"Low", the first album of David Bowie's stunning collaboration with soundscape specialist Brian Eno, is easily the most "plastic" of the trilogy -- that was, and still is, the point. Modern music's chameleon, who has changed personas more times than some people change their socks, bent and manipulated the course of music once again with "Low", and the effects are likely never to cease being felt. In a career that has been all about breaking new ground, this is arguably Bowie's finest hour.

This album is a fascinating hodgepodge of styles: pure, delicious pop ("Speed of Life", "Sound and Vision"), post-punk ("Breaking Glass", "What in the World"), R&B flavored rock ("Be My Wife"), ambient jazz ("Art Decade", "Weeping Wall"), even classical ("Warszawa"). Despite the stylistic variations, the album is of a piece: a coherent vision wherein each song is treated with a rich palette of sonic coloration. Bowie and Eno utilize multiple synthesizers, layered guitars, colliding vocals, and twisted variations of an instrument's "traditional" sound (check out the honky-tonk piano of "Be My Wife" or the harmonica of "A New Career in a New Town") to produce music unlike any heard before in rock.

This album has been cited as the inspiration for countless 80s new wave synth bands and beyond (NIN, Prodigy). But aside from knocking down the door for those new acts, it also lent some serious credence to existing artists like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, who had been exploring the kind of music Bowie took to new, unforeseen heights with "Low".

You can keep Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane etc (glam rock generally isn't my thing). This is my favorite Bowie album, and no doubt one of his most innovative. A collaboration with Brian Eno (produced by Tony Visconti), Low merges Eno's ambient and electronic experimentation (as seen on minor classics such as Another Green World and Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy) with Bowie's innate pop sense to create a truly excellent record. Released in 1977, Low proved that David had recovered from his somewhat flatulent "plastic soul" period with ease and was still relevant in the face of rock's new generation (Sex Pistols, Ramones, Elvis Costello, The Clash, Wire etc.). It also established the course he would take on the next 3 albums--Heroes, Lodger (Parts 2 & 3 of the "Berlin Trilogy") and Scary Monsters.

The album is split into two sides--one mostly a platter of electro/art pop with sparse vocals that predated the New Wave movement by a solid 4-5 years; while the other is a deep exploration of Eno-esque ambient soundscapes that still sound pretty cutting-edge. If there's one complaint I can lodge against this album, it may have to do with the pacing; in my opinion it would've been better to sequence the ambient material with the pop, as one side made up strictly of slow-moving soundscapes can get a little dreary. No big deal. That's what the "shuffle" function is for, right?

Side 1 kicks off with the awesome instrumental Speed Of Life, which marries bleepy synths and treated percussion with a classic Carlos Alomar guitar line. The moody, short Breaking Glass has Bowie intoning his dark narrative ("You're such a wonderful person/ But you've got problems/ I'll never touch you") over a similar futuristic backdrop. Sound & Vision was the single, and easily the most accessible song but doesn't suffer for it at all. Nice sax solo. Always Crashing In The Same Car is another interesting electronic exercise with simple but evocative lyrics--it reminds me of Kraftwerk for some reason. Be My Wife has a great honky-tonk piano as a contrast to the synths. The resigned, hopeful instrumental A New Career In A New Town with its moving harmonica closes out Side 1.

In comes Side 2. Warszawa is probably the best-known electronic piece from this album, and its best-realized one with its stirring, mournful feel and solemn chants. The rest of the ambient pieces build on the same eerie, meditative vibe. Low ends with a feeling of resignation and doubt, which makes sense given the state of mind the drug-addled Bowie was in; which in turn precipitated his move to Germany.

This is brilliant, and a must-have for Bowiephiles and Eno fans alike. Also check out Iggy Pop's The Idiot, which was released around the same time, a collaboration with Bowie and also recorded in Berlin; it's very similar in mood and sound to Low and the rest of the Berlin Trilogy.

A lot of people have complained that these reissues do not contain the extra tracks that the Rykodisc editions did. I am interested in hearing rare material too but sometimes it just spoils the enjoyment of the album by making it sound too long and clumsy. This is no more evident than on "Low". Without the extra tracks this sounds superb, as it was intended to sound.

"Low" is the first of three albums Bowie was to record with Eno in the seventies, the two others being "Heroes", and "Lodger". "Low" is not an instantly accessible album. It demands your patience and attention, but rewards generously. It contains a delightful mix of quirky pop tunes sounding like vignettes of an altered state of mind, and eerie ambient tracks filled with strange alien sounds. A feeling of loneliness and space permeates through this album, not surprising since Bowie had gone to Berlin to lead a quieter life and to keep a "Low" profile.

This album was way ahead of its time. Finally the world is catching up. Philip Glass took some of the instrumentals from this album and recorded "The Low Symphony", confirming that this is very much a modern classic.

I once thought that I knew everything about synth-music (a term I find myself using more often since "synthpop" is a term that just seems to take away from the real meanings behind songs). I once thought that David Bowie was just another glam-rocker from the early 70s who happened to hit it big with Let's Dance sometime in the early 80s, with apparently no consideration as to what happened inbetween. On a whim, I bought David Bowie's latest album, Heathen, and read about the return of the Berlin trilogy producer-Tony Visconti. Upon hearing that album, an insatiable desire for hearing all of Bowie's "electro" material was firmly established. I took a chance and decided to begin at the starting-point of the trilogy.
Low caught me completely off guard. Early industrial came to mind. Then, ambient soundscapes, then...well, I just gave up trying to put a label on everything. It was all just so unique and different, nothing I had ever heard had really touched upon this particular type of sound. The instrumentals, Speed of Life, A New Career in a New Town, and Art Decade seemed so claustrophobic and yet, so expansive at the same time. The seemingly suicidal despair of Breaking Glass, Always Crashing in the Same Car (great titles!), and Subterranians seemed so comforting at the same time. Finally, this was an album with genuine angst, not the commercialized angst force fed by record companies through bands like Korn, Slipknot, or Blink 182. As far as I'm concerned, there's no better album than Low to throw you into the pit of despair, then pulling you out again by actually enabling you to meditate and move on.
Since purchasing this album, I have bought several other Bowie albums, namely Hunky Dory, Station to Station, Heroes, Lodger, Scary Monsters, and 1. Outside. Even after hearing them all ten times or more, Low remains my favorite Bowie album. There's not a single note on it that I would say was wasted.

While ZIGGY STARDUST will always be my favorite Bowie record, LOW and HEROES rank a close 2nd.

What I find most impressive about LOW is that, unlike some of Bowie's later work and almost all of the second-rate 1980's techno-junk which LOW inspired, this synthed-up record retains some swing and some rythm.

It also dulls me to tears to hear about Bowie's "bravery" in releasing these albums, as if there were some commercial risk involved. While he may have been stepping off stylistic cliffs, he gave himself great, nearly infallible parachutes by including great Pop singles on each LP. ZIGGY had "Suffragete City," LOW has "Sound and Vision," and HEROES had its title tune. They were all classic singles and, at the time, the market was still largely singles-based. Bowie may have been a challenging musician who liked to push the edges of the envelope, but he has always also been a smart businessman.