was former King Crimson member Robert Fripp, who would later work with him on "Heroes". The last track recorded for The Idiot was "Nightclubbing" with Bowie playing the melody on piano using an old drum machine for backing. When Pop pronounced himself happy with the result, Bowie protested they needed real drums to finish it. Pop insisted on keeping the drum machine, saying "it kicks ass, it's better than a drummer". When recording was completed, Bowie and Pop traveled to Berlin to mix the album at Hansa Studio 1 (not, as is often incorrectly reported, the bigger Studio 2 by the Berlin Wall). Because his former producer Tony Visconti was already in line to co-produce Bowie's next album, Bowie called upon him to help mix the record, so as to familiarize him with Bowie's new way of working. Given the almost demo quality of the tapes, the post-production work was, in Visconti's words, "more of a salvage job than a creative mixing". Styles and themes The Idiot marks a drastic departure for Pop from the aggressive proto-punk sound of the Stooges, reflecting a more subdued, inward-looking sound featuring elements such as "fragmented guitar figures, ominous basslines, and discordant, high-relief keyboard parts" as well as his "world-weary baritone." At the time of its release, Pop described The Idiot as "a cross between James Brown and Kraftwerk". Retrospectively, commentators have categorized The Idiot primarily as art rock, but have also noted the presence of gothic rock, industrial rock, post-punk, and punk rock. In 1981, NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray suggested that The Idiots electronic sound had been "pioneered" on Bowie's Low (1977), whereas in 2016, Nicholas Pegg described it as "a stepping stone between Bowie's Station to Station and Low". According to critic Simon Reynolds of Tidal Magazine, the album's "mechanistic grooves, brittle drums and harsh guitar textures" anticipated Bowie's Berlin Trilogy and allowed Bowie to explore his fascination with German electronic sounds inspired by Neu! and Cluster. Wesley Strick of Circus magazine described the music as "mechanized", similar to Bowie's "Fame", but "with rhythms keyed off a quickened pulse", while Richard Riegel of Creem called it "professional studio metal, with occasional German-electronic overtones". NMEs Nick Kent described the music as "totally rivetted and fettered to a thoroughly unhealthy aroma of evil and twilight zone zombie-time unease". Bowie biographer David Buckley called The Idiot "a funky, robotic Hellhole of