Robert Smith: "David Bowie's Low is the greatest record ever made"

Started by dsanchez, November 05, 2012, 21:30:00

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dsanchez

QuoteI bought it on cassette and the same day I went to a garden centre with my mum. I'd ordered it from the local record shop, and Paul, who was in the band, and is my brother-in-law, had dropped it through the letterbox. It's like one of those weird days. I walked home from school, there was the cassette and we had a cassette player in the car. I went with her to a garden centre, and I listened to 'Low' while she went and did whatever mums do in garden centres, and I was like utterly, my whole perception of sound was changed. Just how something could sound completely different, like 'Breaking Glass', everything on there in fact, 'Sound And Vision', everything on there, everything I heard was astonishing, really astonishing. When I put it on now the sound, dunk dunk, everything is just f*cking genius! There are other albums that I love much more, like viscerally much more, like 'Axis: Bold As Love', or 'Five Leaves Left', albums that I can cry to, but 'Low' was the album that had a huge impact on me, just how I saw sound. No other album has done that to me.
http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=147&title=what_s_the_greatest_record_ever_made&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
2023.11.22 Lima
2023.11.27 Montevideo

jakso

i don't have this gem in my collection...yet. but it's on the way ;)

erpomata

hey you must have Low, and heroes and scary monsters and outside....oh, all bowie records  :-D
i love him 

meanwhile take a look at these, songs from low on 1996 tour and...uh oh, who is that guitar player ? 

DAVID BOWIE - BREAKING GLASS - LIVE LORELEY 1996 - 480p

David Bowie ~ Always Crashing In The Same Car (live)
fortunato il popolo che non ha bisogno di eroi

Ulrich

Robert has often named "Low" as one of his influences (e.g. for the sound on "17 Seconds" LP).
After reading Robert's praise for "Low", I bought the cd re-issue in 1991 and still enjoy it, it is a fabulous album indeed.  :)
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

MeltingMan

I found an article about a forthcoming exhibition,with a focus on his time in Berlin:

http://www.davidbowie-berlin.de/
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

Fabien G

Oh, I'm not so fond of Bowie, apart from the pop stuff of late 80's, too 'mannered' for my liking. It's really funny how you can like someone (Robert, a friend...) and not like the things he/she likes.

MeltingMan

Quote from: Fabien G on May 22, 2014, 23:25:49
Oh, I'm not so fond of Bowie, apart from the pop stuff of late 80's, too 'mannered' for my liking. It's really funny how you can like someone (Robert, a friend...) and not like the things he/she likes.
Me too.I'm not familiar with his works in the seventies,but when I noticed the article about the
exhibition,I was curious.
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

Ulrich

Quote from: Fabien G on May 22, 2014, 23:25:49
It's really funny how you can like someone (Robert, a friend...) and not like the things he/she likes.

Don't think it's "funny". It's just that you don't need a band or a person to think ahead for you and/or tell you what you have to like. Tastes are different and it's good that way. I'm glad though when I can discover a good album like "Low" by reading interviews with RS.
(Of course he's also mentioned music/bands I don't like much. So what...)
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

piggymirror

Quote from: Ulrich on November 07, 2012, 19:07:03
Robert has often named "Low" as one of his influences (e.g. for the sound on "17 Seconds" LP).
After reading Robert's praise for "Low", I bought the cd re-issue in 1991 and still enjoy it, it is a fabulous album indeed.  :)

I've always found that Low is an album that I like to listen to when I'm ill.
There's just one other album that I like to listen to when I'm ill, and that's Ultra by Depeche Mode.
Go figure.

I've always loved Low since I bought it, but I've never found it as groundbreaking because when I did, I already had the Heroes album, which I bought much long before.
I can see why it was so groundbreaking, but to me, it was Heroes (and it blew me away indeed), as well as the other two Bowie & Iggy albums (The I.diot and Lust For Life).

But to me, and in hindsight, the really groundbreaking Bowie album was Station To Station, which actually is the Bowie hardcore fans' favest... Station To Station was released in 1976, but it sounds totally 80's.

:( Still can't listen to him though. It's only been months.  :smth100

Ulrich

Quote from: piggymirror on August 15, 2016, 21:13:43
I can see why it was so groundbreaking, but to me, it was Heroes (and it blew me away indeed)

Found this nice article, focussing on "Low", "Heroes" & "Lodger" (respectively the new cd box "A New Career In A New Town"):
http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a12500861/david-bowie-berlin-years-box-set/
Quote
"David and Brian Eno and I had a three-way call," Visconti says of the phone call he received asking him to join the pair in France at the legendary Honky Château—the Château d'Hérouville studio outside Paris—to work on Low. "They said, 'We want to break all the rules. We know how to make a hit record. We want to make something creative and different and artistic. We don't want to repeat any old formulas.' They wanted everything to sound different—the guitars, the piano, and especially the drums—everything."

Bowie and Eno had grand ideas of what they could accomplish with their ambitious form of pop music, and the prospect of working with them excited Visconti. "They had been writing songs that were kind of 'minimalistic'" he says. "They were talking about doing ambient music for Side Two of the album. All of this was thought out between the two of them before it was brought to me, so I kind of knew what I was getting myself into. Of course, I was rubbing my hands together, saying, 'This is amazing.' Then David said, 'None of this might ever get released. It's purely experimental. Are you willing to sacrifice a month of your life?' Of course, that was even more thrilling. I said, 'I'm there!'"
The holy city breathed like a dying man...