Firstly, this album wasn't produced by Brian Eno - a common misconception - it was produced by Tony Visconti.
Brian Eno was a key collaborator however, with his box of sonic tricks, but Visconti was responsible for the revolutionary drum sound, for example. Utilizing then-new technology, he found a way to ensure the drums infinitely lowered in pitch, thus creating the strange drum sound present throughout
Low - something alien - rather than just 'stick and skin' as it were.
Eno was of course very influential on the instrumentals that take up Side Two of
Low, the side that had Bowie's record executives scratching their heads. In fact, Side One had them scratching their heads as well, nothing had sounded like this before. Between them, Bowie, Eno, and Visconti had created in Berlin, Germany a sound that was entirely new, from top to bottom. Even the structure of the songs, helped by the randomness encouraged by Eno, wasn't rooted in either Bowie's, or rock's past.
Bowie by all accounts was fed up with 'being fake'. For yes, both
Station to Station and
Young Americans felt - even to Bowie himself circa 1977 - contrived, a sellout. He didn't believe anymore in the methods of writing he had up-to-then used. So
Low wasn't about such artistic compomise, it wasn't about worrying whether it would sell - Bowie was fed up with that particular pressure too.
Ironically, Bowie's new anti-commercial sound would provide him with a big hit single in "Sound and Vision", a song with a lengthy instrumental introduction, but still catchy. It has a disctinctive sound - those drums, the synths, and other assorted odd noises, plus peculiar slightly detached vocals.
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There's many remarkable songs here, the kind of 'anti-pop' of Side One actually providing more highlights than the more celebrated Side Two, which didn't even remotely approach being pop.
Take the strange yet wonderful lyrics of "Breaking Glass" - that fantastic drum sound, the brief punk-like nature of the song. And indeed, Bowie survived punk where many didn't thanks to this album, and the two albums that followed. He'd moved so far left field, that he escaped the criticisms heaped on others.
A highlight of the first side is the delicious "Always Crashing in the Same Car", I could listen to that song all day, it just has some kind of effect, something magical about it. Bowie's resigned and weary vocal helps, and the strange noises - of their time, ahead of their time, now behind their time - yet still sounding timeless also help. Bad punctuation helps (?!), with Bowie retaining all the mistakes, even built entire songs around what could be perceived as a mistake.
"Be My Wife" is another stunner, a brief song that doesn't follow any obvious rules of music, yet manages to be one of the catchiest things on earth. It leaves me begging for more. Of the instrumentals, the alien language created by Bowie on the utterly spooky "Warszawa" proved influential, and "Weeping Wall" sounds ahead of its time, even today.
The album has an Eno minimalism that today's acts would do well to take note of ... there are spaces throughout Low, that leave room for the imagination. The music is wonderfully put together.
Rated: 






by Reviewer:
Adrian Denning (blogging at
Adrian's Album Reviews)