24/09/2007

Byrning Down The House

Somehow I ended up on the email list for Positiva records, something I am not entirely happy about, as you can imagine. So I was reading my latest batch of Paul Van Dyk news, when I caught sight of the words 'feat. David Byrne'. This caused an obvious cartoon style double take, and then an equally obvious pursuit of said track. A collaboration between the coolest man ever and the trance meister himself? It's gotta be heard right?

Paul Van Dyk - Fall With Me (feat. David Byrne)

So when you have a partnership between my favourite person in the world, and one of my least favourites, in terms of quality, I suppose you expect to get something in the middle. Which is where I would put this. Van Dyk raises his game and comes up with something, well, okay, and for Byrne, well, it's no Life During Wartime. But an average David Byrne song, sung by David Byrne, is better than 98% of music in the world, and God I love his voice, he really could sing anything and I'd be interested. Like trance, for example.

He also has a new collaboration with Baby Elephant, who are Prince Paul (a man who likes a collaboration also as much as Byrne himself) and Bernie Worrell, the legendary Funkadelic and Talking Heads percussionist. This track completes the Stop Making Sense reunion by also featuring vocals by Nona Hendryx, one of the vocalists on that tour. It has a real George Clinton feel about it, especially the intro, and as always, Byrnes vocals are great:

Baby Elephant - How Does The Brain Wave? (feat David Byrne)

3 comments:

David N said...

Puns are always welcome in the titles of posts.

I know he's still responsible for the odd quality piece of work and his blog is great and his label puts out some interesting stuff and all, but - BUT - what would make an interesting blog would be why the likes of David Byrne is not a patch nowadays on the David Byrne of 30-20 years ago. This applies to Bowie, Eno, Rundgren...all that lot. Most artists in most fields, I think, after they reach a certain age, at any rate. But Byrne's work with Talking Heads is so great that its thrown into sharper relief in his case than in many others.

I'll give him a bonus point coz hes Irish, though.

hf,c,.jgvkhbj,. said...

Errr, he's Scottish actually. Born in Dumbarton. Sorry.

It is an interesting point, and does make a good subject for a blog, so watch this space (I'm still going to do that Brian Eno post you asked for)...

David N said...

I know hes not Irish-Irish, but Byrne is an Irish name. So hes Irish, in the same way, say, Wayne Rooney is Irish. As in : not really Irish at all, but we'll claim him.