David Bowie is back with a song and video that reclaims his title as the grand old duke of weird. His surprise return from retirement in 2013 offered us a stripped back, sleaze-rocking vision of a venerable glam icon, exactly what his fans might have dreamed of. But such nostalgia was unlikely to satisfy the man himself for long.

This time he is venturing once more into the outer limits of pop, with a gorgeously inscrutable avant jazz sci-fi torch song, all slippery drum’n’bass rhythm, two-note tonal melody with hints of Gregorian chant, shifting time signatures, churchy organ and spaced out wandering sax - like Ornette Colman on a moonwalk. And just when you think it can’t get any stranger, it turns into a bluesy ballad of mourning. “We were born upside down, born the wrong the way round,” he sings with enigmatic conviction.

The accompanying video has the impressive effect of making such a warped piece of music even more baffling and beguiling. It is a gorgeous big-production nightmare, HP Lovecraft by way of David Lynch, with spacemen, scarecrows, voodoo, swamp monsters, ghostly dancers and bejewelled skulls.

Bowie himself appears with bandages wrapped around his head, and dots painted on for eyes, like a mad old soothsayer. In the opening scenes, a pretty girl in a dress walks the surface of a painted planet to discover the rotting corpse of an astronaut amidst blasted mountains. It’s the cute John Lewis moon advert turned into the stuff of bad dreams. A devil’s tail slips from beneath the girl’s dress. And who might that astronaut be? Major Tom is dead. Bowie lives.

Blackstar video: 'It’s the cute John Lewis moon advert turned into the stuff of bad dreams' Credit: YouTube

“I’m not a film star, I’m not a pop star, I’m a blackstar,” he sings. He is certainly a star of his own very peculiar devising. It is unlikely to worry Adele about her prospects for dominance of the charts. But this extraordinary visual and musical taster will make any Bowie fan salivate for the new album to be released on January 8th next year.

At 68 years old, Bowie is still the strangest superstar in pop.