Where did he go? Out. What did he do? Everything.
There is no golden age of music – everybody lives through their own era and gets the music they deserve. Some people nowadays might decry the lack of great, contemporary music, but that’s only because it might be slightly more difficult to find, even though music in all its myriad forms is more accessible than at any time in history. In the past people would consult their local record shop to see what was alive and keep abreast. In the absence of the record shop, in an environment where the internet is king, some people don’t know where to look, or simply can’t be bothered, so just assume that it’s not there. Despite the protestations of some older listeners, back catalogue material has never been easier to find or more readily available. With that in mind, I’m always staggered at just how many people have never heard Eno and Byrne’s pioneering masterpiece “My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts”. Conceived as a solo project, away from Talking Heads, “Bush Of Ghosts” was recorded in the sessions immediately prior to their fourth LP “Remain In Light”.
According to the internet, it was showered with mixed reviews upon its release in early 1981. I recall it landing in Probe where it was treated like the oddity it clearly is, but then over a matter of weeks it became one of the favourite LP’s in the shop. To say it was unusual is an understatement. Not only was the music somewhere just over there, but clearly the style and – as we later found out – the recording process was new, different, original. Incredibly original. Eno had described it as “a vision of psychedelic Africa” and it certainly exposed some of the more unusual musical forms that were both alien and new to our white European ears. Some of the voice “samples” contained on the album come from “Music In The World Of Islam” on Tangent Records, a series of LP’s that exposed the music of a hitherto unknown world. The human voice on “Regiment” is by Dilma Yunis, and it is hypnotic and chilling at the same time. The unusual nature of the singing is of course what makes the track, with a little help from your friends. It really can transport you to that “somewhere else”, somewhere music may have never taken you before. “Regiment” was also the b-side of the single “Jezebel Spirit”, a downtown, no wave funk workout underpinned by the sound of a real exorcism.
The original take contained a sampled voice of a well known psychic medium. The argy bargy in getting the sample included on the record delayed its release by several months, indeed until way after the release of “Remain In Light”.
“Bush Of Ghosts” remains one of the most pioneering, forward thinking records ever made – a tour de force in out of the box creativity, a benchmark by which all other weirdo records ever since have been judged. Every time you listen to it – and I must have heard it thousands of times – it still sounds like a brand new record. So much so, that every time I ever play this out, and I still often do, a pop eyed 23 year old will marvel at its genius and demand to take a photo of the sleeve. The heroics of sampling took the art in a completely different direction to where Eno and Byrne were travelling but that should never discount the fact that if there was a starting gun to this journey, they pulled the trigger. Strange analogy I know, but it’s 9.40am on a Tuesday morning… . Thanks. x
Brian Eno David Byrne – Regiment. EG EGOX 1 (B). May 1981.
bernie@happening-things.com 