This iconic instrumental album - like Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene in 1977 - was all over the place in 1974, beloved of serious music critics and those studious nerds at my school who carried it around with them under their arm throughout the school day, showing off their apparently highly-developed musical taste.
Fucking hell, I despised them and this accursed record. As a glam, David Bowie, Roxy Music and Mott The Hoople fan this sort of dense, innovative, experimental, ambient electronic music was completely anathema to me. It remained so for years, standing as an example of why I and many others became punks. It was the musical anti-Christ.
Nowhere is this better exemplified than by the track Phaedra on the old ‘side one’ - seventeen minutes plus of brooding, sonorous electronic noises which took up the whole side, served up by three faceless Germans. Good God, I wanted none of this po-faced serious pretension. My, there wasn’t a guitar riff within a thousand miles of this, just mellotron, moog synthesiser and electric piano amongst other keyboard noise makers. It has been quoted as being the most important and influential piece of electronic music in that genre’s history, even more so than the output of the group’s German contemporaries Neu! and Kraftwerk. Maybe I was missing something, because at the time it left me totally cold. Time then, surely, to re-assess this proggy behemoth.
On a positive note, though, I will now happily admit that the first six or seven minutes of the track’s 2018 Steven Wilson Remix sounds bloody great, particularly that big, rubbery, Mike Oldfield on Tubular Bells-esque bass sound. The bit around 7:13 onwards is aurally stunning, so there you go.
As I have aged and my tastes and tolerance for different genres have evolved I now find myself reviewing it. Look, it is ok for a while - atmospheric and pleasingly bassy - but it also spends seventeen minutes getting precisely nowhere. Maybe that's the point - that’s what ambient music is all about, I guess.
What is not in doubt, and somewhat ironic, is that I, the great Bowie devotee, would be lapping up the instrumental side of Low in three years’ time. There is absolutely no question that this was a huge influence on Bowie’s ‘Berlin’ period. Just listen to the weird sweeping synth noises on the pretentiously-titled Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares, you can hear the instrumental side of ‘Heroes’ in there, clearly. I like it.
Moments Of A Visionary has some slightly world music percussion sounds in it that would have resonated with Talking Heads, to an extent. There are sounds in there that remind me of Bowie's Station To Station (the track) as well and also of Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure (again the track not the album). The short Sequent ‘C’ ends this somnolent piece of work and I find myself having to snap myself awake once more.
I remember the group played at my local rock club, Friars Aylesbury, back in 1975 and their fans lay flat out on the floor during the show, eyes closed in a proggy nirvana in order to appreciate the vibe, man. Jesus Christ. If you ever wanted an explanation for punk, there you had it.
Yes, this album sounds great on my sound system - all those sounds coming gracefully in and out of my speakers, like something from a classical composer who has taken too many drugs and yes, it has something about it, but do I want to listen to this for pleasure too often - no. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know its all about the textured sounds but I can’t wait to stick something more ballsy back on.
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