The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
David Bowie · produced by David Bowie and Tony Visconti · RCA · about 38 minutes
Mode
Art rock cut to fragments on one side, and given to electronic and ambient instrumentals on the other
Mythos
Exile and rebirth: a self in ruin, a passage to a new town, a divided city made into a rite
Phase
Eleven tracks on two near-equal sides; seven short pieces with the songs among them cut short, a wordless bridge, then four long pieces with no English words
Presentation
Album; eleven tracks, about thirty-eight minutes, recorded in France and completed in Berlin
Register
Treated drums, dry funk bass and guitar, synthesisers, piano and saxophone; a voice deadpan on one side and in invented syllables on the other
Scale
One exhausted consciousness, then a city and its walled-in people, held by sound and title
Governing Proposition
A rock singer at commercial height cuts his songs off before they finish, sets his voice low and his treated drums high, and gives the second half of the record to four long pieces with no English in them: a self rebuilt by subtraction, in which speech is the first thing to go, ending in a divided Europe heard as liturgy and lament.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins without its singer. Speed of Life is an instrumental with a manic lift, over drums that sound broken and machine-made at once, and it sets the album going before any voice is ready to speak. That is the record’s method stated in its first two minutes. A singer known for his personae opens his album by declining to appear, and when he does appear on the next track the voice is low in the mix and the drums are high. Everything that follows is built on that reversal.
RCA released the album on 14 January 1977: eleven tracks, about thirty-eight minutes, produced by David Bowie and Tony Visconti. It was recorded in 1976 at the Château d’Hérouville in France and completed at Hansa in Berlin. Brian Eno collaborated, and co-wrote Warszawa. The rhythm section was Dennis Davis, George Murray and Carlos Alomar, and Visconti put Davis’s drums through an Eventide Harmonizer, so that the snare is heard harmonised. The drum sound is the record’s signature, and it is part of what the record means.
The architecture is two sides of near-equal length. Side one holds seven short pieces, five of them sung in English, under three minutes on average, most cut off before they arrive anywhere a song would normally go. Side two holds four long pieces, nearly five minutes on average, and none of them has a word of English in it. Words occupy about a third of the record’s time, and none is heard after the sixth track. A record that will go on to say that speech is the first thing to go is built so that speech goes.
Movement II
Sound and Vision is a song about waiting to be able to speak, and it makes the listener wait for the voice. Its instrumental opening is long, bright and suspended, a height of its own, and the vocal does not enter until most of the first half has gone. When it comes the song is about a blue room and the will to begin. It was a hit single in Britain, a pop song about not being able to make a pop song, and its form is its subject: the waiting is what it knows.
Around it, side one runs in fragments. Breaking Glass is under two minutes of brittle funk, cut off before it can complete. What in the World is nervous and cluttered, the busiest and least necessary of the songs. Always Crashing in the Same Car repeats a compulsion and names it, the old figure of a return that cannot be escaped. Be My Wife is a plea of loneliness sung flat enough to be true. The songs end before their choruses, or have none, and the voice that carried the singer’s earlier records is kept low and short.
What the record discloses can be stated: a self dismantled by its excesses rebuilds itself by subtraction, and speech is the first thing to go and the last to return. The songs on side one show the withdrawal; the form enacts it. Change the form, and let these songs run to their choruses with the voice in front, and the record would stop knowing what it knows. But the disclosure is rendered more than articulated. The record shows a self exhausted and withdrawing, and states almost nothing beyond that exhaustion that could be held as true.
Movement III
The last track of side one is wordless, and it is the bridge the record needs. Its title names a passage, and the music makes it: the side of fragments ends with an instrumental that looks forward, and the next sound is a different country. A New Career in a New Town is the hinge between a self in ruin and a place where that self can no longer speak the language. It is the only track on the record whose title tells the listener where the album is going.
The frame is exile and rebirth, and it is carried by the sequence and the titles. The record passes from the crash that repeats, through the passage to a new town, into the east of Europe: a city named in its own language in Warszawa, a wall in Weeping Wall whose title joins Jerusalem’s to Berlin’s, and people beneath the surface in Subterraneans. The particulars stay particular, a car, a room, a wife wanted. The myth is old, the exile who must lose a tongue to begin again.
No person bears it. The singer of side one does not arrive in the city of side two; he disappears, and the city is heard without him. The frame is real, and it holds the two halves in one passage, but the archetype is atmosphere more than structure, laid down by the order of the tracks and the words on the sleeve rather than built into a figure who carries it. That is what holds the myth below the record’s other achievements, and it is the record’s plainest limit.
Movement IV
The first track of side two is the record’s centre of gravity and its summit. A slow processional under synthesiser chords, then a voice in invented syllables rising like a choir in a foreign rite, grave and immense. Eno co-wrote it. The voice is kept and the words are removed: speech without meaning, sung with the full weight of liturgy. A city is made into a rite, and a record that has withdrawn from speech finds, without a single word, its greatest height. Art Decade follows, an elegy that lifts in its quiet way between the heavy pieces.
The tradition turned from is Bowie’s own. Young Americans had been plastic soul, and Station to Station had added a cold funk and a motorik pulse; beside them stood the German electronic bands and Eno’s ambient records. The turn here is large: a rock star at commercial height gives half an album to instrumentals and abandons the persona album he had perfected. But the languages were proven, in Düsseldorf and in Eno’s work, the man who brought one of them was in the room, and the turn had begun on the previous record. The swerve is the joining, made from inside the mainstream.
The joining moved the field. Joy Division first called themselves Warsaw after this track. The post-punk generation took the record as a source, the synthesiser pop of the following years followed it, and the processed drum became a sound of the next decade. Philip Glass carried its material into the concert hall in his Low Symphony of 1992, and later left turns by established bands, Radiohead’s Kid A among them, were measured against it. Part of that reach belongs to the Berlin records together. The force that began it is this record’s: a mainstream rock album that left the song for long stretches and kept its public.
Movement V
The record ends in a lament. Subterraneans sets a saxophone over drifting synthesisers and piano, an elegy for the people beneath the surface of a divided city, and by now there are no words left. Before it Weeping Wall restates the mode of side two in a thinner palette, and stays level. The last sound of a record that began with a riff and a broken drum is a horn mourning, slowly, with nothing to say and everything to grieve. The rebuilding the record promised is not completed. It ends in the city, not in a new self.
One law governs the whole: speech failing and sound taking its place, under a cold, close light. Breaking Glass and Warszawa, the two most distant pieces, obey it, one a song cut off and the other a voice without words. But the two halves are joined by a bridge rather than fused, and a listener may hear two records in one sleeve. Side one’s nervous energy and side two’s stillness meet only in the argument they share. The law holds, and the strain on it is real.
Forty-nine years have tested the record. It has stayed in print, Sound and Vision has stayed in broadcast, and it has been heard whole and reworked for orchestra. That presence is wider among musicians than among the public, and its drum sound, which the next decade made its own, now dates part of its surface later than its year. What it holds is one exhausted consciousness, a single plea to a wife, and a city and its walled-in people glimpsed through sound and title; labour, the family and the natural order are absent. Within that, the form is the knowledge, and the record’s last word is that there are none.
Act III · The Twelve
Eleven tracks in about thirty-eight minutes, and the fragmentary method changes the subtractive test: the songs are cut short by design, so brevity is not slack. Speed of Life must open, an instrumental that sets the record going before any voice is ready. Sound and Vision is the hinge of side one, a song about waiting to speak that delays its own vocal. A New Career in a New Town is the bridge the two sides require; Warszawa is the record’s centre of gravity, and Subterraneans its compelled end. The test bites twice. What in the World is the busiest and least necessary of the songs, and Weeping Wall restates side two’s mode in a thinner palette. One soft track on each side holds the figure.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: a self dismantled by its excesses rebuilds itself by subtraction, and speech is the first thing to go and the last to return. The record says it mostly by sound. Sound and Vision waits in a blue room for the will to begin; Always Crashing in the Same Car repeats a compulsion and names it; Be My Wife is a plea of loneliness flat enough to be true. Then words stop. Side two discloses a place, a divided Europe, heard as liturgy without a text in Warszawa and as an elegy for the walled-in in Subterraneans, and that is credited as fully as words. It is held below the bar because the condition is rendered more than articulated, and little is stated beyond the self’s exhaustion.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Elevation is real, cold, and concentrated on side two. Warszawa is the summit: a slow processional under synthesiser chords, then a voice in invented syllables rising like a choir in a foreign rite, grave and immense. Subterraneans ends the record in a lament, a saxophone over drifting synthesisers. Art Decade lifts in its quiet way. On side one Sound and Vision has a bright, suspended height in its long instrumental opening, and Speed of Life a manic lift. The rest of side one has force more than elevation: Breaking Glass is brittle, What in the World nervous, Be My Wife flat by intent, and Weeping Wall stays level. Height at the top is very high; it comes on five or six of eleven tracks, and that frequency holds the figure.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Myth is evoked through places and figures, and built in one frame: exile and rebirth. The record passes from a self in ruin through A New Career in a New Town, the passage named in its title, into a foreign city in the east of Europe, where it can no longer speak the language. Side one’s crash that repeats is an old figure of eternal return; Weeping Wall’s title joins Jerusalem’s wall to Berlin’s; Warszawa makes a city into a rite. The particular stays particular: a car, a room, a wife wanted. What holds the axis well below the bar is that the frame is carried by the sequence and the titles, not by a figure: no person bears the exile, and the divided city is atmosphere more than structure.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The inheritance is Bowie’s own: the plastic soul of Young Americans and the cold funk and motorik pulse of Station to Station, beside the German electronic bands and Eno’s ambient records. The turn is large. A rock star at commercial height gives half an album to instrumentals, cuts his songs off before they complete, puts the voice low and the processed drums high, and abandons the persona-driven album he had perfected. The stake was the singer’s own standing. What holds it below the top is the path: the electronic and ambient languages were proven in Düsseldorf and in Eno’s own work, Eno was in the room, and the turn had begun on the previous record. The swerve is the joining, made from inside the mainstream.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Change the form and the record stops knowing what it knows, because the knowledge is the form. A record about a self withdrawing from speech is built of songs that end before their choruses, a voice that enters late or not at all, and then a side with no words. Sound and Vision’s vocal waits through most of its first half, as its subject waits. Warszawa’s invented language is speech without meaning, voice kept and sense removed. The harmonised drums make rhythm sound broken and machine-made at once. The sequence is counted here, once: the personal fragments yield through a wordless bridge to the impersonal and the collective, and the near-equal sides weigh equally. What in the World and Weeping Wall, where the form serves without enacting, hold it short of the top.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Evidence over forty-nine years. Philip Glass’s Low Symphony (1992) reworked the record across idioms, into the concert hall: the plainest proof of yield a popular record can show. Producers and musicians still take apart the drum sound and the synthesiser layering, and Visconti’s own accounts have kept the making open to study. The yield is in the record too: the sides answer each other in ways never spelled out, and Warszawa’s voice invites hearing as a language it is not. The semantic return is thinner. The words are few and flat, and some of what listeners find is projection invited by silence, as with every record that withholds statement. The depth is formal more than semantic, and that holds the figure where it stands.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The contest is with the rock album as a vehicle of song and persona, and with the singer’s own previous records. The intrinsic force is high: the record joined a funk rhythm section, treated drums and synthesiser to the European electronic and ambient languages inside a mainstream rock record, and showed that the rock album could leave the song for long stretches and keep its public. Kraftwerk and Eno had the languages; the reorganisation was in carrying them into rock’s centre. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: Joy Division first named themselves Warsaw after the eighth track, the processed drum became a sound of the next decade, Glass carried it into the concert hall, and later left turns by established bands were measured against it.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Survival is weighed over forty-nine years. The form is whole: the recording survives as issued, remastered and reissued. Presence is continuous: in print throughout, Sound and Vision in broadcast, the album heard whole and reworked for orchestra. That presence is wider among musicians and critics than among the public, and the charge stands. The fabric bears its moment: the synthesiser timbres and the harmonised snare are sounds of their year, and the drum sound became a sound of the 1980s, so part of the surface now dates to a decade later than the record. Little else is topical. It stands level with Taxi Driver and Closer, and below what has lasted longer.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Command of the recorded medium is load-bearing. Visconti’s treatment of the drums is the record’s signature, a sound that is the content. The rhythm section of Dennis Davis, George Murray and Carlos Alomar plays tight, dry and close, and its funk sits against synthesisers without either swallowing the other. The mix places the voice low and the drums high, a reversal that carries the argument. Side two is made in the studio as composition: layered synthesisers, piano and saxophone in Subterraneans, the slow build of Warszawa, a narrow palette used exactly. The voice runs from the deadpan of Be My Wife to the incantation of Warszawa. The faults: What in the World is cluttered, Weeping Wall’s palette is thin, and some synthesiser timbres are generic for their year.
Score: 9.0 / 10
One law governs the record: speech failing and sound taking its place, under a cold, close light. The two most distant elements obey it. Breaking Glass is under two minutes of brittle funk, Warszawa over six minutes of wordless liturgy; in one the song is cut off before it can complete, in the other the voice is kept and the words removed. Be My Wife, the plainest song, is speech reduced to a plea. The range is wide: funk, pop single, instrumental rock, ambient, liturgy, lament. But the halves are joined by a bridge rather than fused, and a listener may hear two records in one sleeve; side one’s nervous energy and side two’s stillness obey one law only at the level of the argument. That strain holds the figure.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held fully, as exhaustion, compulsion and withdrawal. The couple is held in a single plea, Be My Wife. The city and exile are held: a new town, a room, a car. History and the state enter on side two, Warsaw, divided Berlin and the people walled in, through sound and title, glimpsed more than held. The sacred is evoked in Warszawa’s rite; technology is the medium itself. Labour, the family, the natural order and the body beyond the self’s ruin are absent. One consciousness joins the first half; the second half’s orders are joined by the law, not by a person. Several orders, two of them glimpsed: that is what holds the figure lowest.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
Pressure on Tradition at 9.1, then The Living Form and The Made at 9.0, and The Swerve at 8.9. A record that carried the electronic and ambient languages into the centre of rock and was taken up by the generation after it, a form whose knowledge is in its cuts and its silence, a treated drum sound that is the content, and a rock star’s abandonment of the persona album he had perfected.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.2: one exhausted consciousness, a single plea to a wife, a city and its walled-in people glimpsed through sound and title, and labour, the family and the natural order absent. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 7.8 and The Unconcealment at 8.1: exile and rebirth are carried by the sequence and the titles and borne by no figure, and the withdrawal and the divided city are rendered more than articulated.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.4 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.0, The Made at 9.0, The Inner Law at 8.6, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: Pressure on Tradition at 9.1, The Swerve at 8.9 and The Imperishable at 8.7 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.1 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.8 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.8, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.2.
Basis · the complete album as released by RCA on 14 January 1977, eleven tracks in sequence on two sides, about thirty-eight minutes; judged from knowledge of the recording, its documented making and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand. The album is the unit; reissues, remasters, the box set of the Berlin years, live performances and Philip Glass’s Low Symphony (1992) are used only as evidence. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted. Track lengths are given only roughly. Facts that could not be verified, among them the chart positions, the record company’s response to the album and the timing of its release, whether it was toured, the voice on Weeping Wall, the origin of parts of Subterraneans, its sales against the singer’s other records and the published studies of the Berlin years, are not given.