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 For those who listen to music in a more evolved way, Low will please on almost as many levels as the insturment layering.
Following the mighty achievement of Station to Station, a startling, astonishing fusion of R&B, rock and funk, Bowie's next album is another massive leap forward, delving into electronica, ambient mood pieces, ambient funk, twisted confessional pieces and playful experimentation. The result is Low, one of my all time favourite Bowie albums (along with Station to Station and Hunky Dory). There are some similarities with Station to Station on the album's first half, most notably in the use of driving repetitive guitar lines(in the style of Kraftwerk and Neu) mixed with funky rhythm sections. Low's opener, the immediately arresting and splendid instrumental Speed of Life, recalls the opening track of Station to Station and foreshadows V-2 Schneider from Bowie's next album Heroes. The addition of synthesisers gives the track a warm, yet eerie and excitingly futuristic sheen that is all the more effective for it. This is one of my all time favourite Bowie tracks; everything clicks together perfectly, the timing of the playing is spot-on, the perfect start to an album. Why it wasn't included on Bowie's instrumental compilation All Saints is utterly baffling, as not only is it one of Bowie's best instrumentals, it's also in my Top 10 Bowie recordings of all time. The next couple of songs: Breaking Glass and What in the World are two short pieces with more emphasis on experimentation, both quite lively and playful musically, though Breaking Glass has a dark, sinister lyric, seemingly dealing with Bowie's paranoia and cocaine addiction during the Young Americans/Station to Station period of his career. Sound and Vision is the most famous track here, with a memorable and repetitive riff that did very well in the UK charts and helped Low get to number 2 in the album charts, which is frankly astonishing for a work as uncompromising as this. Not my favourite on the album, as I've heard it too much (i remember it was used on a Blockbuster Video advert years back, and it got on my nerves back then). Always Crashing in the Same Car is a musically beautiful, yet lyrically disturbing account of Bowie's raging drug-fuelled paranoia at the time, and this is followed by the superb Be My Wife, driven along by a classic piano line and a lovely, simple vocal. Side One of Low ends with A New Career in a New Town, which is another instrumental, a lovely, bittersweet piece that has the same sense of movement and travel that Speed of Life does, though this is a much sadder, melancholy number. Side one of Low is peachy, a truly great, versatile, lyrically fascinating collection of music, but Side Two of Low is something else altogether: four instrumentals that rank along with Bowie's finest of all time. Wordless (except for the chanting at the endings of Warzsawa and Subterreaneans), they take the listener to another world entirely. it's staggering to think David Bowie was responsible for these pieces; they're a million miles away from stuff like Life on Mars, Golden Years, Rebel Rebel or Young Americans. It's a testament to Bowie's amazing versatility during this decade. The epic Warzsawa is the first, a track I find very sad but also strangely beautiful. There are some superb synthesiser patterns throughout, and this is probably the most cinematic of all of Bowie's instrumental pieces (it was used to great effect in Uli Edel's Christiane F. in 1981). This is followed by the stunning Art Decade, am ethereal, sleepy underwater piece, that has lots of layers, textures, and beauty to it. It has a surreal, dream-like quality to it and is, along with the lovely Moss Garden from Heroes, the most tranquil of all of Bowie's works. Weeping Wall is a lot edgier and unsettling, sounding as though it belongs in an obscure European art horror film, all creepy xylophones and wailing, searing, echoing guitars. Probably the least of the four Side Two tracks, it's still a very atmospheric piece. Subterreaneans ends the album on a chilling, uncertain note, a fantastic, late-night slice of moody, electronic blues that would make for a scary listen on a middle-of-the-night drive. The use of saxophones is brilliant, making the music sad as well as eerie. All in all, Low is probably the most strikingly different of all of Bowie's albums: it was one of the first Bowie albums i had ever listened to (Heroes was the first)and in a way that was a bad thing, because it raised my opinion of him to such a high level that i ended up being critically unfair to some of his other, lesser albums (in the case of Diamond Dogs heinously unfair, as its excellent, in the case of Lodger, quite justified, as its deeply flawed). To follow the huge success of his last two albums (plus the huge success of singles like Fame and Golden Years) with an album as perversly uncommercial as this was a striking move. And it was worth it: Low was and still is one of the most fascinating albums ever to be recorded by a major artist. Even though Low is beautiful to listen to all the way through, I sometimes have a tendency to start it from Warszawa onwards, as Side Two of Low is a tremendous suite of music that is extremely effective to listen to by itself. Proto-chill out music, if you will, though a lot more emotionally involving that most of what that genre would have to offer. Low is one of the seminal albums of the seventies, and of all time.
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