Track Listing

1. America Is Waiting
2. Mea Culpa
3. Regiment
4. Help Me Somebody
5. Jezebel Spirit
6. Very Very Hungry
7. Moonlight In Glory
8. Carrier
9. Secret Life
10. Come With Us
11. Mountain Of Needles
12. Pitch To Voltage
13. Two Against Three
14. Vocal Outtakes
15. New Feet
16. Defiant
17. Number 8 Mix
18. Solo Guitar With Tin Foil
19. Mea Culpa

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5302 in Music
• Released on: 2006-03-27
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Originally conceived as "a series of recordings based on an imaginary culture", My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts finds Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and studio egghead Brian Eno marking time between 1979’s Fear Of Music and the following year’s Remain In Light with a machetes-out excursion into the dense, unexplored ethnic wilderness. Recorded with a cast of virtuoso players that includes bassist Bill Laswell and New York percussionist David Van Tieghem, it’s an album that blurs the boundaries between African rhythms and the electronic avant-garde, a feat made possible thanks to Eno’s cutting-edge studio tool – the sampler. It’s this equipment that provides the "voice" of the record. A series of disembodied voices, in fact - Arabian singers, raging US talk-show hosts, Christian preacher men, field recordings – not just dropped into the music but immersed in it, until it’s impossible to sense the join. Stiffly funky and reliant on electronics, it’s a defiantly modern record, which paradoxically, dates it somewhat next to Byrne’s next work, Talking Heads’ immortal Remain In Light. It remains a fascinating milestone in experimentation, however, its foundation loosing a tremor that can still be heard in everything from Moby’s Play to the teeming ranks of modern hip-hop.--Louis Pattison

CD Description
Eno was a key figure in the development of Talking Heads, producing some of their most innovative albums. This collaboration with head Head Byrne built on the sonic ground the twohad already broken together via their well established working relationship. The pair couldn't have known how influential MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS would be in the next two decades. Deconstructing the avant-funk of the Heads' REMAIN INLIGHT, Byrne and Eno recorded polyrhythmic backing tracks similar to that effort. Instead of creating lyrics or melodies to lay over them, the duo turned to "found sounds" and voices, looping everything from radio talk show conversations to Muslim chants atop the rhythm bed, before anyone even knewwhat a sampler was. The subsequent impact on everything, from electronica to World music to whatever Bill Laswell is doing this week, was inestimable. The most important thing is that all this high-minded studio wizardry works on a very immediately satisfying level.

Customer Reviews

Correct me if I'm wrong but...
This is less a review than a correction to the Amazon review. The line abou Eno having a sampler was bugging me as I was sure that that wasn't the case. Sure enough, a quick scan of the album notes revealed that Eno and Byrne did it all with tape, making it all the more of an achievement. I guess only anoraks like me will care but what the hey. Whichever way you slice it, it's a great album. Also, anyone interested in this might also want to check out 'On The Way To The Peak Of Normal' by Holger Czukay, ex Can bassist. It was also made by manipulating tape and is, like 'Bush of Ghosts' a remarkable album.

Groundbreaking brilliance...
Few records can justifiably claim to be "groundbreaking", but here's one - a mesmerising example of two highly creative musicians at the peak of their powers pushing their ideas out to the edge. Using the infectious poly-rhythms and jerky, high tension riffs & vocals that permeated their brilliantly successful collaboration on Talking Heads' "Remain in Light" as their starting point, they mix-in ingenious looped samples and insidious guitar, synthesizer & percussion back-beats to produce something completely unique. Not only like nothing else around at the time but, like all truly great albums, one that hasn't aged with time. Often sounding more like an inventive slice of modern "electronica/dance" it's almost impossible to believe that it was produced 25 years ago... and, of course, a great deal of what's followed since can be traced back to this amazing record.

Darker and far more "left-field" than "Remain in Light", "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" is no easy listen, but with repeat playing it becomes equally addictive... a worthy successor and a wholly successful exploration of just how far Brian Eno's & David Byrne's complex fusions of electronica & rock could be taken. File under "essential, timeless and under-rated slice of musical genius".

Another shortcoming
Forget the cover, Eno has dropped the track Qur'an from the original after complaints from some Muslim organisation because Eno dared to include clips of Koranic recitation. The bonus tracks are all very well, but make sure you get/keep the original if you want to hear the album before it was censored.