Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Sounds FEBRUARY 14, 1981 - by Tony Mitchell

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

Primeval poltergeists

What's going on here - in case you've been living in a fallout shelter for the last six months - is that two chaps with enviable reputations for producing meaningful statements of a musical nature have got together with a handful of American radio broadcasts, some Islamic records and a whole bunch of percussion and have assembled it into something which may or may not be music, yet alone art.

Eno of course is an old hand at this kind of thing and his is undoubtedly the overriding influence throughout the album, although he shares with Byrne a fashionable interest in the African music which provides the rhythmic basis of its content. My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts was, incidentally, recorded before Talking Heads' similarly influenced Remain In Light but its release has been delayed by legal wrangles over the use of recordings of a particular evangelist's radio broadcasts.

Having listened to it as many times as deadlines permitted I find at least one important question unanswered. Why is it that side one is relatively interesting and yet side two is unmitigatedly tedious? Is it, a) pure chance; b) pure malice; or c) proof that you can't milk more than about twenty minutes of worthwhile entertainment (I use the term in its widest sense) out of one idea?

Personally, I'd plump for six of 'a' and half a dozen of 'c'.

The idea that it is possible to combine ethnic rhythms with cleverly processed and edited recorded speech, or alternatively with ethnic chanting/singing fairly alien to the western ear - the result in either case being that the human voice is converted into a pure musical instrument - is certainly a diverting one, worthy of Eno's rather unique approach to composition and production. But is it any more than interesting?

Well, I found the highly developed African rhythms behind the opening track America Is Waiting, which derives its 'lead line' from the processed outpourings of an indignant radio show host in San Francisco, to be a source of... stimulation - something that would catch the attention of the club scene dominated by standard synthesiser dance music. I found Mea Culpa, based on the confessions of a smooth talking politician and the inflamed responses of a chat show caller, set to a kind of slow-mid shuffle, novel.

What of Regiment? This is 'the funky one', where lashings of Sly-Stone-cum-Magazine's Thankyou Fa Lettinme Be Mice Elf Agin bass lines and the voice of Dunya Yusin, a Lebanese mountain singer, vie with some equally exotic sustained guitar tremolo work (I presume - it could be a synth) to create a very danceable little number, ho ho.

Help me Somebody - frantic Afro rhythms set against Sunday Morning sermonising - I found strikingly energetic and remarkable also for a particular bit of tomfoolery with the preacher's voice which makes it sound like a guitar string twanged and bent. And the last track on side one, The Jezebel Spirit, seemed to share the greatest commonality with the feel of Remain In Light even if the vocal line is a radio exorcism.

But the dive into the depths of tedium experienced on side two, with its chanting Algerian Muslims, Lebanese mountain singers (again) and Egyptian popular vocalists practically defies description. And taking the album as a whole, even the good stuff, though recognisable, is hardly memorable; at least not for reasons that have much to do with music.

I prefer to avoid making judgements about what does and doesn't constitute music, but this album begs the question. I also prefer not to condemn it as totally pretentious, though I think others would.

In the end I think it is best to see it as an experiment which proves 1) that the skilfully contrived combination of various cultural styles is no substitute for natural cross fertilisation, and that 2) without adequate melodic content, music may still be music but it isn't memorable. Rhythm is only half the story and however many complimentary 'voices' are stitched together, the result will still be ultimately unsatisfying without harmony and melody.

For me, then, this album is a unique mutation which carries its own seeds of destruction.

This is not innovation in any meaningful sense. It is not progression. It is the product of two individuals who isolated themselves from all but the most selective realities to create it.

The essence of My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is not new thought except to the most naive who don't recognise primeval rhythms for what they are and don't see the contrivance involved in 'processing' them the way Eno and Byrne have. The essence of the album is skilful juxtaposition of styles, skilful exploitation of resources and, some would say, skilful plagiarism too. But don't confuse it with Art with a capital A. Craft with a capital C would be far more appropriate.