In the early 1990s, while still signed to EMI in Great Britain, David Bowie signed with Virgin Records in the U.S., at the peak of the label’s success in the pop field (Janet Jackson, the Rolling Stones, Lenny Kravitz, Smashing Pumpkins, et alia). The three studio albums he subsequently recorded for Virgin – OUTSIDE (1995), EARTHLING (1997), and ’hours…’ (1999) – were among the most adventurous and controversial he ever produced.

Two years later, Bowie negotiated a deal with Columbia Records for his own label, ISO, and went on to record his most recent studio albums under the new venture, HEATHEN (2002) and REALITY (2003). The deal also brought rights for OUTSIDE, EARTHLING, and ’hours…’, and in 2004, they were issued by Sony International as two-CD sets, each containing a bonus disc of more than a dozen mixes, remixes, edits, special versions, alternate takes, outtakes, rarities and so on. In 2007, they were followed-up with two-CD configura­tions of HEATHEN and REALITY, again for the international market, with bonus discs of impossible-to-find – and in many cases previously unreleased – material.

Assembling these five albums into THE DAVID BOWIE BOX SET brings more than 60 tracks of bonus material to fans and collectors for the first time in one package. As the world awaits news of David Bowie’s next project, the time is right to focus attention on his most recent work, reaching back more than a decade.