With final album, Bowie made dying a work of art

David Bowie won wide acclaim when he released "Blackstar." With his death two days later, the album appears in a startlingly new light, as it turns out to be an intricate final statement from the legend.

The album, the 25th from the groundbreaking artist, proved Bowie to be cutting edge to the end as he taps a quartet to create a hard jazz sound.

The lyricism on "Blackstar" grows wistful as Bowie -- long fascinated by space and his separation from his body -- reflects on his dwindling time on earth.

A customer picks up a copy of "Blackstar," the latest album by David Bowie, in central London on January 11, 2016 ©Justin Tallis (AFP)

After he died Sunday at age 69 from a secret battle with cancer, his longtime producer Tony Visconti revealed that Bowie knew "Blackstar" would be his last work.

"His death was no different from his life -- a work of art," Visconti wrote on Facebook.

"He made 'Blackstar' for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn't, however, prepared for it," he wrote.

Summing up Bowie's artistic sense, Visconti wrote: "He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way."

Bowie last week released a video for a second track on the album, "Lazarus," which was written for a current theater production in New York -- a new take on "The Man Who Fell to Earth," the novel of an alien exploring the planet's delights whose 1976 film version starred Bowie.

Yet the video takes on powerful new meaning in light of Bowie's undisclosed illness. The singer sings from a hospital bed, blindfolded with buttons for his eyes.

"Look up here, I'm in heaven / I've got scars that can't be seen," Bowie, his voice bearing no sign of physical weakness, sings to a dark bass line.

Bowie's body levitates and his arms flail as the screen switches to the singer at his desk singing: "You know I'll be free / Just like that bluebird."

- Innovative until end -

"Blackstar" was only Bowie's second recent album. In 2013, he suddenly returned with "The Next Day" after a decade-long absence that led many fans to presume he had retired.

Both albums -- the first announced and the second released on his birthday, January 8 -- won widespread critical acclaim. Yet while "The Next Day" marked a return to classic Bowie, with tight and driving rock tunes, "Blackstar" showed an artist eager to break traditional song structure and confound expectations.

The album opens with a title track that runs nearly 10 minutes long. With a macabre backdrop, the song shifts musically several times with Bowie's voice -- in a gentle wail -- holding it together.

Accompanied by a nightmarish video in which Bowie again puts on the blindfold, the song dwells on death and religion with the line, "On the day of execution / Only women kneel and smile."

Saxophonist Donny McCaslin was quoted as saying Bowie wrote the song about the Islamic State group, although others around the singer said they were not sure.

- Reflections on past, with eye forward -

Bowie has long experimented with form, most famously in the "Berlin Trilogy" that started with his somber 1977 album "Low," in which he took inspiration from the burgeoning electronic scene in his temporary home in Germany as he battled addiction.

For "Blackstar," Bowie sought out McCaslin, a saxophonist who has tested the limits of modern jazz with funk and electronics.

Bowie lets McCaslin take the lead, with the saxophone charging throughout the album in a fashion similar to a rock guitar.

His voice dueling maze-like with the saxophone, Bowie returns to his fascination with the avant-garde of previous eras.

"'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore" reflects on the horror of World War I, with Bowie describing the song as a taste of how the Vorticists -- a modernist artistic movement of the era -- would have crafted a rock song.

Bowie, whose sexuality was never simple, sings in Polari, the slang of the gay underground in late Victorian England, in "Girl Loves Me."

Bowie, who rarely appeared in public and last performed in 2006, turns increasingly introspective as the album draws to a close.

A longtime resident of New York, the British artist sings over haunting minor piano on "Dollar Days": "If I'll never see the English evergreens I'm running to / It's nothing to me."

Yet "Blackstar" ends not with a ballad but an anthem, "I Can't Give Everything Away," with a hint of New Wave dance layered with bold, poised blasts of saxophone, electric guitar and Bowie's voice.

Bowie closes with a hint of mystery, singing, "This is all I ever meant. That's the message that I sent. I can't give everything away."

A portrait of David Bowie during a memorial event at the consulate of Great Britain in St Petersburg on January 11, 2016 ©Olga Maltseva (AFP)

Flowers and other momentos are left at the Hollywood Star in Hollywood, California on January 11, 2016 ©Frederic J. Brown (AFP)