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A legendary album -- for its prescience about the shape of music to come, its early use of samples -- and a controversial one, having fielded many criticisms of cultural imperialism and arrogance, David Byrne and Brian Eno's 1981 record "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" just received a triumphant rerelease from Nonesuch, a move sure to confirm its place as a true classic. All the extra-musical discourse surrounding the album aside, what still astonishes is how Byrne and Eno took what sounds, to me at least, like a thoroughly distasteful idea -- polished instrumental world-beat funk topped with a potpourri of sampled voices from around the globe -- and turned out an album that is always good, sometimes great and, 25 years later, barely sounds dated.
-- T.B.
