The Buddha of Suburbia is the nineteenth studio album[a] by the English musician David Bowie, originally released on 8 November 1993 through Arista Records in the United Kingdom and Europe.

Working with the musician Erdal Kızılçay, recording took place at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland and was completed in six days; Mike Garson contributed piano overdubs.

While promoting his then-upcoming album Black Tie White Noise in February 1993, David Bowie spoke with the British novelist Hanif Kureishi for Interview magazine.

"[10] The pianist Mike Garson, who had recently reunited with Bowie on Black Tie White Noise, overdubbed piano parts for two tracks ("South Horizon" and "Bleed Like a Craze, Dad") in a single three-hour session at O'Henry Sound Studios in Burbank, California.

Then, having noted which musical key I was in and having counted the number of bars, I would often pull down the faders leaving just the percussive element with no harmonic informations to refer to.

The more dangerous or attractive ones would then be isolated and repeated ...[1] According to O'Leary, the music Bowie made for The Buddha of Suburbia consisted of short "motifs – combinations of guitar, synthesiser, trumpet, percussion, [and] sitar".

[14] He also presented a list of influences that he drew from when creating it, including the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), Roxy Music, T. Rex, Neu!, Kraftwerk and Brian Eno.

[14] Reviewers have recognised numerous references to Bowie's 1970s works,[8][3] with AllMusic's William Ruhlmann naming The Man Who Sold the World (1970), Aladdin Sane (1973) and Low (1977).

[15] The Guardian's Mark Hooper considered Buddha "a gloriously experimental mish-mash of 70s influences",[16] while Julian Marszalek of The Quietus found a mix of "glam, jazz, funk, ambient soundscapes and pop".

[3][8][18] Aside from the three instrumental tracks, Pegg considers the album's lyrics "non-linear", which he believes suggests an adoption of the working methods of Eno, who Bowie listed as an influence in the liner notes.

[1] Bowie stated that he used "great dollops of pastiche and quasi-narrative" when crafting the lyrics as a way to reduce proper narrative form, which he considered "redundant".

[8] "Sex and the Church" uses a beat similar to "Pallas Athena" from Black Tie White Noise,[18] which Buckley compares to the music of Prince.

[22] Featuring various electronic sounds and synthesiser loops,[8][18] Bowie stated that "the original tape was slowed down, opening up the thick texture dramatically and then Erdal would play thematic information against it".

[22] "Bleed Like a Craze, Dad" features contributions from the trio 3D Echo (Rob Clydesdale, Gary Taylor, Isaac Daniel Prevost), who were recording an EP at Mountain at the same time Bowie was.

[8] He almost raps during one section, which Buckley compares to his vocal on Lodger's "African Night Flight" (1979);[3] Pegg also mentions the presence of "Lodger-style percussion" with Robert Fripp-type guitar licks.

[d][24] "Strangers When We Meet" uses a sound akin to the late-1970s works of Roxy Music with a guitar riff from the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" (1966).

[28] In the liner notes, Bowie wrote: "The real discipline is ... to pare down all superfluous elements, in a reductive fashion, leaving as near as possible a deconstructed or so-called 'significant form', to use a 30's terminology.

[1][3] The original album sleeve, featuring a still from the BBC serial's stage production of The Jungle Book overlaying a map of Beckenham, lacked Bowie's face and made his name almost unnoticeable.

[1] Latter-day reviews have praised Buddha as Bowie's "lost great album",[3][16] a return to form,[42] his finest in a decade,[8][43] and even his most important and best release of the 1990s.

[17] Trynka labels it one of "Bowie's triumphs" that "benefitted from its rushed creation",[10] while James E. Perone finds it "a thoroughly listenable album and one that makes for interesting study".

[44] Regarding its obscurity, Pegg states that it "remains one of the choicest treasures awaiting discovery among Bowie's less familiar work", one that displays him "at his most bravely experimental".