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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. I'm talking about Low, a 1977 album.
Eno is to music what Spinoza is to philosophy. His compositions have the calm and perfection of rationality. Everything appears in order, even what seems evil, negative, chaotic. Eno finds a space and a counterpoint for it. Like in nature: inequality is functional to the order of things. We must rise to an objective vision of the whole, without stopping at a purely subjective account.
Is man capable of it? I don't know, personally, I struggle to have such a pacifying conception of existence.
With Eno, Bowie seems to find himself in a world that feels like his own, a tailor-made universe where he can best express his creativity.
After leaving behind the lysergic, glittering, and vicious nights of Los Angeles, he locks himself in a studio in Berlin and like any semi-unknown musician artisan, he is determined to immerse himself totally in his "beruf," in the profession as a vocation. In this relatively short but extremely productive period, the material that will later be used in the albums "Heroes," "Lodger" by Bowie himself and partly in "The Idiot" and "Lust for life" by Iggy Pop is generated.
Let's go back to Low. It's incredible to notice how the album does not show its forty years but rather anticipates the times to come. It doesn't fully reflect either today's society or society as it was at the end of the 70s. It has its own forthcoming dimension, not yet fulfilled.
Some tracks bear Bowie's specific hand more than others: "Always Crashing in the Same Car" and "Sound and Vision." In others, the influence of the creative germ contained in "Another Green World" by Brian Eno, a 1975 album, emerges.
The compositions are all of sublime quality, if I had to choose three, I would have no doubts: Warszawa, Weeping Wall and Subterraneans.
The first is currently performed by some classical music orchestras for its extraordinary melodic and expressive beauty. The atmosphere is ominous, the scenery a post-war landscape, in ruins. A sense of emotion and pity for violated humanity emerges powerfully from the notes.
In Weeping Wall, the sound waves, metaphor for human desires and miseries, seem to jump and finally crash against the Berlin Wall. The pace is obsessive, there is a continuous attempt, fall, and then try again.
Subterraneans is the concluding masterpiece, the sounds seem to be the result of overdubs and tapes playing backward, harmonic and rhythmic rules literally torn apart in favor of a minimal primary search for pure and underground emotion, of a mysterious and dark sound world that captures and attracts you to itself. The final part, sung by Bowie, is a non-language language, as if it were the voice of the Übermensch.
How will the overman speak, what words will he use? The author leaves a question mark, a worthy finale for one of the most beautiful and mysterious albums of the last fifty years.
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
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 Ghemison
Perhaps words cannot describe such wonder.
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.
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 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.
