Low

Welcome back to the album atmosphere podcast about music and usually about an album today.

I've said it many times on recent episodes, we have a doozy.

It's not coincidental.

I've been wanting to get around to a lot of my giant favorite albums and or artists like The Who.

But today, as I'm sure anybody listening knows from clicking on it, it's The Cure's Disintegration, one of the greatest albums of all time.

And I mentioned South Park before we got rolling, and I'll just go ahead and say a quick little snippet of my introduction.

I had heard The Cure before, but the first time I think I heard the title of this album was on one of the very first South Park episodes that ends with, I think, Stan saying...

Kyle.

Iggy Pop on vocals, helping out Dave there as well.

And that was What In The World from Low.

And now we've got yet more new things in a minute.

We've got an exclusive Sam Redmore reworking of New Order and the Chemical Brothers.

Let's make a hypothetical, theoretical, metaphorical, potentially possible mixtape inspired by this movie.

My mind went to The Police right off the bat because The Police had this album called Ghost in the Machine.

Early 80s, comes out right before Synchronicity.

First of all, I love the police.

I love the interplay between these guys.

I love their songs.

I love their albums.

Always have, always will.

But still, it feels essentially aesthetically like a refinement of the Heaven and Hell sound.

I think the whole Iggy Pop Lust for Life from The Idiot and David Bowie Heroes from Low, all this Berlin period stuff, are status quo.

All four of these albums kind of fit together.

Fleetwood Mac rumors.

Our theme song is the track Talk to Me by the band Eraser.

And this episode featured David Bowie's Versava from his 1977 album Low, and Hello Kanye by the Schlossk Song and Dance Ensemble, composed by Stanislaw Hadina.

Um, w- what's, what album you can listen forever if you had one a- one album to like take on a, like a, like a beach or something, getaway, which, which album would that be?

Um, um, um, um, David Bowie, Low.

Perfect.

All right.

Um, you said to me, "What's the one album that I would listen to forever?" And I said, um, the answer to that again.

Yeah.

David Bowie, Low.

What about you? 'Cause you obviously love music hugely.

Um, same producer, but different production, but still, uh, it feels essentially aesthetically, um, like a refinement of the Heaven and Hell sound.

Um, I think the whole Iggy Pop, Lust for Life from The Idiot, and David Bowie, Heroes from Low, all this Berlin period stuff are status quo.

All four of these albums kinda fit together.

Um, Fleetwood Mac, Rumors.

[laughs]

Another important moment for you was hearing David Bowie's Low for the first time.

Can a record be more transformative to a person? I just can't tell you.

And you wanna hear what's funny about it? Because I was a, I was a David Bowie fan, like, at a young age.

And I, I bought those in real time, so when Low came out in '77, I, I bought it.

When Heroes came out in this, in the fall of '77, I had it.

You know, I really followed him and stuff like that.

But Low is a departure, and I was still a young, young kid, and I didn't really have the, the maturity and the knowledge of where, how, why it sounded the way that it did and where it fell into the actual, um, uh, library of the music that I grew up with.

What music is playing when you picture that time?

Well, I suppose if you are talking about, say... then already the albums by David Bowie, Heroes and Low, have already come out.

And I can remember coming back from school one day and knowing that the David Bowie Low album had been released that day.

And I came home, I put my coat on and got on the bus from where I lived in Blackpool to go to Woolworths to buy the cassette of David Bowie's Low, you know, and that was very exciting.

And finding that music just too weird because it's a lot of instrumentals and it's quite haunting and he was taking music somewhere else, you know.

But, yeah, I mean, it fed my imagination.

Give me top three, perhaps.

I