politics of resistance through creativity in the uplifting musical moments that appear sparsely
throughout all three albums.
I feel, that whilst there is a haunting, almost oppressive feeling to tracks such as Neuköln ,
Warszawa and Subterraneans , that the overall aesthetic of the electronic genre is extremely
liberating in the sense an artist is able to access any sound possible within the composition.
There is now an unlimited labyrinth of divergent objects of sound. Low is the perfect example
of how Bowie and Eno began to move away from the pitch-centric note patterns of more
traditional forms of composition in order to shift their focus towards a more textural focus in
terms of the sound that they wished to create. They begin to use music and sound in an
attempt to articulate experience as opposed to the traditional lyrical form. There appears to be
a fluid structure throughout most songs on the album that doesn't adhere to the traditional
structural norms of popular music, which is why the album is often described as one of the
most radical moves away from mainstream music ever undertaken by an artist.
This freedom can also be seen in Eno’s composition of Warszawa . The piece was structured in
relation to the clicks of a metronome as opposed to the rigid structures of bars and beats within
each musical bar. This was in an attempt to free himself from the constraints of traditional
composition, meaning that each click of the metronome would be numbered on a new track
during the recording process. So, each chord change would be assigned to a random number.
The song, however, is still relatively rigid – which can be attributed to its unsettling feeling.
There is a feeling of being lost in the deliberate randomness of the track. I would argue that
this could be seen as a mirroring of attempts of rebellion that were mediated through the art
and culture of Berlin in the 1970’s amidst the social and political tension of the time in the
shadow of the Wall.