Growing tired of phony California, deadened personal problems and cocaine addiction, David Bowie left for Europe in 1977. His first album after relocating to Berlin, Low, breaths with frustration like no other record in rock's vernacular. Bowie realized the overrating of words to express grief and lets the fluid, mutated synthpop vent. He certainly chooses the right cohort for the project. Sonic experimenter extraordinaire, Brian Eno acts as keyboardist and general co-creator of Low. Eno adds his mark of gorgeous, multi-dimensional, electronic glazing to Bowie's project. The first side of Low consists of short, simple, cryptic pop songs, themed around depression and dysfunction. Through a series of one and a half to three minute disheartened pop songs, Bowie gets the point across very clearly and very radiantly that he has been tattered out of breath. The side ends in a truly extraordinary manner. The solemn sound erupts spontaneously into an urgent decree on the raucous "Be My Wife," which is followed by "A New Career in a New Town," an amazing harmonica-led rain-on-your-face-at-the-end-of-a-hard-day instrumental. Low's second side features four Eno-ish, expansive instrumentals. Their cold, murky and mechanized sound is enhanced in multitudes by Bowie's shrilling, therapeutic chants. Bowie was a different man in 1977, a thirty year old who had been building his own life long enough to become entangled in it. As always, the music reflects his growth. Low is an album that echoes Bowie's frame of mind more brilliantly than any of his others.