David Bowie Low CD

Personnel: David Bowie (vocals, guitar, cello, harmonica, saxophone, piano, synthesizer, vibraphone, xylophone, pump bass, percussion, tapes, sound effects); Brian Eno (vocals, guitar, piano, Chamberlain, synthesizer); Carlos Alomar, Ricky Gardener (guitar); Eduard Meyer (cello); Roy Young (piano, Farfisa organ); Peter, Paul (piano, Arp synthesizer); George Murray (bass); Dennis Davis (percussion); Iggy Pop, Mary Visconti (background vocals).
Recorded at Chateau d'Herouville, France and Hansa By The Wall, Berlin, Germany.
This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Personnel: David Bowie (vocals, guitar, cello, strings, harmonica, saxophone, horns, piano, chamberlin, keyboards, ARP synthesizer, vibraphone, xylophone, percussion); David Bowie (various instruments); Iggy Pop (vocals, piano, organ, background vocals); Mary Hopkin (vocals); Eduard Meyer, Eduard Meyerm (cello); Roy Young (piano, organ, Farfisa); Peter Himmelman (piano, ARP synthesizer); Roy Young (piano); George Murray (bass guitar); Brian Eno (vocals, guitar, piano, chamberlin, keyboards, synthesizer, mini-Moog synthesizer, Moog synthesizer); Mary Visconti (vocals, background vocals); Ricky Gardiner, Carlos Alomar (guitar); Dennis Davis (percussion).
Audio Mixers: Brian Eno; David Bowie; David Richards .
Audio Remasterers: Nigel Reeve; Peter Mew.
Recording information: Château d'Herouville, France; Hansa; Hansa By The Wall, Berlin, Germ.
Photographers: Christian Simonpietri; Steve Shapiro; Clive Anderson.
Following through with the avant-garde inclinations of Station to Station, yet explicitly breaking with David Bowie's past, Low is a dense, challenging album that confirmed his place at rock's cutting edge. Driven by dissonant synthesizers and electronics, Low is divided between brief, angular songs and atmospheric instrumentals. Throughout the record's first half, the guitars are jagged and the synthesizers drone with a menacing robotic pulse, while Bowie's vocals are unnaturally layered and overdubbed. During the instrumental half, the electronics turn cool, which is a relief after the intensity of the preceding avant pop. Half the credit for Low's success goes to Brian Eno, who explored similar ambient territory on his own releases. Eno functioned as a conduit for Bowie's ideas, and in turn Bowie made the experimentalism of not only Eno but of the German synth group Kraftwerk and the post-punk group Wire respectable, if not quite mainstream. Though a handful of the vocal pieces on Low are accessible -- "Sound and Vision" has a shimmering guitar hook, and "Be My Wife" subverts soul structure in a surprisingly catchy fashion -- the record is defiantly experimental and dense with detail, providing a new direction for the avant-garde in rock & roll. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
The first (Heroes and Lodger would follow) of Bowie's three Berlin albums. Living there as a semi-recluse for three years, he worked with Svengali/producer Brian Eno and the results of their collaborations helped change the face of the European mainstream. Artists such as Gary Numan, Ultravox and OMD were indebted to the sound Bowie had created with the synthesizer to build a somewhat terse wall of sound. Critically acclaimed, but a relative commercial failure, apart from the surprise `Sound And Vision' hit single, it remains as a pertinent reminder of Bowie's ability to surprise and enlighten.Rolling Stone (11/22/01, p.90) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...LOW flows together into a lyrical, hallucinatory, miraculously beautiful whole, the music of an overstimulated mind in an exhausted body..."
Q (p.108) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "[A]n album of mournfully sincere synthesizer music."
Q (10/91) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...the critical acclaim (LOW) received at the time still seems justified....a crucial part of rock history..."
Q (6/00, p.80) - Ranked #14 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums"
Mojo (Publisher) (2/02, p.84) - "...The first and best of the so-called Berlin trilogy....'Sound And Vision', a remarkable venture into hypno-disco, typifies the approach. Hooks and melodies abound, but listen a little deeper and you'll hear some of the most radically constructed - and produced - 'pop' ever made."
NME (Magazine) (9/18/93, p.19) - Ranked #24 in NME's list of The Greatest Albums Of The '70s.
NME (Magazine) (10/2/93, p.29) - Ranked #67 in NME's list of the `Greatest Albums Of All Time.'