"David
Byrne Plays a Factory, Teams With Fatboy Slim"
By Brendan Fitzpatrick and Amy Phillips, Pitchfork Media, November 7, 2005
Remember that ultra-neat homemade "guitar" you
crafted as a child? Thought you were hot stuff,
stretching those rubber bands across the top of
Mom's Keds box, huh? Well, consider yourself wholly
one-upped: Former Talking Head David Byrne has
replaced your rubber bands with an old wooden pipe
organ, metal beams, plumbing, heating pipes and
electrical conduits. As for the shoebox, well,
how does a former paint factory in Stockholm sound?
Fucking awesome.
Not content to rest on his laurels
following the recent DualDisc
re-release of the Heads' studio catalogue, Byrne has converted
Färgfabriken ("The Paint Factory", if you're nasty)
into Playing the Building, which, on his official
website, Byrne calls a "sound installation
in which the infrastructure, the physical plant
of a building is converted into a giant musical
instrument... triggered by a simple keyboard located
at a central position." Said keyboard controls
machines which cause the elements of the building
to vibrate, resonate and oscillate. Sounds...loud.
And way cooler than Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
Visitors will only have the opportunity to give
this baby a whirl until November 13, so get on
that plane now before that building's all played
out. Oh, and for those of you planning on bringing
a friend to aid you in a rousing rendition of "Heart
and Soul", be forewarned by the large-suited
one himself: "It might not play melodies in
the conventional sense...but it might." Here's
hoping.
In other Byrne news, it was recently announced
that Armageddon is nigh...I mean, that David Byrne
has teamed up with Fatboy Slim to write a musical
about former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos.
According to the BBC's website, Here
Lies Love,
which focuses on Marcos' "passion for music
and night clubs" will premiere at Australia's
Adelaide festival and will be shown on the BBC
in March 2006.
We're sorry, we have to go now. Our heads just
collapsed.
[Link]
