Hours (David Bowie album)
Hours is the 21st studio album by English singer David Bowie. It was released on 4 October 1999 on Virgin Records. This was Bowie's final album for the EMI sub-label. It was the first complete album by a major artist available to download over the Internet, preceding the physical release by two weeks.
Although Hours peaked at number 5 on the UK Albums Chart, it was Bowie's first studio album since his 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars to miss the US Billboard 200 top 40, peaking at number 47. It has received mixed reviews from critics.
Background
Bowie and Reeves Gabrels wrote the songs for both Hours and the adventure video game at the same time. According to Gabrels, they set up special writing sessions to write the music for these projects, then recorded demos in studios in Bermuda and Paris. Gabrels himself wrote over 3 hours of instrumental songs for the game. Gabrels described these tracks as "more electronic and aggressive in nature than the Hours album" and suggested there would be an Omikron, The Nomad Soul instrumental album released the next year.Hours was thought of as the soundtrack CD for Omikron as late as June 1999. In the game, released by Eidos Interactive about a month later than the album, Bowie played the role of a character called Boz, while his wife Iman appeared as an "incarnable" who introduced "virtual reincarnation". Furthermore, Bowie appeared together with Gabrels and Gail Ann Dorsey as "The Dreamers", a virtual band performing in bars around Omikron City. Characters in the game could also buy a virtual album that they could listen to in their apartments. Omikron: The Nomad Soul included eight songs, all of them also appeared on Hours. At an E3 press conference Bowie said "I moved right away from the stereotypical industrial game-music sound. My priority in writing music for Omikron was to give it an emotional subtext. It feels to me as though Reeves and I have achieved that. We both worked really close with Quantic Dream to come up with eight new songs for the game."
The game also included 34 "Instrumental Songs", of which 26 were written and performed by Gabrels and 8 by Bowie and Gabrels. Half of the tracks by Bowie and Gabrels were "easy listening versions" of some of the vocal songs. Some of the other "instrumental songs" would be further developed and released as b-sides, for instance "Awakened 2" is an instrumental version of "No One Calls" and "Thrust" would become "1917". Only three songs on Hours were not from Omikron: "If I'm Dreaming My Life", "What's Really Happening", and "Brilliant Adventure", although the latter was actually considered as incidental music for the game.
Bowie and Gabrels did a lot of early work in Gabrels' apartment. Then, according to Gabrels, "I would bring the drive over to where we were working at Chung King or Looking Glass studios and do the drums, the guitars that needed room sound, or the final vocals there."
To drum up interest in the impending album, a "Cyber Song" contest was held on Bowie's personal website BowieNet to compose lyrics to an early instrumental version of the song "What's Really Happening". The winning lyrics would be featured on Hours. Contest winner Alex Grant also won a trip to Philip Glass' Looking Glass Studios on 24 May 1999 to watch Bowie record the final vocal during a live Webcast. There, Grant contributed backing vocals to the song, along with a friend who accompanied him.
The original title for the album was going to be "The Dreamers", after the album's closing track.
Artwork
The album cover, designed by Rex Ray with photography by Tim Bret Day and Frank Ockenfels, depicts the short-haired Bowie persona from the intensely energetic previous album Earthling exhausted, resting in the arms of a long-haired, more youthful version of Bowie. Indeed, Hours is a much mellower album than its predecessor, and features numerous references to earlier parts of Bowie's musical career. For the album's initial release, a number of copies featured a lenticular version of the cover, lending a three-dimensional effect to the image.Gabrels' departure
This was the last studio album with Bowie for Gabrels, who had worked with Bowie since 1988. During the recording of the album, Gabrels started to notice some disagreements building, which made him realize that his time as a bandmate and recording partner were over. Said Gabrels, "I knew from January of '99 that there was a long road for me to leave him, without leaving him hanging." For one, Bowie had the idea to bring R&B group TLC in to sing backing vocals on the track "Thursday's Child". Gabrels said, "I was so pissed off.... Now we've acquired the audience that we wanted, and you're gonna put TLC on the record, and going to say, 'Fuck him!'"Gabrels won the argument, and his friend Holly Palmer was brought in to sing on the track, and she would join the touring band as well. Gabrels was frustrated by how originally, "we did a different version of the Hours record, and I had played bass on that, and we let it sit and then we listened to it, and David said it was too raw. I thought it had a certain Diamond Dogs quality, but he wanted it to be more slick and polished and have fretless bass. … Mark Plati came in at the end of Hours to play fretless bass and remix the record." He said, "There’s a track from the Hours era that was a b-side called 'And We Shall Go To Town' that I thought was a key track for that album and it ended up being taken off the album, and that was part of the final straw for me. It was a very dark track." For the last live show that Gabrels performed with Bowie, for VH1 Storytellers, Gabrels had Plati join the band so that David would "get used to him." Said Gabrels, "I put Mark next to David where I used to stand. I cannot remember whether that was conscious or unconscious." After Bowie died in 2016, Gabrels said of his departure, "I was running out of ideas for him. I was afraid that if I stayed, I would become a bitter kind of person. I’m sure you’ve spoken to people who have done one thing for too long, and they start to lose respect for the people they work for, and I didn’t want to be that guy. The most logical thing for me to do at that point was to leave and do something else. I departed on good terms."
Critical reception
The album has received mixed reviews from critics. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote: "it may not be one of Bowie's classics, but it's the work of a masterful musician who has begun to enjoy his craft again and isn't afraid to let things develop naturally." Rolling Stone critic Greg Tate described the record as "an album that improves with each new hearing" and "further confirmation of Richard Pryor's observation that they call them old wise men because all them young wise men are dead". Similarly impressed, Alternative Press described Hours as "a masterpiece", adding that it "finds Bowie returning to basics he never should have left behind".Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork criticised the album, saying: "Hours opts for a spacy, but nonetheless adult-contemporary sound that comes across with all the vitality and energy of a rotting log." Schreiber further stated: "No, it's not a new low, but that doesn't mean it's not embarrassing." Writing for Select, John Mullen considered the album to be an improvement on Earthling, but likened Bowie to a "more high-brow" version of Sting and concluded: "Even on the personal exorcism of 'Seven' there's a lack of urgency that suggests that the 'confessional' is just another style Bowie's trying out for size."
Releases
An edition with additional tracks was released in 2004. In January 2005, Bowie's new label ISO Records reissued Hours as a double CD set with the second CD comprising remixes, alternate versions, and single B-sides.Promotion
Bowie took the album on the road for the 3-month Hours Tour in late 1999. In August, he appeared on VH1's Storytellers, and in October, he appeared on the 25th season of Saturday Night Live to perform "Thursday's Child" and "Rebel Rebel". His appearance on VH1 Storytellers was released in 2009 as VH1 Storytellers.Track listing
Personnel
Adapted from AllMusic.- David Bowie – drum programming, 12-string guitar, keyboards, producer, vocals
- Everett Bradley – percussion
- Sterling Campbell – drums
- Reeves Gabrels – drum programming, guest artist, guitar, producer, synthesizer programming
- Chris Haskett – rhythm guitar
- Ryoji Hata – assistant engineer
- Mike Levesque – drums
- Jay Nicholas – assistant engineer
- Holly Palmer – background vocals
- Kevin Paul – engineer
- Mark Plati – bass guitar, acoustic and electric 12-string guitar, synth and drum programming, mellotron
- Andy VanDette – mastering
Charts