JUMP THEY SAY

Jump They Say is a song from Bowie's excellent Black Tie White Noise album, on this 12 inch single it is given five remixes. This single also includes a remix of Pallas Athena from the same Black Tie album. Jump is a well-written and very emotional song that deals with David's brother's suicide by jumping from a building. In typical Bowie styled irony this heavy subject is presented on top off a trendy dance beat without taking away from the seriousness of the subject. The lyrics deal with the idea of jumping into the unknown from a quasi-spiritual, yet somewhat confused perspective. Overall I have always found this song to be very moving and most of the remixes do not detract from that.

The Brothers in Rhythm and Dub Oddity mixes are in a style that used to be called acid house. Both of these mixes feature the percolating synthesizers and psychedelic sound effects usually associated with this early 90s dance style. The Brothers in Rhythm mixes include the vocals, while the Dub version is all cool electronics and no vocals. The Dub mix is really nice, but the Brothers in Rhythm mixes are the best since the added synths with the vocals add to the drama of the song and these mixes are actually an improvement over Jump's original mix. The other mixes of Jump tend to be a bit drier and more sparse and David even goes through the trouble of recording an alternate chilling dead pan vocal delivery on these mixes. Unfortunately the remix of Pallas Athena is just cliche dance music without anything that is particularly remarkable.