Music:David Bowie:
EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK AT NEW BOWIE PICTURE DISC

Outside recently announced SPEED OF LIFE, the new publication from Genesis born out of a 40-year collaboration between musician, actor and producer, David Bowie and photographer and designer, Masayoshi Sukita.

What we didn’t say is that suggested for inclusion by David is an exclusive record pressing.

Here, for the first time together on a 7″ single, are parts 1 and 2 of his 1980 track ‘It’s No Game’ presented as a collector’s photographic picture disc. It features King Crimson’s Robert Fripp on guitar and in Japan it was released as a single in 1980 with “Fashion (David Bowie song)” as the B-side. Nine Inch Nails sampled the guitar, slowed and reversed it on “Pinion” from the EP “Broken (Nine Inch Nails EP).”

The lyrics to “It’s No Game (Part 1)” are spoken in Japanese by Michi Hirota, with Bowie screaming the English translation “as if he’s literally tearing out his intestines”, according to the NME’s Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray. Bowie said that he employed a strident female vocal “to break down a particular kind of sexist attitude” regarding Japanese girls and women in general.

In contrast to the musical and vocal intensity of the first part, “It’s No Game (Part 2)” is much calmer; Charles Shaar Murray interpreted this as meaning that by the album’s close, Bowie is “facing the same situation which he confronted when the album began, but with the force of his rage somewhat spent. Things haven’t improved, but he’s taking it better.

In their fine bound edition of SPEED OF LIFE, the authors have opened up Sukita’s archives to assemble a 300-page photo essay which, captioned with their own recollections and memories, traces the development of Bowie’s remarkable career from 1972 to the present day.

David Bowie: ’It’s very hard for me to accept that Sukita-san has been snapping away at me since 1972 but that really is the case… May he click into eternity.’