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Rating: Low was released a long time ago in 1977, and it's hard to believe it. This album contains everything and more. Rock punk industrial new-wave dark trip-hop ambient ethno downtempo post-rock...
The start is fast: the Duke offers us a brief instrumental of robotic funk slightly tinged with synth. After this short introduction comes "Breaking Glass": slightly acidic guitar, groovy bass, acidic synths, and Bowie's voice, beautiful, intense, warm, almost sensual. "What In The World" keeps the pace high and speaks with an urgency that leads directly to much late '90s disco-punk and electroclash. Ok, almost everyone has heard "Sound And Vision" at least once: dry and constant rhythm, bass always prominently featured, and an acidic rain of synths. It almost makes you want to dance, then the sax arrives and his ever dark and fascinating voice overlaps itself... "Blue blue electric blue it's the colour of my room...". One of those songs that can chase away paranoia. Perhaps it represents the highest point of the album along with the following "Always Crashing The Same Car", a description of haunting beauty: a Mercedes skidding on caviar in a Berlin underground garage and always crashing into the same parked car. The monotony, the discomfort, the dissatisfaction in a beautiful rock piece genetically mutated into electronics.
Incredible. Perhaps words cannot describe such wonder.
Then Bowie's guitar anger and the need for support vent on the nervous keyboard carpet of "Be My Wife". A futuristic rock'n'roll. With the instrumental "A New Career In A New Town", the first side closes perfectly: the beat is contagious, and the track reconciles tradition (the harmonica in the distance) and technology (the well-present drum machines).
The second part opens with "Warszawa": the perfect balance between Eno's ambient-dark and the European roots sought by Bowie (who frees himself in a wordless chant) can recall the work later undertaken by Dead Can Dance. With the following "Art Decade," "Weeping Wall," and "Subterraneans," the album becomes increasingly complex and touches on ethno. These are tracks where Eno's detailed sensitivity is disrupted by Bowie's tormented ego. Almost industrial landscapes that tell of the decay of modern man and society with a keen eye on the Berlin atmosphere.
An absolute masterpiece by Bowie who, thanks also to the talent of non-musician Brian Eno and the truly unique city where the project was born, reaches great heights between inspiration and experimentalism.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Breaking Glass (01:52)
Baby, I've been, breaking glass in your room again
Listen
Don't look at the carpet, I drew something awful on it
See
You're such a wonderful person
But you got problems oh-oh-oh-oh
I'll never touch you
04 Sound and Vision (03:03)
Don't you wonder sometimes
About sound and vision
Blue, blue, electric blue
That's the color of my room
Where I will live
Blue, blue
Pale blinds drawn on day
Nothing to do
Nothing to say
I will sit right down
Waiting for the gift
Of sound and vision
And I will sing
Waiting for the gift
Of sound and vision
Drifting into my solitude
Over my head
Don't you wonder sometimes
About sound and vision
05 Always Crashing in the Same Car (03:33)
Every chance, every chance that I take
I take it on the road
Those kilometers and the red lights
Never looking left or right
Oh, but I'm always crashing in the same car
Jasmine, I saw you creeping
As I pushed my foot down to the floor
Round and round the hotel garage
Must have been touching close to 94
Oh, but I'm always crashing in the same car
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
06 Be My Wife (02:56)
Sometimes you get so lonely
Sometimes you get nowhere
I've lived all over the world
I've lived every place
Please be mine
Share my life
Stay with me
Be my wife
Sometimes you get so lonely
Sometimes you get nowhere
I've lived all over the world
I've left every place
Please be mine
Share my life
Stay with me
Be my wife
Sometimes you get so lonely
08 Warszawa (06:23)
Mmmm-mm-mm-ommm
Sula vie dilejo
Mmmm-mm-mm-ommm
Sula vie milejo
Mmm-omm
Cheli venco deho
Cheli venco deho
Malio
Mmmm-mm-mm-ommm
Helibo seyoman
Cheli venco raero
Malio
Malio
11 Subterraneans (05:41)
Share bride failing star
Care-line
Care-line
Care-line
Care-line driving me
Shirley, Shirley, Shirley own
Share bride failing star
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Other reviews
By Venexiana1
This is an album that speaks of a melodramatic and seductive turning point; the turn of the white duke who becomes electro-demonic.
To (trans)gress, here is the passphrase of the duke; here is the mad vehicle we will have to get used to from here to eternity.
By Dune Buggy
One cannot rationally express a journey into the inner terror of a man with a lacerated existence, a subway journey through a new wave of European decay.
In 'Low,' punk attitudes clash with oblique methodologies brought by Brian Eno's mind, creating dashed sound fragments and introspective instrumental suites.
By GordonPym
When the alien David Bowie, restless astronaut of the deepest spaces of the human soul, encounters the musical architect of perfect cosmic spaces Brian Eno, an extraordinary album emerges.
Subterraneans is a mysterious and dark sound world that captures and attracts you to itself, ending with a non-language language, as if it were the voice of the Übermensch.
By Armand
Where David used to wear more makeup than Amanda Lear, here there is no trace of mystifying pigments.
You find yourself in that suspension and naturally, you feel at home, you feel good.
