Talking Head front man and all-round experimentalist David Byrne first crossed paths with Norman Cook during the recording of Cook’s collaboration heavy concept album The BPA, Byrne sharing vocal duties on the track Toe Jam with Dizzee Rascal. Byrne and Cook – once again wearing his Fatboy Slim hat – have joined forces once again, although this time it’s Byrne who’s the driving force. Whereas the The BPA (an acronym of The Brighton Port Authority) was a an opportunity for Cook to welcome in a wide range of artists in to the studio, Byrne is all the more rigorous with this new project ‘Here Lies Love’, setting out with a very definite agenda. “The story I am interested in is about asking what drives a powerful person” explains Byrne “What makes them tick? How do they make and then remake themselves? I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great if—as this piece would be principally composed of clubby dance music—one could experience it in a club setting? Could one bring a ‘story’ and a kind of theater to the disco? Was that possible? If so, wouldn’t that be amazing!

The story in question is that of the ‘Iron Butterfly’ Imelda Marcos. A notorious figure during the Seventies and Eighties, Marcos was the first lady of the Phillipenes and wife to the dictatorial leader Ferdinand E. Marcos. She was well known for her shoe addiction, and would regularly spend millions of dollars during shopping trips to New York, Rome and Copenhagen. Marcos bought up swathes of Manhattan, but declined an offer to buy the Empire State Building as she deemed it “Too ostentatious”. With this kind of a back story Byrne obviously had a lot to draw from, but never being an auteur content to tell the story the audience expected, he focuses on one of the more obscure relationships in Marcos’s story: Estrella Crumpus was a servant in the Imelda’s family home as she grew up in Manila, and reappeared during key points during her lifetime.

The album takes the form of a 22 track song cycle that starts with the young Imelda’s life in Manila during the Thirties and finishes with her removal from the Malacañang Palace as part of the four day People Power Revolution in 1986. Given the infamy that still surrounds Marcos to this very day, Byrne has called upon some of a cast of incredibly strong female performers. Names like Cyndi Lauper (whose performance Byrne described as being “amazingly fine tuned and very impressive”) and Tori Amos will immediately resonate with music fans of all ages, but Byrne also displays his impeccable ear for new and exciting music: Santigold, Roisin Murphy, Camille and Sia all take turns in giving voice to Marcos and Estrella, as do Soul sirens Alice Russell and Sharon Jones. Natalie Merchant, Martha Wainwright and Country favourite Alison Moorer contribute and there’s an unlikely duet between Disco legend Candi Staton and St Vincent. As was previewed in this weeks Recommends, the album starts with a stirring prelude from Florence Welch, whose vocals soar above Byrne’s music and Cook’s textured production.

For more information visit David Byrne’s website.