In a 2022 poll conducted by Sky Arts, singer David Bowie was voted one of Britain’s most influential musical figures of the 20th century. For over 50 years, Bowie proved to be a rare example of an artist who remained uncompromising throughout his career.

His sound and persona changed in almost every album he created. The music ranged from glam rock and funk to R&B and new wave, and he dedicated himself to the characters he created, like Ziggy Stardust from the album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,” and The Thin White Duke from the album “Station to Station.” Bowie was never one to rest on his laurels.

After reaching the height of his commercial success and popularity in 1983 with his album “Let’s Dance,” Bowie fell into a brief period of stagnation, but soon after, he reunited with his former collaborator, Brian Eno. Eno, who co-produced Bowie’s revered “Berlin Trilogy,” co-created their most ambitious and strange record yet, “1. Outside (The Nathan Adler Diaries: A Hyper Cycle).”

Bowie took a special interest in outsider and contemporary art, as well as performance artists such as Rudolf Schwarzkogler and Ron Athey. He used this enthusiasm to assemble the loose threads of a concept for his and Eno’s upcoming project.

Bowie and Eno organized recording sessions as “happenings,” or spontaneous instances of creation, with a majority of the album’s music written in the studio or improvised. On March 12, 1994, during a three-and-a-half-hour recording session, Bowie came up with a setting and numerous characters on the spot that would become the basis for “Outside.”

After a week and a half of initial recording sessions and months of overdubs, the content that resulted was 25 to 30 hours of material, which was cut down to the hour-long pseudo-opera, “Leon.” The obscure, free-flowing sound of “Leon” raised concerns from Bowie’s label about commercial success, and they requested additional sessions throughout 1994 to rework and rerecord the album.

During this time, Q Magazine asked Bowie to write a diary for 10 days as a contribution to their 100th issue. Bowie took the opportunity to return to the concepts developed for “Leon” and further refine its characters and concept. Soon after he submitted the fictional diary, he later used it as the story for the album.

The album is a sprawling hour and 15 minutes that takes the listener through the non-linear story of detective Nathan Adler and his investigation into a mysterious “art murder” in the fictional Oxford Town, New Jersey.

Some of the album’s characters include outsider artist Leon Blank, jeweller Ramona A. Stone, victim Baby Grace Blue, and the shadowy figure the Artist/Minotaur.

Along with the musical tracks, the album also featured multiple “segues,” or spoken-word narrations by each of the record’s characters, which are all recited by Bowie using a multitude of different effects that distorted his voice.

The record is a blend of art rock, jazz, industrial rock, electronica, and experimental ambient music with a prime focus on atmosphere. It ranges from Bowie’s catchier, pop-oriented songs like “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” and “Strangers When We Meet,” to the chaotic bop of “A Small Plot of Land,” or to the hypnotic and rhythmic “The Motel.”

The album is fully unabashed in its strangeness. It’s at its best when Bowie gives himself over to the music’s spellbinding quality and lets the listener stew in the album’s unique mix of gloom, manic energy, and offbeat humor.

The track “Wishful Beginnings,” for instance, is genuinely off-putting and consuming. It is comprised primarily of a slow, pulsing drumbeat, sparse and dissonant synthesizer trills, and Bowie’s Scott Walker-esque croon. It is an uncomfortable song to listen to.

“Breathing in, breathing out / Breathing in only doubt / This pain must feel like snow / I’m no longer your golden boy / Sorry little girl.”

Another incredible moment comes near the end of the album when “Segue – Nathan Adler Pt. 1” transitions into arguably the best song on the record, “I’m Deranged.” The narration of “Segue” perfectly sets up the beginning of “I’m Deranged,” a propulsive track with overlapping drumbeats, chaotic piano lines, and Bowie’s cryptic howling:

“And the rain sets in / It’s the angel man / I’m deranged / Cruise me, cruise me, cruise me, baby.”

The album is certainly not for everyone. For one, it’s most effective when listened to in full. A lot of the songs on the album only work when listened to in context with the rest of the record, letting the ambience of the work settle in.

It also doesn’t help that this album was the first in a planned trilogy of records to be released until the end of the millennium, the CD’s diary ending with a “to be continued…” This sort of storytelling is fascinating and something I’m willing to indulge in and explore, but to some, it could come off as convoluted.

The album was divisive at release, with some critics praising its challenging nature and others finding it pretentious. Over time, it’s received a cult following and some retrospective reappraisal, but it remains largely forgotten to those unfamiliar with Bowie’s back catalog.

It’s a wild and ambitious record that takes big swings with every song, lyric, and sound. While its batting average is not perfect, it more than makes up for its missteps with a sheer audacity and peculiarity only David Bowie could achieve.

The story that the album tells is something you have to feel your way through rather than understand. Even if you read the booklet of Nathan Adler’s diary entries that came with the CD, it is very unlikely you’ll be able to make sense of the album’s overarching narrative. However, Bowie stressed that the story’s obfuscated nature was intentional.

“The narrative and the stories are not the content,” said Bowie. “The content is the spaces in between the linear bits. The queasy, strange textures.”