Extending their collaborative efforts on Talking Heads records, David Byrne and "fifth head" studio producer Brian Eno got together and recorded one of the most brilliantly challenging and satisfyingly experimental albums ever, "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts."

Sample-heavy, dense yet ethereal, and otherworldly are all adjectives that could be used to describe this sonic masterpiece, yet none of them do the record justice. From the floating vocals that breeze around and through tracks like "Regiment" and "The Carrier," sounding like disembodied, haunting and haunted spirits, to the polyrythmic percussion adding an undeniable tribal feel, as though these disembodied spirits were being invoked, the material sounds as fresh and radical today as it must have in 1981 when it was released. With tracks about demonic possession ("The Spirit Jezebel"), the stupor of the American people ("America Is Waiting") and the penchance to blame others rather than oneself ("Help Me Somebody") the undeniable weirdness of American culture is presented and exposed.

It might seem as though this album were ahead of its time when it was released, but I also say that it's a timeless album, one that was very foreward-thinking when Eno & Byrne recorded it, but which stands up well to this day. And while it might seem prescient, there's still no other album to compare this one to. Sure, it features sampled music (which might make it similar to a dj or house record), studio manipulation (similar to industrial music), moody ambiant sounds (that call to mind certain goth albums), african polyrhythms (which predates the surge in popularity of world music), and bits of reconstructed vocal samples (reminding one of Emergency Broadcast Network or The Evolution Control Committee), yet when put together in a blender and mixed to perfection as this album has done, it sounds like none of these things. This makes the record both difficult to classify and truly classic.

Anyone who is a fan of experimental, moody, and at times downright eerie music, or would like to hear something similar to early Peter Gabriel but without the singing, and with even weirder textures, would do well to pick up this record in its new remixed and expanded format. It's worth it for any serious lover of music.