"My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" is a notable album co-produced by acclaimed musicians Brian Eno and David Byrne. Released in February 1981, the album was highly experimental, marking a significant departure from the traditional rock music conventions to which Byrne's band, the Talking Heads, had generally adhered.
The project was borne out of the pair's shared interest in world music, particularly Afrobeat, and sought to synthesise this influence with Western music forms. The title of the album is borrowed from the 1954 novel by Amos Tutuola, which chronicles the protagonist's experiences in the spirit world.
The music techniques used in the album were innovative for its time. The album makes heavy use of samples from various sources including commercials, radio broadcasts, and recordings of non-Western music. No traditional vocals were used but rather "found" or recorded voices were sampled and looped over the music tracks.
It stands as one of the first popular music albums to make extensive use of what we now call sampling, a technique that would later become a staple of hip-hop and electronic music. This incorporation of varied and sometimes obscure samples was a novel and experimental approach that set the tone for much future music production.
Furthermore, the album is also renowned for employing a wide array of percussion instruments and effects, potentially stemming from Eno's prior experiments with ambient music and Byrne’s incorporation of funk rhythms into the Talking Heads’ sound.
The album initially stirred controversy due to the use of Arabic vocals, leading to one track, "Qu'ran," being removed from later editions of the album. Despite this, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" has been highly influential on a wide range of genres and considered a pioneering work in the use of sampling and world music influences in popular music.
