Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Rip It Up APRIL 1981 - by George Kay

DAVID BYRNE AND BRIAN ENO: MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS

The Byrne-Eno involvement in African music was the guiding force behind Remain In Light. Concurrent with that album, the two academics were working haphazardly on a more personal and esoteric venture, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts.

Again the emphasis is on African rhythms, hypnotic in design but this time out concerned with providing more truncated set pieces of bustling funk for the pre-recorded voices involved. For Remain In Light Byrne revealed that his lyrics were taken from evangelists' speeches on the radio. On much of Ghosts he has recorded fragments of the actual religious rants and used them on several tracks with the result that Help Me Somebody and The Jezebel Spirit, particularly, have an amazingly obsessive, almost macabre aura that's driven home by relentless funk. On other tracks Byrne and Eno have used, with cunning suitability, the voices of traditional African singers and further radio excerpts, America Is Waiting and Mea Culpa.

In negative terms Ghosts can be seen as a collection of Talking Heads instrumental backing tracks that are a touch too exploitive and condescending in their adaptation of things African. A back-to-the-roots journey by superior intellects and all that jazz. But don't go away because Byrne and Eno, on the positive side, have managed to fuse a number of disturbing, haunting and accessible parts into effective songs. A good album and not above entertainment.