DAVID BOWIE

1. outside (1995) the 90s was bowie’s great overlooked period, and 1. outside was his great underappreciated album. not only did the singer reunite with brian eno and tony visconti, the dream team he had worked with on his fabled late-70s berlin trilogy, but it found him serving up his first full concept album – or, in bowie-speak, “non-linear

gothic drama hyper-cycle”. set in a dystopian future where murder

has become a literal art form, it centres around enigmatic investigator nathan adler as he investigates the death of a baby. lyrically opaque and deliberately disjointed, discordant and jazzy, the result comes across like an even gloomier, more opiated

blade runner – and it’s not a huge leap from this to his final album, blackstar, 19 years later.