Playing the Industrial Space

David Byrne, 80s pop artist of Talking Heads fame and experimental musician, takes Boing Boing TV's Xeni Jardin on a tour of New York's Battery Martitime Building where the composer has wired up an old pump-style organ to play the building. Crawling around the underbelly of the building Byrne and Jardin find an old slide transparency of former New York Mayor Ed Koch.

In early 80s when I was working at the ICA in London, Byrne and Brian Eno (formerly of Roxy Music and British art rock) frequently used the ICA's flex multimedia performance space to collaborate in recording samplings, making Polyrhythms and experimenting with world music that emerged out of the British melting pot of post-punk and ska London art music scene.

The environmental musicality of Brynes industrial music invention remind me of living in my East Village walk up and lying in bed at night listening to the symphony of pipes surging with... hot air and clanking sounds, groans, hisses, banging for which there was no explaining their source.