Low
- Zone: Shallows (level 2 of 5)
- Genre: Rock, Art rock, Ambient
- Mood: icy, fractured, melancholic
- Sound: ambient instrumental second side, synthesizers, Eno production, gated drums, short fragmentary songs
Low is a pop album split in two. Side one is short, abrupt avant-pop fragments with downbeat lyrics, while side two is longer, mostly instrumental pieces that evoke Berlin, with wordless vocals and ambient textures. Bowie and Tony Visconti recorded it at Château d’Hérouville in France and Hansa Studios in West Berlin, with Brian Eno adding synthesiser textures on his EMS AKS, which has a joystick instead of a keyboard. Visconti ran the snare through an Eventide Harmoniser and fed the output back into it, giving the drums their mechanical sound, and on “Sound and Vision” Bowie’s vocals don’t come in until about 1:30. Its mix of krautrock, minimalism and electronics fed into post-punk, industrial and post-rock, with Joy Division and Nine Inch Nails among those who cited it.
Track list
- Speed of Life
- Breaking Glass
- What in the World
- Sound and Vision
- Always Crashing in the Same Car
- Be My Wife
- A New Career in a New Town
- Warszawa
- Art Decade
- Weeping Wall
- Subterraneans