Damn Nicholas Roeg and his predilection for the new age transcendental folk of John Phillips, The Man Who Fell To Earth soundtrack was David Bowie‘s.
Those burgeoning precursor examples of what would eventually become Low, proved too ‘off-world’ for the film director. Bowie kept the image though (the second LP to use a still from Roeg’s movie): his forlorn, marooned gazing profile set against a burnished alien sky, a perfect indicator of what waits inside the sleeve.
Heralding the triumvirate of empirical ‘Berlin’ albums (though much of the material was recorded in France), Low featured the ‘dream team’ of Brian Eno and Tony Visconti. A bookend to that year’s concomitant Heroes, its Northern European, Lutheran melancholy reflected where Bowie’s mind was wondering. Druggy delusions of LA were replaced with the darker underbelly of Berlin’s smack culture (see Christiane F), as Bowie and his Teutonic sightseer buddy, Iggy Pop, immersed themselves in the shadow of a cold war miasma-walled city.
Much to the surprise of the country’s musical vanguard, his adoption of the German new wave received all the acclaim they’d been denied. Yet there’s no denying that he gave the Krautrock blueprint a sheen and wider appeal, which only Kraftwerk and managed to achieve.
Half spiritual progressive soundtrack, half assuaged meditations on addiction, Low may still lyrically feature the themes that dominated his torrid lifestyle (drugs, isolation, marriage problems), yet the sound had once again moved on – those soul postulations now just a distant memory.
Decreed as the leading highlights of the album by the majority –
Sound And Vision (single), Always Crashing In The Same Car, Be My Wife (single), Warszawa
Pay attention to these often overlooked beauties –
Breaking Glass, Subterraneans
