Hours (David Bowie album)

Background

Bowie and Gabrels wrote the songs for both Hours and the adventure video game Omikron: The Nomad Soul 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 (on top of the songs which he and Bowie had written together). 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 ("We All Go Through" only as a Japanese bonus track, but also as a related single b-side and on the 2005 bonus disc). On a E3 press conference Bowie said about his work on the soundtrack:

"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" (as heard during a rooftop fight with a demon) 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).

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.

Album cover

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 (particularly the early 1970s). 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.

Critical reception

AllMusic's senior critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine 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.

Original release

All tracks written by David Bowie and Reeves Gabrels, except "What's Really Happening?" lyrics by Alex Grant.