Sons Of The Silent Age

Middle/ Described as "haunting and beautiful" —not least for it's cover art, a still from the Nicholas Roeg movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, for which the music was originally intended—, Low (RCA, 1977) by British musician David Bowie is widely regarded as one of his most influential releases. Low was the first of the "Berlin Trilogy", a series of collaborations with Brian Eno. Although the music was influenced by German "krautrock" bands such as Kraftwerk and Neu!, Low has been acclaimed for its originality and is considered far ahead of its time. As late as 2000, Radiohead looked to be attempting a similar concept and sound with their album Kid A. Bowie himself has said "cut me and I bleed Low". Top/ Star Rise: Remixed (Real World, 1997) is the last release by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Michael Brook. It was released posthumously for Khan, as he died just before the album was due to be completed. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was a Pakistani musician, primarily a singer of Qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufis (a mystical tradition within Islam). Bottom/ My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Sire Records) is a 1981 album by Brian Eno and David Byrne, titled after Amos Tutuola's 1954 novel of the same name. Eno and Byrne thought the title reflected their interest in African music, and also had an evocative, vaguely sinister quality that also referenced the voices sampled for the album. Receiving strong reviews upon its release, My Life is now regarded as a high point in the discographies of Eno and Byrne. Critic John Bush describes the album as "[a] pioneering work for countless styles connected to electronics, ambience, and Third World music. Rather than featuring conventional pop or rock singing, most of the vocals are sampled from other sources, such as commercial recordings of Arabic singers, radio disk jockeys and an exorcist. Musicians had previously used similarly sampling techniques, but critic Dave Simpson declares it had never before been used "to such cataclysmic effect" as on My Life. The album was rereleased in expanded form in 2006.