Rockin' the Web

David Byrne and Brian Eno's latest CD, a product of e-mail exchanges, is out on its own Internet site

Beginning in the late summer of 1979 and continuing well into the fall of 1980, David Byrne and Brian Eno were holed up in five recording studios in New York and Los Angeles, piecing together rainbow glints of sound. Using analog technology - the only kind available at the time - the art-rock duo doggedly tried to synchronize sampled voices with their multilayered instrumental tracks.

With no digital sequencing software, the process was tedious and often frustrating. However, the two still managed to come up with richly evocative, even groundbreaking music, albeit mostly by accident. The album, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, was finally released in early 1981 and garnered generally favorable reviews. The pioneering recording techniques used on the album - particularly the splicing of sampled voices with heady electronica and ambient music - would influence numerous producers and DJs, most notably Moby.

Fast forward 27 years, past countless musical trends and head-spinning technological advances. Byrne and Eno decide to collaborate on another album, a belated follow-up to My Life. This time the new set, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, doesn't take nearly as long to make. The two are never together in the studio. In fact, they're never in the same country during the entire process. Eno is in his London studio while Byrne is at home in New York.

"Brian had some tracks and wanted me to write some words and tunes. Years ago, that would have implied going into the studio together to do all that," says Byrne, who will headline a solo show playing cuts from the new album tomorrow night at the Lyric Opera House. Eno opted not to tour. "Now we can just e-mail the tracks back and forth. I would record vocals over whatever he implemented and send him back an MP3 and say, 'Here's my idea.' It's amazing how easy it is once you get the technical glitches worked out."

Once the album was done, Byrne and Eno decided to digitally release the album via everythingthathappens.com. A physical CD will be manufactured and distributed soon.

"The record didn't cost us very much," says Byrne, who's probably best-known as a founding member and chief songwriter for the new wave group Talking Heads. "We hadn't made a deal with a record company. But did we need it? We put our money where our mouth is and did it ourselves. We hired people to build a Web site around it, which is more than what a starting artist could do."