Sorry! Join me for the second part of my conversation with author, musician, professor and all round superstar Leah Kardos on Tin Machine II – the overlooked, underrated work by Hunt and Tony Sales, Reeves Gabrels and David Bowie, from 1991. So underrated, in fact, that it's not even properly available - a mystery in itself. There have been occasional rumours of a Tin Machine box but this never quite happens. Leah and I feel this is a great tragedy, as to ignore Tin Machine is to ignore a crucial, transformative and vital moment in Bowie’s evolution.
Made largely in Australia, in between Bowie's Sound + Vision tour and filming commitments for The Linguini Incident, Tin Machine 2 was released to a muted critical reception and an even more muted commercial reaction, despite a Herculean effort by the lads to promote the record around the world. But clearly, for whatever reason, the spark didn't burst into flame. Maybe it was the label's lack of promotion as Bowie would later angrily claim ("They did dick to promote it") or perhaps the timing wasn't right, or maybe it was just the weather or something like that. But Nile Rogers was waiting in the wings, Black Tie White Noise was about to get underway, a loved-up Bowie was ready to walk Iman down the aisle and the laddish hi-jinks and rumoured intrapersonal issues within the unit were just too much to deal with.
Yet, despite being passed off as yet another misfire in a period where poor old Bowie couldn’t seem to catch a commercial or critical break, we feel there’s some inspired songwriting and brilliant performances on this album. Listen to Amlapura, Goodbye Mr Ed, hell even A Big Hurt - and tell us we're (Betty) wrong. Inventive, boundary-pushing musicianship, flashes of sheer brilliance from the band, moments of sublime songwriting - under different circumstances they would be standout moments in the Bowie canon. Unfortunately, given the times, they were forgotten. Until now.
If you want a fat tasty vinyl edition of Tin Machine 2, check out
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tin-Machine-II/dp/B087L8DB9L
https://www.juno.co.uk/products/david-bowie-tin-machine-tin-machine-ii-vinyl/867550-01/
https://uk.rarevinyl.com/collections/tin-machine/products/tin-machine-tin-machine-ii-silver-vinyl-uk-vinyl-lp-album-record-movlp2715-834103
etc
Thanks to Leah Kardos for the intro/outro music
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S5 Ep9: Leah Kardos on Tin Machine 2 (Part One)
Tin Machine 2! Turkey or twizzler?
It has to be said, full marks to Bowie and the boys for steaming ahead with their second album despite bemused reactions to the 1989 debut, Bowie gallivanting off around the world on the mammoth May - Sep 1990 Sound + Vision tour, being dropped by EMI (leaving DB without a record deal for the first time since 1966) and Reeves getting into the intricate properties of sex toys* - all of this conspired to create this, the occasionally brilliant, sometimes baffling, entirely peculiar Tin Machine 2. Bangers and clunkers come together in a far more focused way than the first album, a greater spectrum of songwriting and Reeves revels in the spacious soundscapes, aided and abetted by producer Tim Palmer.
In this opening episode Leah Kardos and I get to grips with the background to the album, its long gestation and the first few tracks, swooning over our favourites and coming to angry blows over "If There Is Something". Come ahead and dive in!
Many thanks to Leah as ever and also for her background intro music for this and all recent episodes - more information about Leah's many activities at https://www.leahkardos.com/
*I feature Reeves Gabrels, taken from an earlier albumtoalbum episode - do check out his whole interview here! https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/davidbowie-albumtoalbum/id1355073030?i=1000547920678
Tin Machine 2 is not currently available on streaming, but cheapish second hand copies abound on ebay and amazon. (Leah and I feel strongly it should be reissued)
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S5 Ep8: Leah Kardos on I Can't Give Everything Away (2002 - 2016)
In this 'emergency' episode, recorded fast and raw on 9 July 2025, Leah Kardos and I react to the announcement that the final box set retrospective, the last in a series that began on September 12, 2015 with 'Five Years', will be released this September spanning "Heathen" to "Blackstar" as well as gathering up most of the b-sides, single edits, remixes and some rare live material in a box that looks- well, unexpected. What could have been included - and whatever has happened to 'Blaze'?
There's a lot to discuss and so, we discuss it.
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S5 Ep7: Mark Reeder on "Heroes" (Part Two)
Berlin calling... it's September 1978 and young Mancunian punk musician, Joy Division/Factory Records associate and Germanophile Mark Reeder has hitchhiked to Berlin, the city where he would make a name for himself as a producer, DJ, musician, impresario and manager, responsible for firing up the West Berlin underground music scene during the 1980s. (For a vivid immersion into this era, check out 'B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989', the 2015 documentary chronicling Mark and the key and not-so-key players in the West Berlin post-punk scene).
In this episode, we explore more of "Heroes", the most Berlin of Berlin albums, the city of darkness and division as refracted through the unique Bowie prism, aided and abetted by an assorted cast of maverick musicians, egg-head theorists, rock'n'roll, techno, experimentation and Iggy Pop. Mark and I take in the mood of the times, from his own personal memories of discovering Berlin with a Walkman and Side 2 of "Heroes" to the lingering influences of Krautrock, Isherwood, Albert King and Bolan.
Thanks to Mark Reeder for his time and generosity for this episode, as well as to Thilo Schmidt for organising our previous visit to Hansa Studios and as ever, a massive thanks to Leah Kardos for composing and gifting the opening music to this episode.
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S5 Ep6: Mark Reeder on "Heroes" Part 1
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 shop in the city - where he immersed himself in Krautrock and embraced punk, in between trying to wean Tony Wilson off his beloved Bruce Springsteen albums, recommending records to future Joy Division/New Order manager Rob Gretton, befriending a pre-Joy Division Ian Curtis and playing bass in Mick Hucknall’s punk band The Frantic Elevators. But as punk began to eat itself and Virgin prepared to relaunch as a Megastore, Mark began hitch hiking to Germany, exploring the record shops of Dusseldorf, Munich and Hamburg before finally pitching up in a dark, grey, bomb-scarred Berlin in 1978, arriving around two weeks after another wandering Englishman had left, having recently completed his “Heroes” album.
In this episode, we wander gently towards a chat about “Heroes” with Mark taking us back to 1970s Manchester and his place at the heart of the city’s punk scene and how he found his way to Germany, settling in Berlin in 1978 where he became the German representative for Joy Division and Factory Records from 1978-1983 and a member of synthpop bands Die Unbekannten and Shark Vegas.
Die Unbekannten performed the first illegal and highly secretive gigs in the Communist East (Czechoslovakia & Hungary) for their underground scenes, and they released Dangerous Moonlight, the first record ever to feature a Roland 606 Drum Machine.
During the early 80s Mark Reeder managed the all-girl avant-garde group Malaria! and organised the first secret underground punk concerts in Budapest and Prague for Die Unbekannten and Die Toten Hosen for which he was classified as a subversiv-dekadent by the Stasi.
In December 1990, he founded the first independent electronic music label MFS
(Masterminded For Success) in post-Wall East-Berlin. In 2015 he produced the score for the acclaimed documentary film “B-Movie (Lust & Sound in West-Berlin)" about Reeder’s life in 80’s West Berlin avant-garde music scene.
Mark is also an established DJ and remixer, for artists such as New Order,
Depeche Mode, The Pet Shop Boys, Blank & Jones, John Foxx, Anne Clark, Yello or Die Toten Hosen which can be found on his remix albums ReOrdered (SO80s), Collaborator (Factory Benelux) Five Point One (Kennen/MFS), Mauerstadt, or Subversiv-Dekadent (MFS).
Stream "B-Movie" here
Thanks to Thilo Schmidt of Berlin Music Tours for organising our visit to Hansa Studios
With thanks to Leah Kardos for intro and outro music
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
UK