10 Best Experimental Rock Albums Of All Time
4. Low - David Bowie
In terms of experimental rock, David Bowie pretty much wrote the handbook on how far you could take the genre. Even in his twilight years, the Thin White Duke was still being inventive by touching on his own mortality through a jazzy lens on his final album Blackstar. If there was ever a time where he was insanely ahead of the curve, it was the tracks he delivered on Low.
Whereas Station to Station was already the strange beginning of his Berlin period, this is where things really start to go sideways. On the first side alone, you have the sounds of krautrock in between some country tinged music that don't sound like they should belong anywhere near David Bowie. Where it gets really interesting though is the back half, where the Artist Formerly Known As Ziggy completely disappears.
Yeah, for over half of this record, Bowie's vocals take a back seat while instrumentals fill the soundstage, courtesy of Bowie and his partner in crime Brian Eno. While this would have normally made the album feel lopsided, it feels like hearing the last days of rock slowly dwindle and give way to the post-rock boom that was bound to follow in the years to come. Yep...even when Bowie was grasping at straws, he was still way more ahead of the curve than anyone could ever hope to be.