(OK. So I am a little late to the party on this one, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless…)
Apparently, w-a-a-a-y back in 2006 in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the release of Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Brian Eno and David Byrne made available all of the constituent tracks to two songs from the album (‘A Secret Life’ and ‘Help Me Somebody’) for remixing and use under a creative comments license. Marc Weidenbaum over at the excellent online blog disquiet contacted musicians he liked and asked them to submit remixes for inclusion in a downloadable collection. Marc noted that the result, Our Lives in the Bush of Ghosts, has been downloaded 25,000 times.
That is cool in itself. However, of even greater interest to me is that the tracks are still available (as mp3s or as 1.2GB of WAVs), and the Eno / Byrne project site is still accepting audio and video remixes. (So far 272 audio remixes have been submitted.) It should be noted that the creative commons licensing terms covering non-commercial use of the material are really very liberal. You can re-interpret the songs as you will, or do something completely different using just a portion of the material. Whatever you desire.
This was a seminal album for me as it — and Eno’s Music for Films — were probably the two albums that inspired me enough to spend my summer savings on a Monopoly back in ’81/’82 and thus start this particular thread in my life.
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- More info on Life in the Bush of Ghosts is available here and here.
- The update on Marc’s project Our Lives in the Bush of Ghosts is available here. His original announcement and more back story on the project is available here.
- The Byrne/Eno site and audio files are available here. Be sure to allow pop-ups or you won’t be able to complete the registration agreement.
- A link to the excellent ambient/electronica site Disquiet is available here.
