10 Rock Albums That Were Ahead Of Their Time
8. Low - David Bowie
It should come as a surprise to no one that David Bowie was always looking to be ahead of the curve. During every phase of his career, The Starman was always looking to be leading the trends of the time, and when he found himself conquering one genre of music, he would get bored and move on to something different that suited him. While Station to Station set up the kraut rock vibes of his Berlin trilogy, a funny thing happened once Bowie started working on Low with Brian Eno.
Though there are still some decent Bowie songs on this record like Be My Wife, some of the more interesting moments on the track listing is when you're not getting Bowie in any real capacity. For the entire back half of this project, Low is made up of atmospheric instrumentals, taking the sounds of glitchy production and piling them on top of each other to get wild sounds that felt closer to ambient music.
The whole thing still holds up as a bit of an oddity today, but what Bowie was on the cusp of here became the first steps of post rock, with fans taking this kind of ethereal soundscape approach in the late '90s and even inspiring artists like Trent Reznor when he was using different sounds to create the Downward Spiral. Bowie had already made himself one of the kings of the rock world once, but the '70s weren't even over yet, and there was so much more ground to cover.