David Bowie's Low (33 1/3)
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"'A brilliant series of pocket-sized books focussing on a classic album. Each one a work of real love.' NME"
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"One day I blew my nose and half my brains came out." Los Angeles, 1976. David Bowie is holed up in his Bel-Air mansion, drifting into drug-induced paranoia and confusion. Obsessed with black magic and the Holy Grail, he's built an altar in the living room and keeps his fingernail clippings in the fridge. There are occasional trips out to visit his friend Iggy Pop in a mental institution. His latest album is the cocaine-fuelled "Station To Station" (Bowie: "I know it was recorded in LA because I read it was"), which welds R&B rhythms to lyrics that mix the occult with a yearning for Europe, after three mad years in the New World. Bowie has long been haunted by the angst-ridden, emotional work of the Die Brucke movement and the Expressionists. Berlin is their spiritual home, and after a chaotic world tour, Bowie adopts this city as his new sanctuary. Immediately he sets to work on "Low", his own expressionist mood-piece.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the definitive account not only of the making of Bowie's meisterwerk- LOW- but also of the album itself.
Wilcken has an engaging, easy style but manages to dig deep and place the album in the widest context of electronic music,German expressionism, post-modernism, Bowie's canon, Krautrock (especially Kraftwerk themselves), Eno's brilliant sound and prescient vision.
It makes for compelling and stimulating reading; each track is dissected and explained and examined in depth, but not in a dry way. He manages to capture the feel, the texture, the dissonance and melody of the album in words: no mean feat.
It takes you back to the album itself, surely the touchstone of this genre of writing and asks you to re-examine and re-experience it in a fresh, vibrant and energetic light.
I've been a Bowie fan for years, and a particular admirer of this period of his work, but it made me listen in a new way and discover subtleties and complexities that I hadn't hitherto been aware of. It places it correctly in the context of the Bowie Berlin trilogy and sheds new light on Bowie's relationship with Eno, and en passant with Iggy Pop.
It is written in a highly intelligent, well informed, style,obviously thoroughly researched with plenty of appropiate anecdote and detail and makes interesting connections with the post-punk pantheon particularly Joy Division, early John Foxx era Ultravox and PIL.
It is part of the fabulous thirty third and a third series and for my money so far the Number One.
Wilcken has an engaging, easy style but manages to dig deep and place the album in the widest context of electronic music,German expressionism, post-modernism, Bowie's canon, Krautrock (especially Kraftwerk themselves), Eno's brilliant sound and prescient vision.
It makes for compelling and stimulating reading; each track is dissected and explained and examined in depth, but not in a dry way. He manages to capture the feel, the texture, the dissonance and melody of the album in words: no mean feat.
It takes you back to the album itself, surely the touchstone of this genre of writing and asks you to re-examine and re-experience it in a fresh, vibrant and energetic light.
I've been a Bowie fan for years, and a particular admirer of this period of his work, but it made me listen in a new way and discover subtleties and complexities that I hadn't hitherto been aware of. It places it correctly in the context of the Bowie Berlin trilogy and sheds new light on Bowie's relationship with Eno, and en passant with Iggy Pop.
It is written in a highly intelligent, well informed, style,obviously thoroughly researched with plenty of appropiate anecdote and detail and makes interesting connections with the post-punk pantheon particularly Joy Division, early John Foxx era Ultravox and PIL.
It is part of the fabulous thirty third and a third series and for my money so far the Number One.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found this book to be very informative and very readable - I got through it in an afternoon. It successfully puts the album in context, both of the music of the time, and of Bowie's preceding work - specifically "Station To Station", "The Man Who Fell To Earth", and Iggy's "The Idiot". I'm a big fan of Eno and Kraftwerk, and love a bit of Kosmische/Krautrock when the mood takes me, so I enjoyed the references to all these. There is pertinent use of quotes, and sparing use of technical/muso info - a good balance to keep the flow, um, flowing. I prefer listening to music to reading about it, so I recommend this book for being concise.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Like me. I've not read any others. Yet. Going to get one soon. So I can't say whether you'll find better detail in another book. But if you love Low (which would be the reason you're looking at this book), you'll love this book.
I read this in one go (not hard, these books are tiny), it took me a morning.
It's better than the other books of the 33 1/3 series I've read because it doesn't just look at the actual music. It does look at the music, of course, and then in very good detail. But it also looks at the factors that effect the music and the recording, for example, the place it was recorded in, Bowie's life at the time, other projects Bowie was involved in at the time (e.g. Iggy Pop's The Idiot), and other records released at the time of a similar vein. All these factors help place the book into a historical context, which the other 33 1/3 books I've read lack.
This book was a good starting point for me, as I've only really heard Bowie's Berlin trilogy, and has wetted my appetite for more Bowie. I shall be raiding my mum's record collection (she's the Bowie fan in this house) for more. And buying at least 1 more book about Bowie's work.
Writing this review has made me want to read it again.
I read this in one go (not hard, these books are tiny), it took me a morning.
It's better than the other books of the 33 1/3 series I've read because it doesn't just look at the actual music. It does look at the music, of course, and then in very good detail. But it also looks at the factors that effect the music and the recording, for example, the place it was recorded in, Bowie's life at the time, other projects Bowie was involved in at the time (e.g. Iggy Pop's The Idiot), and other records released at the time of a similar vein. All these factors help place the book into a historical context, which the other 33 1/3 books I've read lack.
This book was a good starting point for me, as I've only really heard Bowie's Berlin trilogy, and has wetted my appetite for more Bowie. I shall be raiding my mum's record collection (she's the Bowie fan in this house) for more. And buying at least 1 more book about Bowie's work.
Writing this review has made me want to read it again.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Awful
If you want to read the thoughts of a rather bright, geeky 13 year old Bowie bore then you've found your book. Waffle of the third order.
Published on 12 Jan 2010 by Ms. M. E. Vaswani
Unimpressed
Not a lot new here for the better read fans of Bowie: some dime store psychological profiling (exemplified in Wilcken's use of the word 'autistic' as an adjective far too many... Read more
Published on 27 Sep 2008 by Pen Name
A Worthless Exercise
If you've read Buckley's biography of Bowie, have heard Low more than twice and are even vaguely aware of kraftwerk you'll learn nothing from this very disappointing book. Read more
Published on 9 Mar 2008 by Ian Stewart
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