The Catherine Wheel

The Catherine Wheel  I regret purchasing the CD for the price. Was looking forward to listen to the music since I lost the original 1990 CD US print. This 2012 print is a CD-R copy and the worse part is the music that is supposedly continous, now is filled with gaps and pauses in between songs/tracks. This is unlike the original album musical concept and so annoying. Also, the sleeve leaflet is a ugly design with basic lettering and print. I DO NOT recommend to buy the CD-R copy and look for an used CD somewhere else.

As always, good tunes from David Byrne. I might give it 5 stars if the clown that transferred this to CD didn't end each song with a 2 second gap BEFORE the song is actually over! All weird endings to every song but I still enjoy his music.

Fans of the "Remain In Light" era and the Eno/Byrne collaborations will delight in this unheralded master work. Without seeing the film, you can get an amazing experience listening to this album in the dark or perhaps while driving at night if you have an extended commute. Dazzling, sparse, spacious, evocative soundscaping it certainly stands out among soundtracks.

Jerky rhythms abound(hey, it's David Byrne) but are tempered with "triggered flutes", lush reverb chambers and everything else Eno brings to the table and that's a good thing. The ambient pieces are a relaxing tonic; ethereal segues between the more hectic rhythmic songs that provide the narration to the play. Technically the album is "just" the soundtrack to the play, but it still stands on its' own as a musical statement even without the visuals.

I don't know what the confluence of circumstances were to make this so satisfying a musical work from David Byrne, but satisfying it certainly is. For all that the Talking Heads were moving into the same "funk" waters on the band's recordings, here Byrne and musicians make it seem so effortless. One very tangible asset is the crack drumming of the late Yogi Horton, who propels everything with an arsenal of fills, rolls and a spirit of swing. And everything here seems to pull together as a cohesive whole, something Byrne's subsequent solo offerings don't do. I find that once I start playing it, I have to hear the whole thing to the end, it's that tight. Recommended.

Awful. Each song played a bit of the song, then there was a lapse of silence, then the songs started in. Sounded like it was bootlegged.

Quick shipping, great price... Awesome seller

byrne has a style that not everybody gets catherine wheel is his finest work

I bought the selected "Songs from…" album years ago on vinyl and always liked it, so I was pleased to be able to get this on CD. The seller does point out that it is a CD-R burned to order under licence. The music is clearly meant to be continuous, each track cross-fading into the next, with CD track markers added just before each new track starts—however, clearly the person who burned the CD-R previously ripped an original CD, then assembled the 23 tracks in a CD-burning program and allowed it to insert the default two-second gap between each track. So at the end of each track, just before it fades into the next one, the music suddenly cuts out for two seconds before jumping back in again. It would have been easy to reset the pause time to zero seconds before burning, so this is just sloppy. Fortunately it was easy enough for me to rip the tracks on to a computer, strip out the silence from each track in audio editing software, then reburn the disc on to a new CD-R; this did indeed produce a CD with no gap, stop or glitch between tracks, as it was intended, but it shouldn't really be necessary for me to do this when I've paid a full commercial price for the CD, and not everyone will be in a position to do this.

This arrived in good time and was as described. The music is fine, it is very inventive,rhythmically more varied than Bryne's work with the Talking Heads and some of the lyrics still raise a smile. As an album it is a bit shapeless, trying to edit the disc by just programming the tracks that made up the original listing doesn't quite work, and as with the original LP there is no explanation of the concept or story behind the Catherine Wheel;all I can remember from watching a performance on TV is a highly significant pineapple.

When 'Catherine Wheel' was released it got a right pasting in most of the popular music press, which is a real shame because it's very good. This makes an excellent accompaniment to 'My Life in the Bush of Ghost'. Twyla Tharp, for whom this work was originally written, was reported to have considered it one of the most difficult works of music she had ever had to choreograph.The work awards repeated listening. It is dark, dense and occasionally difficult but there are passages of funk, ambience and African rhythms to hang your hat on. It is one of the records I come back to on a regular basis for inspiration. In the same year Jerry Harrison, keyboard player with Talking Heads, released a solo album titled 'The Red and the Black' which I also recommend as an interesting comparison to the solo work of Byrne, as both explore rhythmic expression, though Harrison's work ties into political themes more heavily then Byrne.Both Harrison's and Byrne's work in this year really underpin where Talking Heads were musically in the early 80's and adds new dimensions to an interesting and experiemental time. An important and under-rated record, well worth purchasing.

All the memories of hearing this for the first time, came flooding back. The world was a much nicer place back then!

One of my favourite all time albums