Customer Reviews

Low

5 star:		(86)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Low", the first album of David Bowie's stunning collaboration with soundscape specialist Brian Eno, is easily the most "plastic" of the trilogy -- that was, and still is, the point. Modern music's chameleon, who has changed personas more times than some people change their socks, bent and manipulated the course of music once again with "Low", and the effects are likely never to cease being felt. In a career that has been all about breaking new ground, this is arguably Bowie's finest hour.

This album is a fascinating hodgepodge of styles: pure, delicious pop ("Speed of Life", "Sound and Vision"), post-punk ("Breaking Glass", "What in the World"), R&B flavored rock ("Be My Wife"), ambient jazz ("Art Decade", "Weeping Wall"), even classical ("Warszawa"). Despite the stylistic variations, the album is of a piece: a coherent vision wherein each song is treated with a rich palette of sonic coloration. Bowie and Eno utilize multiple synthesizers, layered guitars, colliding vocals, and twisted variations of an instrument's "traditional" sound (check out the honky-tonk piano of "Be My Wife" or the harmonica of "A New Career in a New Town") to produce music unlike any heard before in rock.

This album has been cited as the inspiration for countless 80s new wave synth bands and beyond (NIN, Prodigy). But aside from knocking down the door for those new acts, it also lent some serious credence to existing artists like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, who had been exploring the kind of music Bowie took to new, unforeseen heights with "Low".

You can keep Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane etc (glam rock generally isn't my thing). This is my favorite Bowie album, and no doubt one of his most innovative. A collaboration with Brian Eno (produced by Tony Visconti), Low merges Eno's ambient and electronic experimentation (as seen on minor classics such as Another Green World and Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy) with Bowie's innate pop sense to create a truly excellent record. Released in 1977, Low proved that David had recovered from his somewhat flatulent "plastic soul" period with ease and was still relevant in the face of rock's new generation (Sex Pistols, Ramones, Elvis Costello, The Clash, Wire etc.). It also established the course he would take on the next 3 albums--Heroes, Lodger (Parts 2 & 3 of the "Berlin Trilogy") and Scary Monsters.

The album is split into two sides--one mostly a platter of electro/art pop with sparse vocals that predated the New Wave movement by a solid 4-5 years; while the other is a deep exploration of Eno-esque ambient soundscapes that still sound pretty cutting-edge. If there's one complaint I can lodge against this album, it may have to do with the pacing; in my opinion it would've been better to sequence the ambient material with the pop, as one side made up strictly of slow-moving soundscapes can get a little dreary. No big deal. That's what the "shuffle" function is for, right?

Side 1 kicks off with the awesome instrumental Speed Of Life, which marries bleepy synths and treated percussion with a classic Carlos Alomar guitar line. The moody, short Breaking Glass has Bowie intoning his dark narrative ("You're such a wonderful person/ But you've got problems/ I'll never touch you") over a similar futuristic backdrop. Sound & Vision was the single, and easily the most accessible song but doesn't suffer for it at all. Nice sax solo. Always Crashing In The Same Car is another interesting electronic exercise with simple but evocative lyrics--it reminds me of Kraftwerk for some reason. Be My Wife has a great honky-tonk piano as a contrast to the synths. The resigned, hopeful instrumental A New Career In A New Town with its moving harmonica closes out Side 1.

In comes Side 2. Warszawa is probably the best-known electronic piece from this album, and its best-realized one with its stirring, mournful feel and solemn chants. The rest of the ambient pieces build on the same eerie, meditative vibe. Low ends with a feeling of resignation and doubt, which makes sense given the state of mind the drug-addled Bowie was in; which in turn precipitated his move to Germany.

This is brilliant, and a must-have for Bowiephiles and Eno fans alike. Also check out Iggy Pop's The Idiot, which was released around the same time, a collaboration with Bowie and also recorded in Berlin; it's very similar in mood and sound to Low and the rest of the Berlin Trilogy.

A lot of people have complained that these reissues do not contain the extra tracks that the Rykodisc editions did. I am interested in hearing rare material too but sometimes it just spoils the enjoyment of the album by making it sound too long and clumsy. This is no more evident than on "Low". Without the extra tracks this sounds superb, as it was intended to sound.

"Low" is the first of three albums Bowie was to record with Eno in the seventies, the two others being "Heroes", and "Lodger". "Low" is not an instantly accessible album. It demands your patience and attention, but rewards generously. It contains a delightful mix of quirky pop tunes sounding like vignettes of an altered state of mind, and eerie ambient tracks filled with strange alien sounds. A feeling of loneliness and space permeates through this album, not surprising since Bowie had gone to Berlin to lead a quieter life and to keep a "Low" profile.

This album was way ahead of its time. Finally the world is catching up. Philip Glass took some of the instrumentals from this album and recorded "The Low Symphony", confirming that this is very much a modern classic.

I once thought that I knew everything about synth-music (a term I find myself using more often since "synthpop" is a term that just seems to take away from the real meanings behind songs). I once thought that David Bowie was just another glam-rocker from the early 70s who happened to hit it big with Let's Dance sometime in the early 80s, with apparently no consideration as to what happened inbetween. On a whim, I bought David Bowie's latest album, Heathen, and read about the return of the Berlin trilogy producer-Tony Visconti. Upon hearing that album, an insatiable desire for hearing all of Bowie's "electro" material was firmly established. I took a chance and decided to begin at the starting-point of the trilogy.
Low caught me completely off guard. Early industrial came to mind. Then, ambient soundscapes, then...well, I just gave up trying to put a label on everything. It was all just so unique and different, nothing I had ever heard had really touched upon this particular type of sound. The instrumentals, Speed of Life, A New Career in a New Town, and Art Decade seemed so claustrophobic and yet, so expansive at the same time. The seemingly suicidal despair of Breaking Glass, Always Crashing in the Same Car (great titles!), and Subterranians seemed so comforting at the same time. Finally, this was an album with genuine angst, not the commercialized angst force fed by record companies through bands like Korn, Slipknot, or Blink 182. As far as I'm concerned, there's no better album than Low to throw you into the pit of despair, then pulling you out again by actually enabling you to meditate and move on.
Since purchasing this album, I have bought several other Bowie albums, namely Hunky Dory, Station to Station, Heroes, Lodger, Scary Monsters, and 1. Outside. Even after hearing them all ten times or more, Low remains my favorite Bowie album. There's not a single note on it that I would say was wasted.

I bought it when it came out. A piece of vinyl; that week's purchase. Played it to my friends; we weren't so sure; we weren't saying 'No', but we weren't saying 'Yes' either.

Slide the timer forward to now.

I can look back and realise it's one of those albums which has been in my brain for all that time. Hovering in the background. Understated , but always there in the subconscious.

How do I know? I just picked it up again afer a long hiatus and found out, for the first time, what I had always suspected ~ what a wonderful, wonderful album this is.

I think I'd better say that again, in case you weren't listening - What a wonderful album this is.

The cover is the clue to this iconoclastic album. It's an altered still from "The Man Who Fell to Earth". When this was released on LP, the songs of the first side were leftovers from more commercial albums (somewhat like the second side of Abbey Road, where small piece of unfinished songs were turned into one of the must successful musical montages ever committed to vinyl.) Though Bowie presents more finished pieces, they are short but strange vignettes (my favorite is Always Crashing in the Same Car). But side two is where Eno steps in, and it helps to know that Eno and Bowie were continuing the mythology presented in "Man Who Fell to Earth". It's the portrait of an ancient, sophisticated world, tribal evidently, whose sun is becoming a red giant. Warzawa captures the spirit of this civilization. Art Decade is the memory of it's great past, in better times. Weeping Wall is conflict as water disappears and a planet loved by it's inhabitants dies before their eyes. Subterraneans are the temporary survivors, forced underground to eke out a much reduced life away from the sun that will eventually consume their world. The music is heart-breakingly noble, eloquent, tragic, melancholy. It's a history. A portrait of ending. And a tribute to a beautiful thing, now past. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to hear in music the the soul and spirit of an alien world.

and that's quite a statement. Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Stationtostation, Low, and Scary Monsters are what I personally would consider the classic Bowie albums and this is #1 with a bullet.
i'm not sure what it is about this album. i don't even see it as being particularly odd since i was born and bred on zappa, faust, cabaret voltaire. but this does sound as alien as ziggy stardust was supposed to look.
with his sort of mutual appreciation of kraftwerk, bowie eno and iggy of course made a set of albums that just defied categorization. they were pop songs made in a very non-pop manner. there's no denying that songs like Be My Wife or Breaking Glass are easy to sing along to but their structure, their lyrics, the production, its all just totally wrong.
this album has endeared itself to me and anyone who's looking for something different (how cliche...) you really should check it out. this album is an all-time classic for any type of music and is ironically one of the least known in Bowie's catalogue.

In 1977, David Bowie relocated to Berlin and engaged "non-musician" Brian Eno in a partnership that would span three albums, "Low" being the first. Bowie was riding on a creative high after the triumph of "Station to Station" whereas Eno was entering one of the most fertile periods of his career. The resulting collaboration was extraordinary-- Eno seems to have a way of getting the best out of anyone he collaborates with, and this is no exception. "Low" may be, for all intents and purposes, Bowie's masterwork.

On its original vinyl release, the album's two sides were dramatically different from each other. The first side was largely in the rock vein, expanding upon the work of "Station to Station" but refining it to a much tighter and cleaner structure. The claustrophobic feel is still there, but the pieces are briefer and a bit more diverse structurally, be it the jaunty instrumentals that open and close the side (rhythmically odd opener "Speed of Life" and harmonica and funky piano driven closer "A New Career in a New Town"), paranoid explosion "Breaking Glass", post-punk/proto-industrial "What in the World" and "Sound and Vision" (check out the bright synths and hissing air noises-- it took the rest of the industry over a decade to catch up to this), or chugging, passionate Enoesque pop ("Be My Wife"). Bottom line, this is probably the best, most forward looking music of its era.

On the second side, the pieces are largely ambient in nature-- Eno's influence on this side is more than just coaxing brilliance out of the leader, this time he's more of an equal partner. The pieces are pretty dark and haunted, the paranoia and claustrophobia now manifests itself directly throughout. The pieces are all powerful and intriguing, although its closer "Subterraneans" that really takes it, a moody simple motif, it is dark and scary, I mean, really scary music of the kind you just don't hear. It's placement after the (relatively) bright "Weeping Wall" only further accentuates this.

Admittedly, this one may not be for everyone, it is a highly experimental and intensely difficult work, but there is nothing in Bowie's catalog that's quite as rewarding as "Low". This is one of the real essential pieces of its era.

The common misconception is that David Bowie's LOW was produced by ambient pioneer Brian Eno. Although he plays on the album and co-wrote one track, Eno was not the producer, Tony Visconti was. Getting that out of the way, LOW is a masterpiece. Difficult to get your head around, but extremely rewarding once you do, LOW is full of atmospheric, ambient instrumentals ( the obvious influence of Eno ) , short, punchy, rhythmic rockers ( some instrumental, some not ) and includes one of Bowie's best songs ever, "Sound and Vision", which could be seen as sort of a theme song for his entire career ( read the lyrics, and ponder....). I love this album. And the cover is one of the all time greats.

David Bowie is quoted as saying "Cut me and I bleed Low," which is a very ironic statement considering the fact that Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars is considered his most famous album. Bowie is one of the most often quoted and bewildering figures this side of Madonna in all of pop and this quote is truly a head-scratcher. What could he mean by that? I think it is because of all his albums, Low is probably the one Bowie album that is most ahead of its time. At the time it was made, Bowie was recovering from his cocaine addiction and the title Low is very fitting since low is the opposite feeling a person gets when they snort cocaine. Low is the sound of a man struggling with his demons. Back in the late 70's, artists sometimes recorded side one of a vinyl or 8-track for their hits and side two for their more adventurous songs (or filler). On Low, Bowie somewhat gives in to the formula, except that side one is considered more accessible than hit-friendly and side two is just completely non-commercial altogether. This is Bowie's artiest album by far. You could even say this is his "Anti-Let's Dance", since although "Sound and Vision" got radio play, (but not a big hit by any means) it was intentionally not supposed to be heard across the airwaves. Bowie was recovering from his cocaine habit, so I am guessing that album sales were the furthest thing from his mind at the time. I think Bowie was attempting an album of catharsis, an album that could prove to the world that cocaine wouldn't tear down his artistic integrity and in turn, making the album would help him on his path to sobriety. I am guessing that working on an album of this magnitude would be one of the most rewarding challenges possible during his attempt at redemption. The challenge paid off. Side 1 consists not of songs, but song fragments and contains Bowie at his most personal. If Lodger is considered Bowie's most personal and revealing album, than Low is his album that implies. "Always Crashing in the Same Car" and "Weeping Wall" are great examples of his implications. The first song implies his problems with eroticism; "crashing" being a less controversial way of saying "orgasm", but the way Bowie sings the song, it sounds as if the sex isn't doing anything for him at all since cocaine is ruining his life. "Weeping Wall" from side 2 is pure schizophrenia. It sounds like a man experiencing a withdrawal from drugs-all at once anxious and fidgety. The best song on the album, however, is "A New Career in a New Town" (symbolic title of Bowie escaping to Berlin to rid himself of his cocaine dealers), which closes side 1. Amidst the turmoil and chaos of the other songs on the album, the musically upbeat song offers the possibility of hope and getting through it all. At nearly three minutes, the song is perfect in both structure and melody and the hypnotic nature of it captivates from beginning to end. There really is no other song in rock quite like it. The Brian Eno touches on Low are apparent throughout, but this is clearly a Bowie album all the way since side 1 is so personal. I am not going to get into side 2's instrumental soundscapes too much. I will just say that the tone of the last four songs on Low is very brooding and sounds like a man struggling with his personal demons, which reiterates this being a Bowie album, but having said that, it is far more riveting than depressing. Elton John was the 70's most popular solo artist, but Bowie was the best and Low is further testimony to that argument. Low is perhaps the best example of electronics incorporated into rock and roll ever recorded and based on that alone it shares its place alongside the other great albums of the 70's. Add the element of catharsis to that synthesis and you have a one-of-a-kind work of art that will amaze listeners for years to come. A+