My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (album)

''My Life in the Bush of Ghosts'' is a studio album by Brian Eno and David Byrne, released in February 1981. It was Byrne's first album without his band Talking Heads. The album integrates sampled vocals and found sounds, African and Middle Eastern rhythms, and electronic music techniques. It was recorded before Eno and Byrne's work on Talking Heads' 1980 album ''Remain in Light'', but problems clearing samples delayed its release by several months.

The extensive sampling on ''My Life'' is considered innovative, though its influence on later sample-based music genres is debated. ''Pitchfork'' named it the 21st best album of the 1980s, while ''Slant Magazine'' named it the 83rd.

Recording

Eno and Byrne first worked together on '' More Songs About Buildings and Food'', the 1978 album by Byrne's band Talking Heads. ''My Life in the Bush of Ghosts'' was primarily recorded during a break between the Talking Heads albums ''Fear of Music'' (1979) and ''Remain in Light'' (1980), both produced by Eno. Eno had also recently recorded '' Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics'' with Jon Hassell, who intended to collaborate with Eno and Byrne on the album, but could not afford to fly to California for the recording sessions. Upon hearing the tapes, Hassell felt "outraged" at what he felt was an appropriation of his music.

Eno described ''My Life'' as a "vision of a psychedelic Africa". Rather than conventional pop or rock singing, most of the vocals are sampled from other sources, such as commercial recordings of Arabic singers, radio disc jockeys, and an exorcist. Musicians had previously used similar sampling techniques, but, according to ''Guardian'' writer Dave Simpson, sampling had never before been used "to such cataclysmic effect". In 2001, Eno cited Holger Czukay's experiments with dictaphones and shortwave radios as earlier examples of sampling. He felt that the "difference was, I suppose, that I decided to make amplingthe lead vocal". The release was delayed while legal rights were sought for the large number of samples used on the album. A sample of an evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman performing an exorcism intended for "The Jezebel Spirit" was refused by her estate as they objected to the context it was to be used in.

The album title is derived from Amos Tutuola's 1954 novel '' My Life in the Bush of Ghosts''. According to Byrne's 2006 liner notes, neither he nor Eno had read the novel, but they felt the title "seemed to encapsulate what this record was about".

Soon after the album was released, the Islamic Council of Great Britain objected to the use of samples of Qur'anic recital in the track "Qu'ran", considering it blasphemy. Byrne and Eno removed the track from later pressings. In 2006, Byrne said:

Two tracks on the album, "Regiment" and "The Carrier", sample the voice of Lebanese singer Dunya Younes (credited in the album's liner notes as Dunya Yunis). Although Byrne and Eno took care to clear the samples with the label that released the album her vocals had been sampled from, as well as paid for the sampling accordingly, Younes was unaware of the use of her voice on the album until 2017. Both songs were taken down from streaming services after a family representative contacted the duo a year later, and the songs were later reinstated when the issue was settled amicably out of court.

Samples

The following notes are adapted from the album's liner notes and indicate the voices sampled.

Side one
#"America Is Waiting" – Ray Taliaferro of KGO Newstalk AM 810 (unidentified in the liner notes); San Francisco, April 1980.
#"Mea Culpa" – inflamed caller and smooth politician replying, both unidentified; radio call-in show, New York, July 1979.
#"Regiment" – Dunya Younes, Lebanese mountain singer; from "Abu Zeluf" on ''Music in the World of Islam, Volume One: The Human Voice'' (Tangent TGS 131).
#"Help Me Somebody" – Reverend Paul Morton; broadcast sermon, New Orleans, June 1980.
#"The Jezebel Spirit" – unidentified exorcist; New York, September 1980.
Side two

#

"Qu'ran" – Algerian Muslims chanting the Qur'an; from "Recitation of Verses of the Qu'ran" on ''Music in the World of Islam, Volume One: The Human Voice'' (Tangent TGS 131).
#"Moonlight in Glory" – The Moving Star Hall Singers; Sea Island, Georgia; from ''Sea Island Folk Festival'' ( Folkways FS 3841), produced by Guy Carawan.
#"The Carrier" – Dunya Younes (same source as track 3)
#"A Secret Life" – Samira Tewfik, Lebanese popular singer; from ''Les Plus Grands Artistes du Monde Arabe'' (EMI).
#"Come with Us" – unidentified radio evangelist; San Francisco, April 1980.

Production

Packaging

The original package design was created by Peter Saville. The cover image was created by pasting small cutout humanoid shapes onto a monitor and pointing a camera at it to create video feedback, infinitely multiplying the shapes. Byrne said of the process: "Somehow, despite it being very techie, these techniques also seemed analogous to what we were doing on the record. It was funky as well as being techie. Extremely lo-tech, actually, and not what you were supposed to do with a TV set."

Music videos

The official short films accompanying two tracks, "America Is Waiting" and "Mea Culpa", were each made by collage filmmaker Bruce Conner.

Reception and legacy

According to music journalist Simon Reynolds, many initial reviews of ''My Life in the Bush of Ghosts'' dismissed the album as "an eggheads-in-the-soundlab experimental exercise." In ''Rolling Stone'', Jon Pareles

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