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Earthling (stylised as EART HL I NG) is the 21st studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released on 3 February 1997 through RCA Records in the United Kingdom, Virgin Records in the United States, and Arista Records/BMG in other territories. Mostly self-produced by Bowie, it was primarily recorded from August to October 1996 at New York City's Looking Glass Studios. Bowie composed the tracks with Reeves Gabrels and Mark Plati, who are credited as co-producers, with Mike Garson, Gail Ann Dorsey and Zack Alford providing overdubs later. Developing musical styles previously explored on Outside (1995), Earthling showcases an electronica-influenced sound partly inspired by the industrial and drum and bass culture of the 1990s, further exhibiting jungle and techno styles. Lyrically, the tracks express themes of alienation and spirituality. One of them, "I'm Afraid of Americans", was remixed for release as a single by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, who appeared in its music video. The artwork depicts Bowie wearing a Union Jack coat co-designed by Alexander McQueen. Earthling charted better than its predecessor and reached the top ten in several countries. Its accompanying singles featured numerous remixes and were supported with music videos. Bowie promoted the album through television appearances and on the Earthling Tour in 1997. Although the album was mostly received positively on release, later reviews find Earthling lacked innovation in a time when the drum and bass craze was well-established; others consider it a worthwhile addition to an underrated decade. It was reissued with bonus tracks in 2004 and remastered in 2021 for inclusion on the box set Brilliant Adventure (1992–2001). Background and recording David Bowie supported his 20th studio album Outside on the Outside Tour, which ran from September 1995 to February 1996. The lineup for the tour included guitarists Reeves Gabrels and Carlos Alomar, pianist Mike Garson, drummer Zack Alford and bassist Gail Ann Dorsey. Bowie's positive relationship with the new band was the springboard for his next studio record. He told Alan Yentob in 1996: "They're probably the most enjoyable set of musicians I've worked with. It's the greatest fun and satisfaction I've had with a band since the Spiders." A few months after the tour's conclusion, Bowie and the band—minus Alomar, who departed due to dissatisfaction—played a series of festivals during the summer from June to July 1996. Gabrels later told biographer Paul Trynka: That summer was the end of Outside and [the] beginning of Earthling. I had written about six tracks, more like electronic stuff, on my laptop. I was trying to write without guitar at that point because we'd been crossing paths with bands like Underworld and [the] Prodigy. In April 1996, Bowie began recording a new track, "Telling Lies", alone at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland; it was the last time he worked at Mountain. The song, which expanded on the jungle and drum and bass rhythms found on the Outside tracks "I'm Deranged" and "We Prick You", made its debut at the summer shows. Speaking with Mojo magazine in March 1997, Bowie stated: "[I] used it as a blueprint of where I wanted the Earthling album to go ... We just kept re-moulding it throughout the tour." Also recorded around May was an untitled piece containing the lyric "dead men don't talk" that, like "Telling Lies", pre-dated the Earthling material. Initial sessions Recording for Earthling began in August 1996 shortly after the conclusion of the festival dates. For the location, Bowie chose composer Philip Glass's Looking Glass Studios in New York City. Joining the lineup was engineer Mark Plati, a New York native who had extensive experience at Looking Glass. Bowie himself mostly self-produced, making it his first self-produced record since Diamond Dogs (1974). He explained: "I knew exactly what I wanted. We didn't have any time to pull in a co-producer ... so I just sort of went for it." Plati and Gabrels were both credited as co-producers, while the former co-wrote several tracks. Bowie and Gabrels commenced work on Earthling with Plati using demos the two had made on the road. The album was recorded entirely on hard disk, allowing instruments and vocals to be cut and pasted at random. While Bowie focused on crafting the lyrics, using an improved version of the cut-up computer program used for Outside, Gabrels and Plati focused on the music. Plati recalled: "We were cranking [songs] out one per day. Reeves would be coming up with guitar parts and sounds, I'd be at the computer recording him or working on the arrangement, and David would be on the couch, writing the lyric. At day's end, he'd do a vocal." According to Bowie, the trio did not focus on crafting melodies, instead tinkering with the recordings to see which combinations worked and which did not: "Once we developed a kind of mattress, then I would go into the studio and just free-associate against that." Plati was impressed with Bowie's work ethic and recalled that most of his vocal tracks were done in one take. While the sessions were still underway, the band performed four shows on the US East Coast in September 1996, where they premiered "Little Wonder" and "Seven Years in Tibet". Overdubs The latter half of the sessions focused on overdubs by Garson, Dorsey and Alford. Their contributions were manipulated through various studio effects, such as sampling, looping and distorting; according to biographer Chris O'Leary, Alford is heard more through sped-up loops rather than live tracks. Gabrels also utilised a Roland processor on his guitar which allowed for digital manipulation and alteration. He and Bowie used a technique they previously utilised for Outside: transferring bits of guitar to a sampling keyboard and constructing riffs from those pieces. Bowie stated: "It's real guitar, but constructed in a synthetic way. But Brian Eno got in the way – in the nicest possible way – so we didn't get to that until this album." Garson was not a fan of the material initially, as he was forced to work with set structures compared to his mostly improvisational role on Outside. For the drum tracks, Alford began by working on his own snare patterns at 120 beats per minute (bpm) which were then sped up to 160 bpm, and afterwards improvised on a real kit against the sampled patterns. Bowie's primary goal during the sessions was to combine elements of the "technological" and "organic": "That's very much how we treat the album. We kept all sampling in-house and created our own soundscape in a way." In comparison to Outside, the majority of the tracks were written and recorded quickly, with the entire album recorded in about two and a half weeks; Bowie at one point stated it was recorded in eight days. However, according to biographer Nicholas Pegg, recording lasted through October. In addition to revamped versions of "Telling Lies" and the Outside outtake "I'm Afraid of .... Discover the Stephen Sandford Jay Heinrichs popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Stephen Sandford Jay Heinrichs books.