Two songs you need to hear: Sean Michaels’s playlist of the week

Ten minutes of sound that probably represent David Bowie's most future-facing music in 20 years. Although the Thin White Duke's long-awaited comeback has already taken place, The Next Day showed Bowie's age: that 2013 album felt retrospective, a sexagenarian's wakeful voice weighed down by out-of-date sounds. Songs like Where Are We Now? were tragic, beautiful, but never sonically adventurous. No big deal - nevertheless I found myself longing for something that would break my head in two, or three, or four. Bowie was one of the last century's most experimental pop stars; what might he invent today?

Judging from this single, Bowie has more yet to show us. The title track of a forthcoming LP, Blackstar is immediately compelling and so absolutely weird. While he's still working with longtime producer Tony Visconti, Bowie recruited bandmates from New York's contemporary jazz scene. "The goal, in many, many ways, was to avoid rock'n'roll," Visconti told Rolling Stone."We were listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar."

Blackstar is a song in three parts, and the second part's familiar: Ziggy the sequined lounge lizard, with earnest verses and pretty melodies. But parts one and three are much more unusual, not quite placeable; like recent work by Radiohead, Lamar, Scott Walker or D'Angelo, Blackstar is a collision of unexpected timbres, genres and effects. Luscious saxophone curls around Bowie's doubled and uncanny voice, mingling with thin synths, off-tempo guitars, flute, stabs of dub and acid house, complicated stop-start drum patterns that make it seem as if there's a Replicant at the kit. And yet Blackstar is seamless: overall, I can't quite decide if it makes me feel bewildered or calmly, confidently serene.

Bowie's saxophonist, Donny McCaslin, claims Blackstar's about ISIS. Visconti says it was originally even longer: they shaved off a couple minutes to comply with iTunes limits. But the singer himself isn't talking; all he's giving us is the song."I can't answer why," he intones, "just go with me / [I'll] take you home.""I'm a blackstar," he repeats, again and again, impenetrable and aglitter.

Occasionally you may have the impulse to hear Bach played on a harmonica. You must not deny this impulse; you must obey it You must go to Sikora's Classical Records, in Vancouver, or to YouTube, on the internet, and say:"Give me Bach on harmonica." Why do you do this? You do not know. You seek clarity and order. You seek novelty and diversion. You are an idiot. You seek the pure, reedy sounds of a virtuoso harmonicist performing music that is three centuries old. What does the music give you? It gives you amusement and peace. It makes you proud of humanity: that we strive, doing everything, whatever we can, teaching dogs to skateboard, landing on the moon, gathering winter coats for the needy, playing Bach of harmonica. We are simple wonders, not yet quite doomed.