As Bowie's Thin White Duke persona ran ragged with both fascist sympathies and cocaine addiction, Bowie decided to cool it down, left Britain and L.A. behind and went to Berlin with friend Iggy Pop to try yet another creative direction. This album, Low, was the beginning of a fruitful effort with Brian Eno and possibly the best and most creative phase in his career. Side one is Bowie stepping into Eno's aural terrain, creating a kind of mutant pop that would foreshadow the New Wave music of the 80s. Side two is largely instrumental and this is where Bowie tries on Eno's ambient style for size, like yet another Bowie persona, yet the world-weariness and depressing air comes from someplace much more profound than yet another Bowie costume change. This was the first Bowie album I bought and coupled with "Heroes" makes for a very distinct period of Bowie's long and mostly productive career. The cover photo hearkens to his film "The Man who Fell to Earth" and there is a definite alienated quality to this record. The track "Always Crashing in the Same Car" seems to find Bowie in a real reflective and contemplative mood and this record can put the listener right there.