David Bowie Hunky Dory

180g Audiophile Vinyl LP!
Mastered by Ray Staff at AIR Studios In London!
2018 Stereophile Magazine Record to Die For!
Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rated 88/500!
Hunky Dory is the fourth studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released in the United Kingdom on 17 December 1971 through RCA Records. Following a break from touring and recording, Bowie settled down to write new songs, composing on piano rather than guitar as in earlier works. Bowie assembled Mick Ronson (guitar), Trevor Bolder (bass) and Mick Woodmansey (drums), and recorded the album in mid-1971 at Trident Studios in London. Rick Wakeman contributed piano shortly before joining Yes. Bowie co-produced the album with Ken Scott, who had engineered Bowie's previous two records.
Compared to the guitar-driven hard rock of The Man Who Sold the World, Bowie opted for a warmer, more melodic piano-based pop rock and art pop style on Hunky Dory. His lyrical concerns on the record range from the compulsive nature of artistic reinvention on "Changes" to occultism and Nietzschean philosophy on "Oh! You Pretty Things" and "Quicksand"; several songs make cultural and literary references. He was also inspired by his United States tour to write songs dedicated to three American icons: Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. The song "Kooks" was dedicated to Bowie's newborn son Duncan. The album's cover artwork, photographed in monochrome and subsequently recoloured, features Bowie in a pose inspired by actresses of the Hollywood Golden Age.
RCA offered little promotion for Hunky Dory and its lead single "Changes", wary that Bowie would transform his image shortly. Thus, the album initially sold poorly and failed to chart, despite very positive reviews from the British and American music press. After the commercial breakthrough of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust album in 1972, Hunky Dory garnered renewed interest, with sales peaking at number three on the UK Albums Chart. Retrospectively, Hunky Dory has been critically acclaimed as one of Bowie's best works, and features on several lists of the greatest albums of all time. Within the context of his career, Hunky Dory is considered the album where "Bowie starts to become Bowie", definitively discovering his voice and style.
"Hunky Dory introduced a kinder, gentler David Bowie after two heavy albums laden with mythological imagery and pleasant dread - not that this album doesn't also include heavy doses of the latter...Hunky Dory swings wildly between Bowie's otherworldly preoccupations and scenes of domestic tranquility that serve to humanize and ground - if just for a short time - an artist searching for his next move. " - analogplanet, Music 10/11, Sound 7/11
"David Bowie's fourth album is also, in my opinion, his best - for the sheer variety of the music, and the key introduction of the late Mick Ronson as major collaborator. All but one of the tracks was composed by Bowie, which makes the extraordinary range of types of music all the more impressive." - Paul Messenger, Stereophile Magazine Record To Die For 2018

Features:

• 180g Audiophile Vinyl
• Mastered by Ray Staff at AIR Studios London with input from Nigel Reeve, Ken Scott and Tony Visconti
• Replica of original vinyl packaging

Selections:

Side A
1. Changes
2. Oh! You Pretty Things
3. Eight Line Poem
4. Life On Mars?
5. Kooks
6. Quicksand
Side B
1. Fill Your Heart
2. Andy Warhol
3. Song For Bob Dylan
4. Queen Bitch
5. The Bewlay Brothers