It's strange, extreme, futurist, fragmentary, morbid, painful, exciting, bleak, perverse, experimental, avant-garde, pretentious, fascinating and completely thrilling. A record that creates it's own complete universe. Cold, austere, mechanical. It's musical science fiction. Many would argue that Bowie's best albums were the classic rock of Hunky Dory or glam of Ziggy Stardust, but for me it's always been Low.
Let's start with it's cover. A striking image of Bowie the alien, a still from the 1976 film The Man Who Fell To Earth. Directed by Nic Roeg (Don't Look Now) the surreal film stars Bowie as an extra-terrestrial who visits earth on a mission to bring water back to his own home, a planet that is suffering a terrible drought. Pale-skinned, with strawberry-blonde locks swept back over his ear, a high military collar and a steely emotionless look in his eye Bowie looks distinctly androgynous and Aryan. It's interesting to note that in a recent interview for Prometheus, Michael Fassbender mentioned that his performance as the android David, was based on Bowie's performance in Man Who Fell To Earth (and also Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence). That chilling, mechanical coldness is something that fans of Low will be familiar with.
The cover was also a deliberate but pun on the phrase "low profile" something that at the time Bowie was attempting to keep as he was attempting to kick his notorious coke habit for the first time.
Low apparently contains remnants of the aborted soundtrack that Bowie had wanted for The Man Who Fell To Earth. He'd taken his score to Roeg who had decided that it was not suitable and preferred a more organic soundtrack. It's also the first of three collaborations with ex-Roxy Music keyboardist and early ambient pioneer, Brian Eno. It was followed by "Heroes" (1977) and Lodger (1979).
The album was largely recorded in Hansa Studios in West Berlin. The legendary studios where U2's Achtung Baby and Iggy Pop's The Idiot were also recorded. The experience of living in pre-reunification Berlin is writ large across every track of Low. Musically it's heavily influenced by early electronica like Kraftwerk and the Krautrock pioneers such as Neu. But you can hear the environment: grey concrete of the post-war city, the cold surrounding Eastern Bloc landscape.
Low's 'A-side' contains seven tracks. They're barely songs though, more "fragments" as one critic wrote at the time of it's release. None of them are over three and a half minutes. It is bookended by instrumentals. Starting with the heavily synthesized 'Speed of Life' and ending with 'A New Career in a New Town'. They are without a doubt the most upbeat and positive tunes on the album, 'A New Career...' especially seems hopeful and optimistic. The title reflecting Bowie's fresh start away from USA and Western Europe.
The first "song" is 'Breaking Glass'; an angular, mechanical funk, punctuated electronic blasts and bleeps. It's not even two minutes long. Allegedly the line "don't look at the carpet, I've drawn something awful on it" refers to Bowie's practice at the time of drawing The Tree Of Life on the floor. At the time he was obsessed with the Kabbala and satanist Aleister Crowley.
'Sound and Vision' was the lead single. Following the success of the soulful Young Americans album the track was a huge flop in the US but in the UK it reached number 3 following it's use on BBC trailers at the time. The lyrics "pale blinds drawn all day, nothing to do, nothing to say" refer to Bowie's isolation and cocaine-feulled paranoia during the time in the preceding years where he'd taken the persona of 'The Thin White Duke' and was reportedly subsisting on only "red peppers, cocaine and milk". Healthy!
The lyrics to 'Always Crashing the Same Car' express frustration at making the same mistakes over and over and are said to reflect Bowie's own feelings towards his drug dependency. Following it, and similarly personal is 'Be My Wife' which is the last conventional song on the album. It's said to be a last ditch plea to wife Angie Bowie in the hope of saving his marriage.
The tracks that follow on the 'B-side' are largely instrumental but do contain vocal parts. The first 'Warzawa' is cold, chilling and evokes the desolation of the Warsaw at the time of Bowie's visit there several years earlier. Heavily electronic and minimalist the middle section of the piece is based on a classical Polish folk song. Incidentally trivia fans, Joy Division's original name was Warsaw in honour to this track.
'Art Decade' is the next track. It's meandering, depressing and melancholy. Eno's synths sounding as if they're crying. The next track 'Weeping Wall' is a electronic reworking of 'Scarborough Fair' and has been described by Bowie as intending to evoke the misery of the Berlin Wall. It's the only track on Low where he plays all the instruments.
The album ends with 'Subterraneans'. Bowie again influenced by the sad emotions of his surroundings, he stated that it represented the misery of the cold war to Berlin's residents, to the people "who got caught in East Berlin after the separation - hence the faint jazz saxophones representing the memory of what it was". Musically it contains elements of Elgar's Nimrod from the Enigma Variation's. It contains his most obscure album lyrics, they appear to make absolutely no sense at all. At the time Bowie was "intolerably bored" with conventional narrative based lyrics and was impressed by the "cut up" technique employed by Dadaist poets and William S. Burrows.
As single piece of work Low is massively influential. You can track it through countless bands since it was released. Listen to Low and then listen to any track by Joy Division, Gary Numan, Bauhaus, NIN, Suede, Interpol, Editors... I could go on, but I've done that enough already.
So, as I said, Low is cold, morbid and bleak. It's fragmentary, experimental, avant-garde, and utterly pretentious. It is also exciting, unusual and challenging. It's the sound of a true musical visionary, pushing back musical boundaries and defying the conventions of what was expected of him. It's not an easy listen. But it is, even 35 years since it was released, an utterly thrilling one.
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