BRIAN ENO & DAVID BYRNE, 'QU'RAN'
A track from the original vinyl release of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which remains one of most rhythmically innovative records of the electronic age - Eno and Byrne's artistic intent being to depict ethnic music emanating from a fictional land. 'Qu'ran' was subsequently left off the original CD pressing and its reissue, sadly enough, as it is a killer jam, with heavy-lidded beats, something like drinking robotussin while listening to a thunderstorm.
From Byrne's Pitchfork 2006 interview:
"Way back when the record first came out, in 1981, it might have been '82, we got a request from an Islamic organization in London, and they said, 'We consider this blasphemy that you put grooves to the chanting of the Holy Book.' And we thought, 'Okay, in deference to somebody's religion, we'll take it off.' You could probably argue for and against monkeying with something like that. But I think we were certainly feeling very cautious about this whole thing. We made a big effort to try and clear all the voices, and make sure everybody was okay with everything. Because we thought, 'We're going to get accused of all kinds of things, and so we want to cover our asses as best we can.' So I think in that sense we reacted maybe with more caution than we had to. But that's the way it was."
We'll let you be the judge.
