Low? I think not! (Low - David Bowie)

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Product:	Low - David Bowie
Date:	14/02/04 (134 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Truly original music from the master

Disadvantages: some might not like all of it

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 put them away. For some reason unknown to me then and now I picked out Low and placed it in the tray, pressed play and the speakers hummed into life.

For the first time I really listened to Low, I mean really, really listened to Low and I found I liked it.

Low, of course, bares comparison with Bowie?s second Berlin album, Heroes: being the album better known though equally as respected. Perhaps Low doesn?t have the urbanity or the musical highs (the title track and The Secret Life of Arabia) that Heroes has but it is still an immensely powerful and consistent album with a much greater level of experimentation than anything Bowie had done before; I feel therefore that Low marks Bowie?s ascendance into artistry. After Low he couldn?t be seen as a simple musician; Bowie was stretching himself musically, exploring sonic landscapes. Also enter Mr Eno (how Richard doth repeat himself) in his first ever collaboration with Mr Bowie. Eno is of course a facilitator. He facilitates Bowie?s ideas and channels them into something new.

The cover to Low, a picture taken from Bowie in costume from the great Nicholas Roeg film: The Man Who Fell To Earth is a visual representation of what Bowie was after at that point in his career. ?Low? is written over an image of Bowie in pr
ofile. Bowie is trying to keep a low profile after having kicked his drug habit, which he relates in the great Ashes to Ashes on Scary Monsters. Even within the booklet, the pictures of Bowie posing in different apparel show him more relaxed, in less extravagant clothing than usual; he?s clearly distancing himself from his glam-rock/Ziggy Stardust persona.

But that?s not what is important, is it now? The music is the key. So let me get down to the important stuff.

Like Heroes Low is an album split into two halves. Low begins with admittedly challenging song based music; Bowie is moving away from his past but one step at a time. The music here is full of odd sounds and synthesizers and is guiding the listener towards the second half of the album which is a stream of genuinely challenging and what would have been at the time radical instrumentals. In this sense the album feels like a statement of intent, the incremental motion away from the past into a new and unusual future. Bowie is clearly stretching himself and taking on a new guise, as said previous, this is Bowie as Artist. Bowie is carving out a place in musical history and does so beautifully.

Bowie opens the album with a particular favourite of mine and a curiosity in many ways for Speed of Life is almost a normal instrumental. It is unlike what comes in the second half of the album; it is guitar lead. There is a gloriously simple guitar riff that repeats itself, powering the track; it?s one of those infectious rhythms that catch you and you find you can just keep listening to it without surcease. There is actually a remarkable amount going on within Speed of Life though there is little variation to speak of. As behind the powering guitar there are myriad organs, shimmering keyboards and guitars all complementing one another perfectly, spreading out little tendrils of rhythm around the central riff. I find Speed of Life surprisingly exciting; it last just under three m
inutes and I want it to continue, to keep speeding on; for the music suggests a kind of motion; the speed of life; there is balance here too; a balanced speed to life.

Breaking Glass has truly surreal lyrics, but then Bowie and Eno were meant to have written their songs having selected random words written on scraps of paper from a box and arranged them in any order that occurred to them. Still there is a sense of something obscene having been done in the words Bowie sings; I can?t quite explain it but ?Don?t look at the carpet, I drew something awful on it? and the repetition of ?I?ll never touch you,? definitely suggest the evocation of a disturbed mind, possibly Bowie?s own before he cleaned himself up. Breaking Glass is short, less than two minutes with very minimal simplistic guitar that repeats and basic percussion; though behind it all there are those Eno flourishes: strange electronic, droning sounds that slide between speakers and seem to add so much; indicating the direction the album is going to take because Low is deeply indebted to electronica. You only have to look at the instruments played by Bowie and Eno; the list is endless and most of it meaningless to me, they?ve assorted so many curious instruments.

There is a frenetic, ululating synthesizer beginning to What in the World that should be disastrous but is oddly hypnotic. I don?t know quite how to describe What in the World as though it?s a great song there is something elusive about it. I find Bowie?s vocals power the song, but are backed up by the wall of sound that are the ululating backing vocals, the quietly grinding guitar, the backwards-and-forwards piano clashing around the edges. What in the World is a case of the structured organisation of chaos. The music suggests the confusion of the title, of Bowie lyrics, of pure bafflement. What in the World is a true gem, one of those musical nuggets that are hidden away quietly within albums waiting to be discovered. r>
But better is yet to come. Sound and Vision was put out as a single and begins the best of Bowie 1974-79 ? it is also the name of a box set of Bowie CDs as well as his 1993 tour, which should suggest the respect with which this song is held. I have to admit though the first time I heard Sound and Vision I found myself disappointed but then I was expecting to hear something different, something rockier, with more obvious energy. I soon came around though for Sound and Vision is fantastic. I find it quite a minimal song in many ways. The central guitar riff is simplistic yet hypnotic in the way it is on Speed of Life. Sound and Vision to me just bounces along; for it does seem to me to bounce. A strange description I admit but somehow very fitting. Again I find it impossible to put into words (I won?t use though feel like saying: the discreet pleasure) how much fun Sound and Vision actually is; fun though seems like a poor word. For Sound and Vision is a damned fantastic listen, a glorious three minutes of musical accomplishments; for all the disparate moments of music; for stuttering instruments that enter for a moment only to disappear. I just think that this is inspired song writing and I love it; however did I ever find Sound and Vision boring? Sometimes I have to wonder at myself.

In the same way I first found Always Crashing in the Same Car a little downbeand a little depressing. WHY? It is a wonderful track filled with curious swirling, synthesized, electronic spiralling behind another catchy yet simplistic guitar riff. Bowie?s vocals are just great, quietly understated, floating over the surface of the music. I can feel Eno powering the song, with his tapestry of background sounds. It?s so difficult to describe for the simple fact that all the swirling electronica sounds on paper like a mess of conflicting sounds. But it adds a depth to the sound, a real experimental basis that allows the guitar that runs over it to work. It i
s like the concrete, technologically inspired foundations that allow it to be built upon by more conventional music. It is a perfect marriage of what Bowie has done and will do. Glorious, plain and simple.

As is Be My Wife. This is fun in the same kind of way that Sound and Vision is. Again there is the catchy guitar riff and wonderful piano behind that. The percussion is simply there to ground the sound, the song. Bowie?s vocals sound almost happy, almost dead-pan at time, he?s talking almost as much as he is singing. You could almost see this as an experimental pop song. It is designed to capture the listener using simple rhythms and yet does so in the most sophisticated way possible, for the mixtures of sounds, the competing rhythms are never intrusive; they play off one another expertly creating in one sense a pop song as a pop song should be, superbly crafted, thrilling and artistic. The lyrics though seem oddly incongruous for Bowie. ?Be my wife, share my life? sometimes I get so lonely.? The latter seems understandable living the life he does; maybe though the former is a nod to the ch-ch-h-ch-changing David (?nobody calls me Dave?) Bowie.

I always thought New Career in a New Town was fantastic. It marks the progression of the album into purely instrumental territory though is slightly less electronic than what comes after it. Though there is not guitar here. New Career in a New Town starts with swirling synthesizers and pad-like percussion. Then comes in what sounds like a harmonica but isn?t (I have no idea what it is to be honest) that sounds melancholic throughout the song; it feels like it should have come out of Sergio Leone?s Once Upon a Time in the West. Fantastic also are the keyboards that repeat a simple rhythm around the edges. The piano and that-instrument-that-sounds-like-a-harmonica have the catchiness of the guitar riff in Speed of Life. Though in one sense there is no catchy pop-riff here though it does hoo
k you. Again this should be something of a misplaced wall of sound; but the shimmering keyboards and droning electronic rhythms are just glorious. This is another Bowie gem, rarely brought out of the box but a delight when it is.

Warszawa really does mark the journey into dark near-electronic music; the real shift in the album. This is a remarkably dark, brooding instrumental; full of static drones and slowly shifting synthesizers. It moves slowly, giving it time to build up; beneath the opening textures of electronic and synthesized sounds is a slow heartbeat-like bass, deep and measured. Above that, sliding in after a minute there is almost pastoral, yet melancholic keyboards (at least I think that they are ? on this album how do you tell?). The mood and rhythms are set and repeated in near doom-laden darkness until towards the end Bowie?s voice enters humming almost god-like over the music. Behind those mono-syllabic back vocals; like an invented language; the keyboards shift and rhythm and pitch before settling back down into what has gone before. If this doesn?t make absolutely sense it is because this is nearly impossible to put into words. There is a textured depth here, a sliding darkness but also a quiet beauty. It is music to play loud on headphones whilst surrounded by darkness. You have to allow Warszawa to surround and permeate yourself.

Art Decade reminds me slightly of Philip Glass (no wonder Glass wrote a Heroes and a Low Symphony). It is more delicate than Warszawa and seems to me to built up out of moments of sounds in stages, for there are electronic buzzes, distant sleigh bells, synthesized ambient textures, slowly rhythmical keyboards and a wealth of created background noises courtesy most likely of Eno. At times there is something here that reminds you of really powerful, dark classical music (There is something in particular and annoyingly I can never remember what it is!). Especially at the beginning there is a
moment when I half expect it to explode like the beginning of Mahler?s 5th symphony, but instead it becomes more low-key. This is the sort of track where you have to listen out for the nuances of sound, for those delicate moments and careful phrasing of sounds. Bowie and Eno seem to be exploring the tone and timbre of sounds; to be finding their way through a sonic landscape that is entirely of their own creation. This sounds like nothing else eventually, not like Bowie and not like Eno, even. It is synthesis of so many kinds of music that it transcends them all and can rightfully claim to be truly original, if perhaps not for all tastes.

Weeping Wall on the other hand has a little more energy and the beginning is truly beguiling with Bowie?s vibes (an instrument I?m not usually too keen on) floating and shimmering beautifully before droning synthesizers arrive to carve their way through the sound. The vibes really keep the piece moving, even when they are couple and mirrored by an electronic beat. When distant guitar stridently echoes beyond and ululating klaxons whistle around the edges it is the vibes that keep the rhythm together, that holds the music in place. There is something truly wonderful about Weeping Wall that defies description. It hasn?t the darkness of Warszawa, if anything there is a curious, studied lightness to it, a gentleness that belies the intelligence behind its construction. It is easier to listen t, I find, than the other instrumentals and perhaps has a little more going for it as it is more obviously listenable to, less minimal. Weeping Wall is the third and final hidden gem to be found within Low.

Finally Bowie and Eno leave us with Subterraneans. The shimmering synthesizer that runs through this reminds me of Robert Fripp?s ambient soundscapes. They are all about delicately emotive changes to pitch and tone; they shimmer around, above and below, all around the other instruments, never detracting and always
giving a sense of depth and yet an emotional fragility. There is an electronic ululating, distorted throb running through that echoes and crackles. Together they allow the vocals, designed for pure sound and not for words, and Bowie?s saxophone, not to enter out of place. Again there is a sense of brooding and a hint of darkness in Subterraneans, not surprisingly considering the title. It is a track completely outside of the mainstream like Warszawa with which it is definitely comparable. There is something dreamlike about it, something that when you listen to it, as I am now, you find yourself stopping (as I have been doing) and listening to the sounds; to the droning and shimmering within the darkness.

Yes, Low is an album that moves successfully between a kind of art-pop-mainstream and into something so completely different and out of the ordinary. I sometimes wonder if the album would be so memorable had Bowie decided to stick with either one side of the album and gone with it; so an album of Sound and Visions, or Weeping Walls. Probably not for it is the successful ability to shift between dichotomous styles that are yet recognisably the same artist that makes Low such a valuable and cogent album. I remember before getting into Bowie that he was rated by musicians as the most important ?pop? (yuk!) musician of the 20th century. Listening to music like this you can see why. His ability to choose his collaborators is often uncanny (ok, let?s forget his 80s stuff), especially here when he teams up with Eno, which is the most inspired move that Bowie ever made. The combination is perhaps one of the greatest in musical history as they gave each other such freedom; Eno really let the artist that was within Bowie come into fruition. But this is to suggest that Eno gains nothing, for he does; Bowie seems to propel Eno further into creative extremes.

Admittedly Low is somewhat rawer than Heroes; it is a little less polished. You can see
Low as a prototype Heroes, at which point Bowie?s (and Eno?s) ideas crystallise and reach more perfect form. Possibly this is true, regardless, Low is a real grower. An album that catches up with you just when you least expect it to. It?s not quite the accessibility of Heroes or the continuity of Lodger but it?s still an extremely important album in Bowie?s oeuvre. Without it who can say where he may have gone.

If you feel the need to purchase this challenging, dark and sometimes exciting album then flip over to Amazon for it is there for a reasonable £10.99, though Play.com is even better at £9.99. Or you could saunter down to HMV as that has a tendency to have Low in the sales for less than that. CD Wow doesn?t stock it though! Bah, plebs!

Enjoy!