David Byrne Releases Live EP for Charity, Plays the Building in London
By Tom Breihan and Amy Phillips, Pitchfork, 12 May 2009 [Link]

You know who should get his own energy drink? David Byrne. David Byrne stays on his grind. Last year, he hooked up with Brian Eno to record one of the best albums of 2008, guest on both Norman Cook's BPA project and the N.A.S.A. album and collaborated with Dirty Projectors. This year, he played that Dark Was the Night Radio City show, he's curating a stage at Bonnaroo, and he's recruited Santigold to collaborate with him on a new album. And he gets out to more New York shows than the Brooklyn Vegan guy. David Byrne will turn 57 years old this week.

Also this week, Byrne has released a digital EP on his website, with a wider digital release to come in June. The four-song live set, titled Everything That Happens Will Happen on This Tour, David Byrne on Tour: Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno is just that: tracks recorded on Byrne's current world tour, highlighting songs from last year's Eno collaboration album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Net profits from the EP will go to Amnesty International. The songs on the EP are "One Fine Day," "My Big Nurse," "I Feel My Stuff", and "Strange Overtones."

If all that wasn't enough, Byrne is making a habit out of gutting old buildings and transforming them into musical instruments. Byrne's Playing the Building project is described on his website like so: "Playing the Building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure-- to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes-- and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument."

Byrne's already staged the project in Stockholm and New York, the latter of which was demonstrated in a Pitchfork.tv video. And the BBC reports that Byrne will bring Playing the Building to London this summer.

Playing the Building will run at the Roundhouse in Camden August 8-31. And if Byrne is to be believed, the Roundhouse might be the best Playing the Building location yet. He had this to say to the BBC: "That venue is just perfect. They'll just strip everything out and open the windows along the top...It's beautiful when the lights stream in. It's the perfect place." Awesome.

Oh, and Byrne has a new book coming out called The Bicycle Diaries. It will be published by Viking in September.