David Bowie

Low

  • MOG Editorial Review

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    Continuing where the previous year’s Station to Station left off, Bowie’s 1977 release, Low, pushed him further into an avant-garde realm of music and eventually became one of his most highly regarded albums. The first half of Low is accessible (if a bit fragmented), with “Sound and Vision” being a particular pop-rock highlight, yet the second side, starting with “Warszawa,” is an ambient gem, and relies much less on Bowie’s vocals. Brian Eno’s experimental contributions, along with the obvious krautrock influences, broke the boundaries of the mainstream and anticipated the shape of electronic and new wave music to follow. It was the start of Bowie and Eno's fabled "Berlin trilogy," and it's hard not to argue that this is the best of the bunch.
  • AMG Review of Low

    Amg
    Stephen Thomas Erlewine
    All Music Guide

    Following through with the avant-garde inclinations of Station to Station, yet explicitly breaking with David Bowie's past, Low is a dense, challenging album that confirmed his place at rock's cutting edge. Driven by dissonant synthesizers and electronics, Low is divided between brief, angular songs and atmospheric instrumentals. Throughout the record's first half, the guitars are jagged and the synthesizers drone with a menacing robotic pulse, while Bowie's vocals are unnaturally layered and overdubbed. During the instrumental half, the electronics turn cool, which is a relief after the intensity of the preceding avant pop. Half the credit for Low's success goes to Brian Eno, who explored similar ambient territory on his own releases. Eno functioned as a conduit for Bowie's ideas, and in turn Bowie made the experimentalism of not only Eno but of the German synth group Kraftwerk and the post-punk group Wire respectable, if not quite mainstream. Though a handful of the vocal pieces on Low are accessible -- "Sound and Vision" has a shimmering guitar hook, and "Be My Wife" subverts soul structure in a surprisingly catchy fashion -- the record is defiantly experimental and dense with detail, providing a new direction for the avant-garde in rock & roll.

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