DAVIDBOWIE: ALBUMTOALBUM

DAVIDBOWIE: ALBUMTOALBUM

Each David Bowie album is unique. Some are universally lionised, some regarded as merely legendary, some, pretentious codswallop. But we all have our favourites. In this series of podcasts, I meet up with writers, musicians, critics and assorted woodland folk, to explore their choice of album in rambling roundelays of free-form facting, anorak-grade geekery, pompous pontification, impassioned argument and highly-contentious chat. I like to think these podcasts exercise the minds of some of the world’s (well, at least the bit I am in) most eminent Bowiebores, my lugubrious interrogations spurring them to wax lyrical and entertainingly - just for you. I hope you enjoy listening to them. Presented and produced by Arsalan Mohammad Music by Leah Kardos

Episodes

April 23, 2025 55 mins
Recorded live in Hansa Studios in Berlin, this is the first of a three-part episode in which Mark Reeder and I delve into the rough, ripped fabric of 1978’s Berlin meisterwerk, “Heroes” 

Manchester-born Berliner Mark Reeder has been obsessed with music ever since hearing Telstar at the age of 4. This passion led him to working in Manchester’s Virgin Records in the early to mid 1970s – then the coolest record sh...
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We continue our chat with Gail Ann Dorsey as she explains the seismic impact Young Americans made on her - and hear a snippet of her breathtaking version of 'Can You Hear Me?' - and reflect on friends and collaborators from Bowie universe, past and present – from Carlos Alomar, Mike Garson and David Sanborn to her current project with Donny McCaslin, the mighty orchestral Blackstar Symphony. And of course, along the way, we co...
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Buckle up listeners, we’ve got a very special guest in today and it’s none other than Gail Ann Dorsey, legendary session musician/singer/songwriter and bassist who accompanied David Bowie on tour and in the studio between 1995 and 2013. In that time, she became a core of the Bowie band, loved by David, bandmates and fans alike for her innate musicality, soaring vocals and cool, calm and stylish presence on stage. 

<...
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Nicholas Pegg and I are back for the final instalment of our three part extravaganza about David Bowie's 1984 album Tonight and its a good one - you'll have never heard anyone explore the joys of 'Tumble and Twirl', 'I Keep Forgetting' and 'Dancing With the Big Boys'  in quite such vivid detail before. In making this series of episodes, I've changed my mind about 'Tonight' to some extent. Going in, I'd dismissed it as a load o...
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Nicholas Pegg and I continue our voyage into the heart of darkness as we venture deeper into the depths of Bowie's 1984 album 'Tonight'. Can we find our way back from the sadness of 'God Only Knows' into the light? Will there be redemption with Tina Turner on the title track? How do the ongoing Iggy covers fare? And what on earth does the surreal 1960 TV series 'The Strange World of Gurney Slade' have to do with the wonderful ...
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Returning to albumtoalbum for a long-overdue reunion is renowned actor, occasional Dalek and author of The Complete David Bowie, Nicholas Pegg.

Nick's an old friend of the podcast and has tackled some of David Bowie's most acclaimed albums in previous episodes - as well as exploring entire eras (our 198More series of chats take an overview of Bowie's singles, soundtracks and various off-extramural activities 1981 - 1...
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January 28, 2024 57 mins
Back in 1974, Earl Slick was a 22-year old jobbing session guitarist fast developing a reputation for his supple, searing style and versatility in all idioms. Hired by Bowie to join his Diamond Dogs tour, Slick then had to suddenly pivot from apocalypto-rock to sleek Philly soul at a moment's notice - but acquitted himself so well, he was invited to play on tracks destined for Young Americans before forming the core band, alon...
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December 31, 2023 33 mins
In this episode we analyse The Next Day Extra, November 2013's accompanying min-album chock-full of tasty treats, rambunctious remixes and some songs that inexplicably never made it onto the album proper. Never mind. Now they get their moment in the sun and thanks to Leah Kardos's encyclopaedic knowledge of all things late-era Bowie, a fascinating conversation ensues in which we gallop across this collection and appreciate ane...
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December 26, 2023 44 mins
Stadium rock! Ziggy! Morrissey? John Cooper Clarke? The Singing Detective! Join author of Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie, musician and director of The Visconti Studio Dr Leah Kardos as she continues her full-spectrum analysis of The Next Day, David Bowie's masterful penultimate album from 2013. In this episode, we look at the final three songs of the album - (You Will) Set The World On Fire, You Feel So Lone...
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We're back! And by we, I mean me and musician, writer and academic Leah Kardos, amongst whose many achievements is the critically-acclaimed book 'Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie' which takes a thoughtful and informed view of Bowie's final projects. She is also a friend and trusted collaborator of Tony Visconti's, founding The Visconti Studio at London's Kingston University. Currently, Leah's working on her next...
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The Next Day is 10. And what a sprawling, dense forest of darkness, enervation and guttural thrills it is. The perfect halfway point between the charismatic rock of Reality and ethereal elusive Blackstar, it's often overlooked and overshadowed by that monumental successor. But there is a lot here to unpack and to do it, I could think of no one better than Leah Kardos, senior lecturer in music at Kingston University where she c...
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October 9, 2022 32 mins
In this episode we talk to the one and only Mike Garson, pianist extraordinaire!
From playing with the Spiders from Mars to improvising one of the most extraordinary passages in pop music – that utterly frenetic piano solo in Aladdin Sane – to the elegance of 2003’s Reality - Garson was one of the only musicians to have played with Bowie across decades, sculpting the sound for Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups, Diamond Dogs, Young Am...
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October 1, 2022 52 mins
The auteur responsible for one of the most talked-about Bowie events in years, Brett Morgen, joins me for this episode of albumtoalbum - the first of a new season! - to discuss the ideas behind, meanings within and reaction to, his film Moonage Daydream. In a wide ranging talk, Brett talks about the acclaim and complaints the film has garnered, why he made it the way he did, why he didn't include your personal favourite Bowie ...
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April 17, 2022 68 mins
He's back! Join me and Reeves Gabrels for more tales from the rock'n'roll frontline.

It's not surprising that the calm, can-do polymath Reeves, who barrels from rock to roll in the blink of an eye, so appealed to David Bowie’s need for a foil, friend and co-conspirator. It had been apparent from their first proper collaboration, the 1988 Reeves/La La La Human Steps performance in which Reeves oversaw a coruscating r...
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January 14, 2022 75 mins
In this, the first of an epic conversation about life, music, art, noise, haircuts, farts, Tin Machine, Buck Owens, Mick Ronson, Mick Jagger - oh, yes and more Tin Machine, legendary guitarist, composer and performer Reeves Gabrels joins me for a wonderfully random chat that charts our hero's early years, his career as a lawn-mower, wedding-party guitarist par excellence right up to meeting the man with whom he would spend the...
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Welcome back to Albumtoalbum, the David Bowie albums podcast with me, Arsalan Mohammad. And it’s a very exciting podcast indeed today as we welcome not one but two Bowie alumni, producer/musician Mark Plati and drummer Sterling Campbell, to talk about a new old classic lost collection of remakes, the legendary TOY. 
 
TOY was released last month as part of the Brilliant Adventures box set, which covers the 1992 ...
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Welcome back to albumtoalbum the David Bowie Albums Podcast with me Arsalan Mohammad and in this second part of our chat with David Bowie’s long time collaborators Mark Plati and Sterling Campbell, we recall the making of albums including Black Tie White Noise, Earthling and of course, the great lost album of 60s tunes revisited, TOY, all of which feature in the new box set Brilliant Adventures. During the course of this episo...
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Join me and Nick Pegg for the fourth and final part of the 198more show, an all-singing, all-dancing odyssey through the wildly underrated Bowie 80s. In this part, we address post Live Aid Bowie, his work with Iggy Pop, Tina Turner, Jimmy Murakami, Martin Scorsese, La La La Human Steps and a fellow called Reeves Gabrels, who would play a huge role in reorientating our hero with his muse, as the 90s loomed. 

I hope you...
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It's Live Aid Special! Join us as we join Bowie behind the scenes at the global jukebox on July 13 1985 for a day that changed pop'n'roll history
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Join us for this 90 minute epic as we continue our mid 80s odyssey through the hectic schedule of D. Bowie, who is dressed in a frightwig and tights hurtling around labyrinths, or smoother than a filtered Turkish gasper, suave and Soho-sexy for Absolute Beginners. We get to grips with the music from both movies, debate Bowie's astonishing work rate, enjoy his Iggy Pop impersonation, tell you all you ever wanted to know about t...
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