10 Classic Rock Albums That Were AHEAD OF THEIR TIME
4. Low - David Bowie
Chances are you can probably throw a dart at any point in David Bowie's career where he was ahead of the curve. Even up until his dying day with Blackstar, the Starman never was comfortable doing the same thing twice and actively tried to reform himself with each passing record. If you're looking for the real mind blowing stuff though, we're gonna have to travel to Berlin.
Being the biggest entry in his Berlin trilogy of albums, Low is one of the most eclectic sounding Bowie records ever made on the first half, going for mixes of conventional pop songs like Sound and Vision combined with the sounds of krautrock that he was hearing from bands like Kraftwerk at the time. The second side is where it gets really interesting, being the first Bowie record without the most essential instrument...Bowie.
Going for a more ambient tone, the entire back half of this record is instrumental, with Bowie and producer Brian Eno playing with textures to create certain moods, almost like you're seeing the remnants of rock and roll distilled into serene tracks. In fact, this is probably the clearest example of where post rock began, with a lot of these instrumentals not sounding all that dissimilar to what you would hear in the late '90s with bands like Sigur Ros. Then again, this is Bowie, so it would make sense that he would be off to search for new musical galaxies.