David Bowie

A Mercedes racing at breakneck speed through a hotel garage, zigzagging endlessly between parked cars. Perhaps this is the emblematic image of the David Bowie who gave birth to "Low", his masterpiece from the second half of the '70s. "Always Crashing in the Same Car": the metaphor of a man who has reached his limit, forever finding himself smashing into the same car. It's 1976, and Bowie, who has been living in Los Angeles for over a year, has just released "Station to Station", an album that boldly blends soul elements with kraut-rock and the electronic fascinations of Neu! and Kraftwerk. "The European canon is here," he declared in the epic ten-minute title track: Bowie is tired of America, of Los Angeles, which he calls "the most repulsive boil on the backside of humanity," of a life of excess, esoteric delusions, legal battles and family disasters. He feels the pull of Europe, of that "mother" culture in many ways opposed to the American one, which by now was consuming and destroying him. And he understands this for good during the promotional tour for "Station to Station", when together with his friend Iggy Pop (himself going through a critical moment) he finds himself crossing Eastern Europe by train.

So, once the shows are over, he moves with his assistant Coco Schwab and with Iggy Pop to Berlin, where he will live in semi-anonymity for over a year. In the German capital, a city rich in contrasts and divisions (in some ways a reflection of Bowie's own soul) and cultural ferment, Bowie will find the strength to defeat his demons through his one true resource: art. Across the eleven tracks of "Low", the former "Thin White Duke" pours out torment and anguish, but also a desire for redemption, all without interrupting his musical quest, which on this record reaches one of its absolute peaks.

The album was recorded in the autumn of 1976 at the Château d'Hérouville in France (where Bowie had just finished "The Idiot" with Iggy Pop) and subsequently mixed at Hansa Studios in Berlin. Considering that 1979's "Lodger" wasn't recorded in the German capital either, the concept of the "Berlin Trilogy" takes on a different meaning, not strictly geographical: Berlin is more of a topos, a place where Bowie managed to confront himself and find new artistic and vital energy. Another point worth clarifying concerns an element many consider (perhaps too generously) key to the historical importance of the trilogy's records: namely Brian Eno's involvement as a musician (not as producer, as many wrongly believe).

The ambient music guru had met Bowie in the spring of 1976 at Wembley, on the occasion of one of the "Station to Station" tour dates, and had been struck by the direction the former "Ziggy Stardust"'s music had taken. On the other hand, Bowie himself had already begun working back in 1975 on instrumental pieces conceived for the soundtrack of "The Man Who Fell to Earth", in which he also starred, using a compositional and instrumental approach akin to that of Kraftwerk and Eno himself (the tracks remained unreleased at the time but were partly reclaimed for "Low"). It's no surprise, then, that two such minds felt the natural need to work together. Eno's role on "Low", however, is marginal compared to the other two chapters of the trilogy: he arrived at the recording sessions when they were already well underway, and contributed more as a sonic supervisor than as an active member of Bowie's team (with the exception of "Warszawa"), beginning to introduce compositional techniques that would find fuller expression in the following works (above all, the use of the "Oblique Strategies"). A contribution that is often underrated, on the other hand, is the work of producer Tony Visconti: to him we owe, among other things, the sonic experiments on the percussion achieved through a new device, the "Harmonizer", which gave the drums an absolutely unprecedented timbre, with revolutionary results. "Low" is in fact a record that expresses itself first and foremost through sound: most of the tracks are instrumental, and in the sung pieces the lyrics are often just small brushstrokes over a scene that's already been sketched out.

Structurally, there's a clear divide between the record's two sides (an approach repeated on the following "Heroes"): one more "pop" and devoted to the song form, the other mostly instrumental and expansive. Originally the LP was meant to be called "New Music: Night and Day", echoing this dichotomy; the choice then fell on "Low", for its double meaning both of "depression" and of what emerges when the word is paired with the cover photo: "low profile" — which was exactly what Bowie intended to show the public after years of excess, including media excess.

In the first part of the album, the icy atmospheres of kraut merge with the passion of rhythm and blues (thanks to the well-established Alomar-Murray-Davies rhythm section): "Speed of Life" still sounds futuristic today (Bowie is on synths here), "Breaking Glass" is a menacing, robotic funk, "What in the World" carries an irrepressible expressive urgency in its rhythm, "Sound and Vision" is glacial pop, with its cascade of synthesizers and the steady beat of the treated drums; "Always Crashing in the Same Car" is Dylan-esque folk transfigured electronically, dominated by Ricky Gardiner's fantastic filtered guitar (Gardiner would go on to become a mainstay for Iggy Pop — a small piece of trivia: the first choice for guitarist on "Low" had been Michael Rother of Neu!, who politely turned down the offer), while "Be My Wife" brings out Bowie's instinctive, angry guitar playing, running nervously over a bed of keyboards. The side closes with "A New Career in a New Town", an instrumental that serves as a manifesto for the new musical direction, reconciling tradition (the simple harmonica line in the distance) with innovation (the "cold" sounds of machines).

The lyrics mirror Bowie's turmoil: resignation bordering on apathy ("Always Crashing"), memories of a turbulent domestic life ("Breaking Glass"), a strong need for support ("Be My Wife"), awareness of the difficult path taken ("Blue blue electric blue / that's the color of my room / where I will live", "Sound and Vision").

The second part of the album is anchored by the more than six minutes of "Warszawa", the expressive peak of the entire work and the emblematic result of the perfect Bowie-Eno synergy. The ambient sound, aseptic by definition, is colored with ethnic suggestions thanks to the voice (treated with the Harmonizer) that soars in a wordless song, made up of sounds evoking Balkan languages and modulations. It's a move beyond ambient music: world music (which would be explored further on "Lodger") is just around the corner. "Art Decade" and "Weeping Wall" (the latter dating back to the aforementioned aborted soundtrack for "The Man Who Fell to Earth") recall certain moments from "Another Green World", filtered however through Bowie's own sensibility: the result is thus far more tormented than Eno's work. The album closes with "Subterraneans", which through its dark sounds and desolate sax line perfectly captures the atmosphere of post-division East Berlin, where "only the jazz saxophones were left to represent the memory of what had been" (in Bowie's own words).

"Low" is a record that opened up countless doors for the development of rock: the '80s and new wave as a whole would certainly not have been the same without this album. Bowie manages to blend European culture (kraut-rock, existentialism) and African-American culture (rhythm 'n' blues) in an utterly original way, achieving the definitive breakdown of transcultural barriers while at the same time creating one of his most truthful and profound records. It's unlikely that "pop" music (in the broadest sense of the term) will ever again reach such heights of inspiration and experimentation.

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27/10/2006