Photo: wenn.com
David Bowie has broken the silence on his new album with 42 carefully selected words after keeping quiet throughout the excitement of his return to music this year, refusing to grant interviews.
He's provided some insight into the thinking behind The Next Day, sending a 'word flow diagram' to novelist Ricky Moody which includes the words 'Anarchist', 'Vampryic', 'Isolation' and 'Osmosis'.
Moody is best known for his 1994 novel The Ice Storm, and Bowie provided a song for the soundtrack of the book's film adaptation.
Now writing for literary website The Rumpus, Moody has managed to get Bowie to do what no music journalist has and comment on the record, sort of.
"I wanted to think about [the album] in light of what he was thinking about it," Moody writes.
"I wanted to understand the lexicon of The Next Day, and so I simply asked if he would provide this list of words about his album, assuming, like everyone else waving madly trying to get his attention, that there was not a chance in hell that I would get this list, because who the f**k am I, some novelist killing time writing occasionally about music.
"And yet astonishingly the list appeared, and it appeared without further comment, which is really excellent, and exactly in the spirit of this album, and the list is far better than I could ever have hoped, and it's exactly like Bowie, at least in my understanding of him, impulsive, intuitive, haunted, astringent, and incredibly ambitious in the matter of the arts."
Bowie has proved one of the most elusive men in music in recent years
The full list of words Moody received from Bowie is as follows:
Effigies
Indulgences
Anarchist
Violence
Chthonic
Intimidation
Vampyric
Pantheon
Succubus
Hostage
Transference
Identity
Mauer
Interface
Flitting
Isolation
Revenge
Osmosis
Crusade
Tyrant
Domination
Indifference
Miasma
Pressgang
Displaced
Flight
Resettlement
Funereal
Glide
Trace
Balkan
Burial
Reverse
Manipulate
Origin
Text
Traitor
Urban
Comeuppance
Tragic
Nerve
Mystification
Elsewhere Bowie has been spotted dressed in long brown religious robes on the set of the video shoot for the third single from the album, titled track 'The Next Day', which will feature Gary Oldman.
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