the last two songs that Bowie's sound and vision begin to lose steam. "I'm Afraid Of Americans" is a stuttering rocker about a paranoid Brit (named Johnny, of course) that seems detached from the other songs. And on the album's finale, "Law (Earthling On Fire)," Bowie loses his heretofore tasteful grip on contemporary technology. Beginning with a sampled spoken loop proclaiming "I don't want knowledge/I want certainty," the song incorporates the kinds of cheesy electronic effects that you might hear in a TV ad trying to be hip.

... Still, if Bowie is not the art-rock pioneer he was in the '70s, his enduring enthusiasm for new musical adventures can be applauded. "Earthling" doesn't break any new ground, but it certainly captures the mood of contemporary popular culture - from the anguish of American industrial rock to the ecstasy of British dance music. (RS 754) reserved. Song samples powered by MusicNet.

HIS TATTERED reputation partially repaired by last year's critically lauded 'Outside' album and hip namechecks by everyone from Nirvana to Nine Inch Nails, Bowie greets his half-century with that famous vampire grin almost back to full beam.

... Even those who can never forgive him for his big-haired '80s excesses must concede that the old goat is back on some kind of creative roll, hoovering up the Zeitgeist and regurgitating it with a zeal not seen since his coke-fuelled '70s prime. The fact that 'Earthling', his 21st studio album, is the first self-produced Bowie opus since 'Diamond Dogs' 23 years ago, is further testament to the revitalised muse of this fired-up 50-year-old.

... Where 'Outside' was painstakingly overwrought and hobbled by conceptual baggage, 'Earthling' is much more pleasingly slick and dynamic. It was recorded in the revivalist fervour of 1996, the year which saw Bowie festooned with endless Great Rock Bloke awards while being simultaneously deified by America's post-grunge royalty. This was also the year during which he immersed himself deep into jungle, trip-hop and industrial noise.

... While Bowie's highly public enthusiasm for such cutting-edge sounds helps explain much of what you hear on 'Earthling', they don't prepare you for just how well he has assimilated them. This is no soft-focus Everything But The Girl-style makeover, but a hearty embrace of full-on post-rave techno-metal meltdown.

... The album hits the ground running with 'Little Wonder', probably the most extreme single of Bowie's career and certainly the most hardcore chart hopeful since The Prodigy's 'Firestarter'. An elasticated blast of apocalyptic drum'n'bass with a warped nursery rhyme at its core, this is sure to alienate any remaining 'Lets Dance'-era pop-lite fans. Then again, devotees of the man's heyday, from the savage glam cacophony of 'Ziggy Stardust' to the abrasively New Wave angularity of 'Scary Monsters', might recognise a flicker of the old fuck-off spirit which propelled Bowie through the '70s.

... Elsewhere, the sound palette remains equally uncompromising, 'Battle For Britain (The Letter)' is another chomping jungloid epic, all machine-gun beats and wrenching guitar detonations, with a lyric which seems to address Bowie's homeland as a bitter, self-pitying backwater.Revamped Internet single, 'Telling Lies ', yokes moody, evil-sounding chants to a freneticdrum'n'bass framework, while 'The Last Thing You Should Do' is a percussion-bomb love ballad which finally implodes under the piledriver assault of Reeves Gabrels' dentist-drill guitar.

... Sure, there is ample ammunition for the Bowie-as-total-twat brigade, too. Many lyrics still sound fairly hollow and pompous, while lingering traces of Tin Machine-esque prog-rock occasionally seep out from behind Dave's futuristic new disguise, 'Seven Years In Tibet' or 'Law (Earthling On Fire)' being the main offenders.

... But it's worth remembering that Bowie has always, by his own admission, been a faker and a borrower. It has been this ever-curious appetite for new sensations, without regard for critical credibility, which has produced both his naffest career nadirs and his most majestic heights.

... 'Earthling' is closer in spirit to the latter than the former: an unprecedented experiment for someone of Bowie's generation, it's a flawed but impressive leap forward and a fucking noisy racket for a 50-year-old geezer.