AVIDIGI

EARTHLING is a strange album title coming from a man who's made a career out of ruminating on rock and rollers from Mars and other faraway places. But after all this time, it makes sense. Bowie's 1970s experiments in dance music, art-rock and other space-age pop forms helped lay the groundwork for modern styles like ambient and techno, and now he comes across as an astronaut inspired by what he's found and looking for a way to bring it all back home. If his most daring '70s albums were a conscious separation from rock and roll, then EARTHLING, for all its jungle beats, ambient noises and industrial dynamics, is a kind of return, an attempt to incorporate all he's learned into the music he started with.

EARTHLING sounds like no other rock album. The beats, which combine live drumming with loops, have the fast, herky-jerky drive of the techno style known as drum-and-bass; the guitars are an explosive mix of live action and samples; there's an occasional dub-reggae synth line; and Bowie's voice doesn't always come clearly through the clanging music. The disjointed arrangements alternately recall danceable rock bands like Big Audio Dynamite and rocking dance artists like Moby. But it's rock nonetheless, with strong, melodic verse-chorus-verse songs like "Little Wonder" and "Dead Man Walking" that use these sounds the way Nirvana used metal and Madonna used house music--as slaves in the service of the gods of pop.