David Bowie - Loving The Alien 1983-1988 (2018) [Hi-Res]

80s albums remastered • 2018 version of ‘Never Let Me Down’ • Selection of key remixes • Two live albums • ‘Recall 4’ features singles/B-sides
For the fourth year in succession, Parlophone Records will release a major box set that summarises an era in the musical life of David Bowie. This October, Loving The Alien (1983-1988) will feature Bowie’s three solo albums from the period in question, and offer fans plenty of extra content, including a ‘new production’ of 1987’s Never Let Me Down, the first audio release of the Serious Moonlight Tour and a remix album.

The new Loving The Alien box set comes as a weighty 15LP vinyl package or an 11CD set. It features newly remastered versions of Let’s Dance (1983), Tonight (1984) and Never Let Me Down (1987). The vinyl version of Never Let Me Down sees the original CD versions of the tracks used on the format for the first time, just don’t go looking for Too Dizzy – originally on the album, but removed shortly after release, at Bowie’s request – because it does not appear anywhere in this new box set.

Having successfully reworked the single Time Will Crawl from 1987’s Never Let Me Down for 2008’s iSelect compilation album, Bowie wrote in the sleeve notes for the latter, “Oh, to redo the rest of the album”. Sadly that never happened in his lifetime, but it was Mario McNulty who had recorded and mixed that new version of the song for David (it wasn’t called the ‘MM’ remix for nothing) and the same man has now created a brand new production of the whole album, with new instrumentation by Bowie collaborators Reeves Gabrels (guitar), David Torn (guitar), Sterling Campbell (drums), Tim Lefebvre (bass – he played on Blackstar) as well as string quartet with arrangements by Nico Muhly. This new version includes a guest cameo by Laurie Anderson (who takes the Mickey Rourke ‘role’ on Shining Star (Makin My Love)). You can get a taster of what this new version sounds like, by previewing a ‘radio edit’ of Zeroes (2018) below.