DAVID BOWIE: "Bowie - The Singles Collection" (EMI)

IN THIS age of grand Pop illusion it's perhaps even more important to be aware of the chief conjurors of yesteryear, to see just how well artifice can be moulded into timeless artefacts. And throughout the Seventies there were few better sleight of hand magicians or, indeed, musical magpies than David Bowie.

For while his fellow Glam Giants Bolan and Ferry both had their obvious root sources in Chuck Berry and art-school chic respectively before blasting off on their idiosyncratic paths, Bowie devoured and disgorged genres at an astonishing rate, a jewelled jackal preying on seminal though half-formed scenes and adapting his way with a smart tune to his newly adopted surroundings.