Bowie's futuristic sound and vision

David Bowie has always been somewhat of a chameleon in the rock and roll arena. He single-handedly jumpstarted the glam rock scene of the 1970's, paving the roads for other artists like Mott the Hoople, Iggy Pop and T-Rex, to name a few--and since then has moved from genre to genre, style to style with the comfort and ease of an artist determined to challenge himself and the world of music. \nLow was the first of three albums known as the Berlin Trilogy (the others being 1977s Heroes and 1979s Lodger) that Bowie recorded in Berlin with ex-Roxy Music member/ambient soundscape connoisseur Brian Eno. \nFollowing his brilliant but short 1976 album Station to Station, an album that was in many ways a spawn of his growing addiction to cocaine, Bowie moved to Cold War-riddled Germany to work and tour with friend Iggy Pop. The result of his time there was a trio of albums that, while stepping away from the more mainstream and conventional David Bowie, remain some of the artists finest to date.\nWith Low Bowie strays away from the pop-friendly songs of previous successes such as 1975s Young Americans or the unprecedented and most well-known The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. The album is harshly divided between futuristic, avant-garde synth rock tracks that are reminiscent of early German techno/Kraut Rock groups such as Neu! or Kraftwerk, and dense, often completely instrumental compositions that reflect Eno's prior ambient records such as Another Green World.\nThe first half of Low features Bowie experimenting with the radio friendly rock of his past. Tracks like the album's one surprising pop hit "Sound and Vision" or the cool, stripped down jazz/rock cut "Always Crashing in the Same Car" are catchy but at the same time require an avid listener due to bizarre vocal distortion and unusual instrumentation.\nLyrics fade on the radically different second half, which relies on five heavy, often depressing yet curiously beautiful instrumental compositions that include the doleful epic "Warszawa" (which may be Bowie's symphonic opus about Poland's anguish plagued capital) and the mysterious and lethargic, but utterly breathtaking closer "Subterraneans."\nWhile Low is without a doubt the most inaccessible and challenging album of the Berlin Trilogy and possibly out of Bowie's entire catalogue, it still stands at the meridian of this versatile artist's musical gamut. It paved the way for Bowie's future reptilian style shifts, influenced artists like Trent Reznor who claims Low was partially responsible for his Downward Spiral album and to this day remains one of the finest ventures into experimental rock out there.