Pitchfork

With two massively influential musical pioneers collaborating, and exorcism ceremonies committed to tape, how could the 1981 David Byrne/Brian Eno collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts have been anything less than spectacular? (Please don't bring up Jay-Z and R. Kelly's Best of Both Worlds, we're still trying to forget that one.)

The shape of America laid down by My Life in the Bush of Ghosts eerily resembles that of today: a population oversaturated by media, religious hysteria, and political dishonesty. It was a harbinger of things to come, not only for the domestic landscape but for two decades' worth of musical trends. Everyone from Public Enemy to Moby can be heard in this album's rhythms, which combined found sound, funk, and African pop into a sample-drenched motley groove.

In celebration of the album's 25th anniversary, Nonesuch Records will release the long-awaited reissue of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts on March 28. The record has been remastered and remixed with seven bonus tracks, and features new cover art.

All of the multitracks from two of the album's songs will be available for download on a special website, www.bush-of-ghosts.com, which will go live approximately one month before the reissue's release. Users can remix the tracks and upload them, listen and rate other users' remixes, and create and upload their own videos inspired by the album's songs. In addition, the site will feature archival material dating back to the record's original production and release, including press, session photos, polaroids taken by Byrne, and a video for "Mea Culpa" directed by Bruce Conner. The video will also be included on the CD reissue.

Tracklist:

Side 1:

01 America Is Waiting
02 Mea Culpa
03 Regiment
04 Help Me Somebody
05 The Jezebel Spirit

Side 2:

06 Very, Very Hungry
07 Moonlight in Glory
08 The Carrier
09 A Secret Life
10 Come With Us
11 Mountain of Needles

Side 3:

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

When My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was first released, Eno commented, "It's almost collage music, like grafting a piece of one culture onto a piece of another onto a piece of another, and trying to make them work as a coherent musical idea, and also trying to make something you can dance to."

Byrne, looking back on the recording of the album, said, "At that time there were no samplers, so the found vocals were inserted into the music by trial and error. We'd have two tape machines playing simultaneously, one containing the track and the other the vocal and, if the gods willed, which they often seemed to, there would be a serendipity, the vocal and the track would at least seem to feel like they belonged together, and it would be a 'take.' It was all 'played" and very seat-of-the-pants. There was none of the incremental tweaking and time-correcting that is possible with modern samplers and computers, so throwing the vocals against the tracks was in our case almost a performance."