Brian Eno & David Byrne "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" [1981]

It's amazing to think that with how obnoxious this album of actual tape loops is that the practice of loop sampling ever got off the ground. Brian Eno seems to have completely ruined the entire concept on his worthless experiments heaped together and called "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts." Joined by lead Talking (dick)Head David Byrne in his "one step away from wearing an afro with a chin-strap" phase, this high-brow duo from the New York art/music scene of the early 80s made for some incredibly high-octane douchebaggery. They exploited everything they could find that they deemed below their own self-worth -- radio conservatives, Muslim calls to prayers, evangelist huckster broadcasts, an actual exorcism, etc. -- and session-wanked their way through constructing actual "songs" around them. The vaguely dance-oriented repetition beneath the featured banalities sounds pretty much exactly like an aerobics tape for crazy people. For the rest of us, though, this album presents a heavy conundrum: what the fuck are you supposed to do while listening to this? You can't clean your house to it, you can't take drugs to it unless your idea is to be completely disoriented, you can't play it at a party unless you want everyone to leave, and you can't present it to an ethnic studies class without being chewed out over its various examples of abuse. Why Sire Records put it out is a complete mystery, unless they were hoping for a quiet implosion of their entire company akin to setting the office building on fire and collecting the insurance money.