My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - Dark Publications

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Amazon.com essential recording
Released in 1981, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is a collaboration between ambient pioneer Brian Eno and Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. On Ghosts, the two strong-willed musicians manage to come to a meeting of the minds, blending Byrne's herky-jerky funk with Eno's atmospheric sound sculpting. More than anything, this is a large album, intent on pushing itself to the front of the listener's consciousness. Abundant percussion (everything from booming tribal drums to eerie electronics) reverberates in the background while Byrne and Eno toss all manner of found sounds, field recordings, and radio broadcasts into the mix. What results is a groundbreaking album that introduced a generation to the dazzling possibilities offered by electronic recording techniques. Highlights include "The Jezebel Spirit," an electro-funk workout that uses a recording of an exorcism as its focal point, and "Very, Very Hungry," a mysteriously ethereal display of electronic percussion and large-scale sonic architecture. --S. Duda

Album Description
Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts appears downright visionary. With its "found" vocals, cut-and-paste arrangements, funked-up rhythms and embrace of influences from all around the globe, the duo's controversial work anticipated the creative cross-pollination and technological innovation of contemporary dance music, world music, hip hop and alternative rock. You can hear echoes of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in the anthems Moby built around vintage vocal samples, in the outrageously exotic beats of Missy Elliot and Timbaland, in the Middle Eastern accented chill-out tracks of Thievery Corporation or Bjork's otherworldly soundscapes.

Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

An Influential Album Gets Its Due April 15, 2006
101 out of 102 found this review helpful

Reissues don't get much better than this.

First, the sound quality is much improved over the first CD reissue, warmer and more balanced, with slightly better definition.

Second, three of the tracks are actually longer than on the original release. "Mea culpa" is almost a minute and a half longer. "Regiment" is about 15 seconds longer, thanks to an extended intro. "The carrier" is 43 seconds longer, including an extra vocal in the middle that, upon comparison, was clearly excised from the original version. (In addition, "Moonlight in glory" takes a bit longer to fade out, though it does not otherwise seem to differ from the original.)

Third, the rather thick booklet actually has liner notes, with essays by David Byrne and Brian Eno (though theirs seem to be mostly David Byrne) and David Toop. You don't see liner notes much anymore, so this is a real treat.

Fourth, the new cover art on the slipcase perfectly illustrates the nature of the contents of the package. The image is actually that of the original album cover, only updated using current technology.

Fifth, according to the official web site created for this reissue, "David Byrne has personally overseen the tracklisting and remastering". I have seen too many artist catalogs remastered and reissued without the participation of the artists themselves, and the results are usually lacking in some respect. This is not the case here.

Finally, the video for "Mea culpa" is included. And at a decent resolution, too.

I have only two real complaints about this remastered edition. One is the omission of the track "Qu'ran", though I realize that particular choice was made back in the late eighties, when the first UK edition of the CD was released. It also would have been nice if the liner notes had included a mention of this track and the reasons for its absence, even if only in passing. In any event, if this track is a must-have for you, I recommend tracking down a used copy of the first US CD edition (Sire Records, 6093-2). The other is the omission of the credits identifying the voices used. David Toop mentions one of the sources in his essay, but none of the others are specifically mentioned anywhere.

Highly recommended.

5 out of 5 stars

ROCKIN', YOU SAY? May 22, 2006
34 out of 41 found this review helpful

I was surprised to see a review of this reissue in "Rolling Stone" of all places. The review's writer seemed somewhat at sea. (I hesitate to describe him as a "reviewer" or "critic" since, as we will shortly see, the discipline he applies to developing his opinions are severely limited). Apparently this chap was unable to twig on to what's happening here and gave the effort a less than three-star rating based on -- get this -- his keenly articulated insight that MLITBOG "wasn't rockin' enough". I guess if you believe that "rockin'" is the single criterion for anything and everything then those guiding lights of Commerce trumps Culture, who know the measure of everything, will eventually let you have your very own copy of "ROCKIN'! --The Industry's Guide to What Matters in Music, Entertainment, Food and Fashion, Etc. -- One Word Edition". But only if you take an oath to Obey.

Of course for the rest of us so far removed from the towers of Stone, there's always a bit of an issue in evaluating any form of expression because it requires some effort to determine both the intention and the result -- and then measure the gap between the two. It's also nice to have some context bigger than last week to consider. I'm going out on what I imagine to be a rather thick and well-developed limb, not far off the ground and in complete confidence to be working without a supporting ladder, rope, parachute or big fluffy cushions to break a potential fall, when I say that it seems unlikely that "rockin'" was one of the primary goals here.

For example, we first hear Eno's use of this "found object" technique on "Before and After Science". On "Kurt's Rejoinder" during which Percy Jones' bass meets up with Dave Mattacks' drums, Eno uses a recording of Kurt Schwitters -- an original member of the Dada movement -- as the vocal in what can only be termed an audio "readymade". "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" takes this aesthetic to new levels of sophistication and deliberate manipulation, and is in fact kin to many art and art music traditions of the 20th Century geared at times to encouraging non-linear processes, trusting an unforeseen outcome and even placing the artist's personality at some remove from utterly dominating all aspects of the created work. Its heuristic tendencies don't derive from a rock sensibility and the importance of a rock sensibility here is at best minimal. In effect, many of the rigidly compartmentalized rhythmic components seem designed to be the absolute antithesis of typical rock forms. So, in addition to some remarkable music, the record's value also lies in bringing this perspective within the reach of a more egalitarian audience.

Rolling Stone's critical arrogance aside, "Ghosts" was and is a singularly winning experiment and these remasters are a huge help in clearing up the sound and structure -- there are even a few spots where voices are revealed which were not evident on the original. It's also great to have the single included ("Very, Very Hungry" which here replaces "Qu'ran" -- no offense! spellcheck tells me it should be Qur'an) as well as the other tracks, some of which have surfaced Here There and Everywhere over the years. Needless to add, a disc well worth having and well worth thinking about here in Century 21.

5 out of 5 stars

It's STILL Years Ahead Of Its Time! April 22, 2006
20 out of 21 found this review helpful

I got my copy of this CD the day it was released, as I had been waiting for this reissue for years. My 17-year-old daughter is very music-savvy. We were out driving in the car, and I played "Mea Culpa" and "Regimen" for her.

I asked her "When do you think this was recorded?" She told me "Probably sometime in the last ten years, maybe in the late 1990's." When I told her that David Byrne and Brian Eno recorded "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts" in 1979-80 without the use of computers or digital equipment, she was stunned!

A lot of music that is now 25 years old has not stood the test of time; it sounds dated, cliched, dull. Not the music on this disc! It sounds as fresh, as scary, as exciting to me as it did when it was first released. The explosive percussion, the shimmering, chattering keyboards, the strange yet perfect "found" vocals... it's all here, in all its innovative glory. Six bonus tracks have been added, and although I feel they don't make the original album better, they add some insights into the music. Extensive liner notes serve to put this work into perspective as the true landmark that it is.

A masterpiece 25 years ago, it is still a masterpiece today and I suspect it still will be considered such 25 years from now. Run, don't walk, to wherever this disc is sold, and BUY IT. You will not be disappointed.

5 out of 5 stars

What really happened in the eighties. June 20, 2006
19 out of 19 found this review helpful

Albums like this one are what makes me grit my teeth when people talk about how vapid 1980's music was. If only they knew how much they missed that was brewing below the surface (The early Butthole Surfers and Big Black, for example).
Anyway, I have loved this album since the day it was released on vinyl. Along with Holger Czuckay, Gregory Whitehead, Derek Bailey, Giorgi Ligetti and other experimental audio artists of lesser or greater extremes, this collaboration between Eno and Byrne came out with little fanfare and seemed to be overlooked for years afterwards (and in Gregory Whitehead's case...still). Back then the internet wasn't around to make it so easy for us to find such music and the music industry didn't see a lot of profit in it, so they gave us Boy George instead. Bush of Ghosts was one of those albums you would get wide-eyed to discover in someone else's record collection. It was a shocker to find someone else who had ever heard of it, let alone actually listened to it.
This album is a great combination of intelligence mixed with soul. I can't tell how many converts it has won over through me alone. No matter how your exploration of music led you to this page in Amazon I hope you'll buy this CD and see where it takes you next. Hopefully that journey will have nothing to do with Billy Idol......or American Idol for that matter.

5 out of 5 stars

Maybe that's what artists do May 24, 2006
18 out of 19 found this review helpful

Not since the Beatles reissues has a remastering provided such a dramatic improvement. Although it doesn't say so, I'd suspect engineer Greg Calbi (who mastered the original album) went back to the original 24-track masters, meticulously cleaned up each individual track, then recombined them digitally for maximum clarity. These don't sound like no safety masters! Vocals, synth lines, percussion and bass all stand out in fresh relief. Comparing this issue to the 1990 Sire CD (or even the 1980 LP) is like the Claritin ad, lifting a haze you didn't even know was there.

The track layout follows the 1981 re-issue, which replaced the track "Qu'ran" with the single B-side "Very Very Hungry" after the Islamic Council of Great Britain complained. Interesting that 25 years later (in these days of Danish cartoons) we still can't afford to offend.

The seven bonus tracks are mostly familiar. "Pitch to Voltage" is called "On The Road to Zagora" on the widely-circulated bootleg of outtakes "Ghosts," "Two Against Three" is "The Friends of Amos Tutola" and "Number 8 Mix" is "Les Hommes Ne Le Sauront Jamais." "Defiant" is a radically remixed "Qu'ran" with a different vocal. "New Feet" showed up on Eno's 1980 KPFA interview (as untitled). "Vocal Outtakes" is 0:36 of exactly that and "Solo Guitar with Tin Foil" sounds like Byrne testing a long delay. Still these tracks make a nice adjunct, and needless to say, sound WAY better than on the bootleg.

The only tracks missing are the real "Qu'ran" and "Into The Spirit World" ("The Jezebel Spirit" with the original Kathryn Kuhlman vocals, which her estate still refuses to license.)

I haven't mentioned the music yet. Somehow, if you're reading this, I doubt I need to.

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