Disco Volante - Born Under Punches

In many ways, 1980’s Remain In Light represents the Talking Heads at their creative apex. Band leader David Byrne, along with fellow Talking Heads Tina Weymouth, Chris Franz and Jerry Harrison, luminary utility players like Nona Hendryx and Robert Palmer, and visionary producer Brian Eno collectively gave birth to a masterpiece of experimental pop music.

Fusing such seemingly desperate source material as African poly-rhythms, Kraftwerky electronica, dour, Joy Division drone and Parliament/Funkadelic, Remain In Light is a vision of the world at once frightening and exhilarating, the sound of technological America colliding with the Third World.

The persona Byrne adopts to introduce us to this bizarre universe is something like a revivalist preacher, something like an ex-CIA agent, something like a circus clown. He is a thin man, a man so harried and uncertain, that the mere fact of breathing is even in question. He is dangling on the edge of a nervous breakdown, on the verge of achieving spiritual ecstasy. Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) is my favorite song on the album, and the first on this week’s playlist.

MP3: Disco Volante – Born Under Punches (right-click-save-as)

1. Talking Heads - Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) (5:49) 2. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - The Ballad of the Sin Eater (5:20) 3. MF DOOM - Curls (4:09) 4. Electrelane - The Valleys (5:20) 5. Caetano Veloso - It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) (6:07) 6. Maria Muldaur - Midnight at the Oasis (3:46) 7. Piero Piccioni - Colpo Rovente (3:43) 8. Fela Kuti - Expensive Shit (13:14) 9. MC Lyte - Stop, Look, Listen (3:20) 10. The Emotions - I Like It (1:59) 11. Erykah Badu - The Cell (4:20) 12. Otis Brown - Boneless Chicken (1:45)