Brian Eno-David Byrne : Regiment
In February of 1981, Brian Eno and David Byrne released My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, which paired the funky African polyrhythmic music both were so intrigued by with snippets from radio broadcasts and Middle Eastern singing. The album was both a prequel and a sequel to the 1980 Talking Heads album Remain In Light. Though completed before Remain In Light, Bush Of Ghost was delayed because of a legal problem with one of the voices used.
Along with "Moonlight In Glory", "Regiment" is one of the songs that made Eno happiest.
"I think my synth solo on Regiment is possibly the best I've ever played," he told Melody Maker. "People think it's a Fripp guitar rip-off, but it really is me on synthesizer.
"In fact I remember Fripp once saying something like I was the best guitar player he'd heard, and I didn't even play guitar."
Both Eno and Byrne wanted to make an album that made people dance and connect on a spiritual level.
"We are both fairly disenchanted with ordinary song structures - the voice you record is invested with your own personality," Eno said. "What we wanted was to create something more mysterious, and by taking voices out of context, but featuring them dominantly as the main vocal performance, you can go on to create meaning by surrounding the voice with a musical mood."
In some cases they use sounds from a New Orleans preacher, an exorcism, readers of the Koran and, in the above example, a Lebanese singer named Dunya Yusin. The album is named after a novel by Nigerian author Amos Tutuola
Years ahead of his time, Rolling Stone's Jon Pareles wrote "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is an undeniably awesome feat of tape editing and rhythmic ingenuity. But, like most found art, it raises stubborn questions about context, manipulation and cultural imperialism."
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