Low

Bowie has described the album as one that was extremely important to him and which had an influence on English music thereafter through its ambience and drum sounds. All three albums (Low, "Heroes" and Lodger) featured the involvement of Brian Eno, whose presence is clearly audible throughout, though on Low he is working to Bowie's brief rather than in true collaboration and has only one shared composer credit on the album, Warszawa.

Work on the album began in France at the Chateau d'Hérouville in June 1976, where Bowie was working with Iggy Pop in preparation for his album, and both albums feature the two of them with Ricky Gardiner and Carlos Alomar on guitars. Low therefore also belongs to a second trilogy, alongside The Idiot and Lust For Life, its sequel.

Bowie and Iggy relocated in 1976 to Berlin, to live and work and to kick their cocaine habits - a bizarre strategy which against all odds seemed to work. The resultant Low is an album of two distinct sides, an aspect that the CD format slightly unravels. The first side consists of half a dozen bursts of song featuring the augmented full band from his previous tour, albeit treated by Eno, sandwiched between two instrumentals, and including the two singles Sound And Vision (with the vocal doo-doo-doos of Mary Hopkin Visconti) and Be My Wife. Bowie had evidently been soaking up the German music scene and their are echoes of Faust, Neu!, Can and others.

If the lyrics on side one were minimal, having more or less discarded narrative, on the second side they were banished altogether for a startling eerie and wordless, largely instrumental handful of atmospheric longer textural tone poems, of which Warszawa is the centre-piece. They possibly comprise Bowie's strongest album side. Though sounding initially dark and sinister because of the (then) unfamiliarity of the sounds, they are intended to be glowing and spiritual, a positive source of regeneration and optimism, that grew out of his impressions of the Eastern bloc, though it was to be another duo-decade before the Wall was to go. Weeping Wall, despite its title, was originally intended for the soundtrack of the film The Man Who Fell To Earth, and the album cover is a still from that film, depicting Bowie as Newton, in profile (Low profile).

The composer Philip Glass used two of the pieces from side 2, Subterraneans and Warszawa, along with the unreleased composition Some Are from the same sessions, to create in 1993 his "Low" Symphony - From The Music Of David Bowie And Brian Eno.

I had certain reservations when I heard Low for the first time. It has no predecessor in his catalogue - even Station To Station with its ice-cold lyrics seems tame.

However, subsequent listenings gave me the chance to re-assess my criticisms and praise. To wit: This is a wonderful album. That is the conclusion - the rest of this review is just filler to make you buy this perfect capture of the late 1970s and latter-era Bowie (latter as in before he went average and normal - the '80s period).

All of the first 'side' (CDs don't allow the luxury/relief/averageness of such limitations) is classic, an aural joy (even if the subject matter - Be My Wife, Always Crashing In The Same Car etc. sounds like it isn't). It promotes Bowie at his most pure, un-diluted and resonant. The second side DOES sound like filler the first time you hear it, but subsequent listenings reveal much of Bowie, producer Tony Visconti and 'sound engineer' Brian Eno at their height. It reminds me of the late seventies - and gives the listener a direct soundline from Kraftwerk to Joy Division - certain praise.

Low is an amazing album - not for the glam-rock that characterised Bowie's early albums or the later radio-friendly dirge (comparatively) - but for the amazing aural dynamics that the listener is treated to. At heart, it is an intelligent album. David treats the listener with respect.

Buy this, and, in time, love this. A discerning listener would demand nothing less.

the album is basically spilt into two halves (side one and two, if it were vinyl); the first half consists of tracks with vocals. these are all three-minute blasts of germanic pop perfection, with interestingly textured, melodic arrangements that camouflage the often bleak and dark lyrics- but i'll come back to that later. iggy pops up (no pun intended) on vocals for 'what in the world'. the classic 'sound and vision' is here as well, with it's great guitar hook. while listening to this album, it really struck me that bowie's backing band are really quite good, especially carlos alomar on the guitar. the short, punchy and strangely desperate 'breaking glass' is great as well. side one is book-ended by two bouncy, poppy instrumentals with great hooks and melodies, 'speed of life' and 'a new career in a new town'.

side two is the instrumental side, consisting of four tracks that run together for about twenty minutes as one gloomy, bleak and incredibly atmospheric suite of music: 'warszawa' (and no, i don't know how to say it either), 'art decade', 'weeping wall' and 'subterraneans'. the sound reminds me of german electro-wizards kraftwerk. when i read in a review that half of 'low' was instrumental, i was a bit put off, thinking i'd be bored after about three minutes. but the amazing thing is, there's never a dull second here.

i'd just like to have a brief moan about something, though; brian eno was probably responsible for the majority of 'low', and definitely responsible for the entire second side, yet david bowie manages to fob him off: read the booklet- 'all songs by david bowie'. not very fair. eno must feel a bit cheated. that's the only thing i don't like about bowie; he picks some great sidemen (robert fripp, eno, mick ronson, etc) who obviously have major songwriting input, then hardly gives 'em any credit.

getting back to the lyrics, 'low' contains some of bowie's most personal thoughts and feelings, generated by his state of mind at the time: cocaine was ruining him, and he'd just split from his wife, angie. the reason why I didn't mention 'always crashing in the same car' and 'be my wife' from side one earlier is because even though the arrangements are very good and really suit the mood, it's the lyrics that really hit hard. even the titles seem desperate and dead-end- 'always crashing in the same car'. the first two lines of 'be my wife' are "sometimes you get so lonely/ sometimes you get nowhere".

thanks to wondrous 21st century technology, 'low' has been digitally remastered and three previously unreleased bonus tracks from that period have been added. 'some are' is pretty unremarkable, I think, but the creepy, churning instrumental track 'all saints' fits in perfectly and carries on the atmosphere of the whole album very well. there's a new, longer version of 'sound and vision', remixed especially for the cd re-release that's every bit as good as the original.

i can't compare 'low' to any of bowie's other works- this is my first bowie cd- but i am told by the more informed that it ranks as one of his best. certainly, as a stand-alone album, it's very, very good. it really does capture the gloomy, bleak, morbid decadedence of a post-war berlin and is very atmospheric. i'd recommend it to bowie virgins and veterans alike, as well as anyone into early kraftwerk, can or sixties/seventies kraut-rock. if you liked iggy's 'the idiot' (and if you didn't, you should do!), which i mentioned right at the start of this review, 'low' is a good buy. and that works vice-versa.

overall, one of the most scary, dark, atmospheric and bleak records to come out of the seventies. well done bowie AND eno AND the backing band! five stars *****.