The Jezebel Spirit
Song by David Byrne and Brian Eno
When I was tired of my guitar, I started getting curious about different sounds, effects, and arrangements. I was trying to find something that could bring me somewhere else, something that could bring more excitement to my music-making.
At that magical moment, I discovered the world of electronic music, experimental music, and minimalism.
David Byrne must have reached that moment very early in his life. With his band, Talking Heads, he always had a different approach than other big rock bands of the 70s and 80s.
He always found a way to embellish his music with an unconventional use of the guitar, or with the famous theatrical aspect of Talking Heads performances (the film concert Stop Making Sense documented it brilliantly), or with the incredible variety of genres his music covers.
In between the two Talking Heads albums, Fear of Music (1979) and Remain in Light (1980), David Byrne collaborated with Brian Eno, which brought him to release his first solo album, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
Although Eno wasn’t a Talking Heads producer yet, it’s very easy to imagine the two of them playing and experimenting with new sounds and techniques. The album was, in fact, then published with both their names.
debuted in 1981, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is a mix of influences based on a heavy use of sampling, a practice now standard in music production, but back then, it was both shocking and revolutionary.
The recordings took months because of “problems clearing samples.”
Nowadays, we have plenty of DAWs to create our loops and music samples. Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, and Ableton Live are tools we invented to make those processes faster and simpler. They were created and developed also thanks to these early efforts. For this historical reason alone, we should celebrate the craftwork we can hear on this album.
I chose to explore the once-controversial track The Jezebel Spirit, in which the vocal samples contain an exorcism performed by an anonymous exorcist.
You can imagine how, in 1981, this could easily attract critics.
The first thing you’ll notice on this track is the irregular beat, a thing we never hear today in the MIDI-based era of programming.
The computers tend to keep us stuck to a quantized grid, and almost all producers nowadays manually modify beats, moving them out of the grid to “humanize them” to make them feel more natural.
How paradoxical this is, isn’t it?
While listening to this track, one can note where other sounds might have been birthed inspiration. Africa Hitech’s intense beats, Thom Yorke’s Atoms For Peace, groovy funk guitars, and around 3:18, a synth arpeggiator we could easily find in any Four Tet album are some. It’s easy to understand the importance of what David Byrne and Brian Eno did in making this album. They inspired thousands of musicians into programming and sampling in a moment still dominated by rock giants.
