HEROES

Heroes is David Bowie's second release of the Berlin Trilogy. This trilogy was based on Bowie's interest in the krautrock scene and he wanted to be a part of it. On this record there are no krautrockmusicians available, but on the second half there are some krautrock inspired tracks. This collaberation with Brian Eno (Roxy Music, solo) and Robert Fripp (King Crimson, solo) contains some nice songs, like the titlesong Heroes, Joe the Lion and Sons of the Silent Age. I do especially like the outcry:"baby I will never let you go. All I see is all I know..." with that nice saxophone solo after it.

The first half contains short experimental sounding songs, which have in common a thick sound with some experimental guitarplay (what else shoulde we expect from Fripp?). This is the better half of the record in my opinion, because of it's catchyness and good vocals of Bowie.

The second half is mostly filled with spacy atmospheres a bit like in krautrock. Here Bowie sounds less convincing: the spacy atmosphere played by krautrock giant's like Can, Faust, Guru Guru, early Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze and many others was much better. Well, I guess I'm not convinced at all by the synthesizer sounds and keyboards played by Brian Eno. The koto playing by Bowie is not that excellent either: a nice experiment, but a failed experiment in my opinion.

The first side is worth four stars, the second side three. 3,5 in total.