Low

The drums on Low do not merely keep time; they seem to alter the air around them. Tony Visconti’s use of the Eventide H910 Harmonizer helped create the huge, clipped sound that gives the album’s first half its peculiar physicality, while David Bowie was simultaneously stripping songs down into short, fractured forms. It is one of the many productive contradictions in a record that feels both immediate and remote, pop-minded and deeply resistant to conventional pop structure.

Bowie made Low after moving to Europe with Iggy Pop in an attempt to escape the drug problems surrounding his life in Los Angeles. Work on Iggy Pop’s The Idiot fed directly into Bowie’s own next phase, and Low was recorded in 1976 at the Château d’Hérouville in France and Hansa Studios in West Berlin. Brian Eno was a major creative contributor, though not the album’s producer; Bowie and Visconti held that role. German groups including Neu!, Harmonia, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk were important points of reference as Bowie moved away from the soul and funk associated with his previous records.

The first side turns that shift into a sequence of concentrated jolts. “Speed of Life” arrives without vocals; “Breaking Glass” barely seems to stay long enough to become a conventional song; “Sound and Vision” places one of Bowie’s most inviting melodies inside an arrangement that delays his entrance. Then the record opens into longer, largely instrumental pieces. “Warszawa”, “Art Decade” and “Subterraneans” exchange pop concision for atmosphere, using synthesiser, texture and repetition to suggest places and states of mind without narrating them directly.

RCA delayed the album for three months because of concerns about its commercial prospects, yet Low reached number two in the UK and “Sound and Vision” became a top-five single. More importantly, it established the first part of what became known as the Berlin Trilogy. Its influence is easy to discuss, but the record is more enjoyable when heard as a set of bold decisions made in real time. Pay attention to the gaps, abrupt endings and strange proportions. Low’s drama often comes from what Bowie refuses to resolve.