Low - David Bowie

Let me begin with an admission. I?ve had Low for some time now ? perhaps two years ? and for the longest time I listened to it in pieces, mostly for the first half of the album. I loved Speed of Life and Sound and Vision; but I never really quite managed to get myself to listen to the entire album. I felt a little frustrated by Low in some ways; I just couldn?t quite get my bearing within the sound of the album. Then a couple of months ago I found myself reading I know not what and as usual the stereo beside my reading armchair was turned on and I checked the CDs available, including those in the shelves and those piled precariously because I couldn?t be bothered to ...  Read the complete review

Low is often regarded as the first of Bowie's Berlin albums, in fact the record was actually written and concieved in France. True it is written at the time the young Bowie was experimenting with drugs to a large extent, more importantly it was a time when his personal life was under going a period of intense stress. His marriage was on the verge of disintergration bought to life in the song "Be my wife" a plea to Angie to just be normal and live her life with him and his son then called Zowie. The album is split into two distinct parts and for those of you that can remember vinyl side one contained the songs with words, while side two ...  Read the complete review

Fantastic Facts for anoraks everywhere 1: Elvis Costello producer and Dave Edmunds sidekick Nick Lowe released and EP called Bowi to repay what he tried to pass off as a favour from one of the world's biggest stars. For Breaking Glass, we were repaid with I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass Trivia is everything and substance is nothing... Now that may sound like just a flip aside, but when you think about the long and amazing career of David Bowie you soon start to appreciate the surface veneer and irrelevance for what it is - all that actually matters. Fantastic Facts for anoraks everywhere 2: Joy Division in their formative years were so ...  Read the complete review

Plenty of people rate this as DB's best album; it's certainly his most avant-garde. The first of his collaborations with Brian Eno, who would go on to produce more commericial material with U2, it is an album of bleak, barren ambience (half the tracks are instrumentals) and defiant experimentation. There is melody, even catchiness, in tracks like 'Speed of Life' and 'Sound and Vision', but much of the album is so slow, grim, and frankly over-produced as to be almost unlistenable. Overrated then, but still an experience...if not an always pleasant one. ...  Read the complete review