The album integrates sampled vocals and found sounds, African and Middle Eastern rhythms, and electronic music techniques.

[9] It was recorded before Eno and Byrne's work on Talking Heads' 1980 album Remain in Light, but problems clearing samples delayed its release by several months.

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was primarily recorded during a break between the Talking Heads albums Fear of Music (1979) and Remain in Light (1980), both produced by Eno.

1: Possible Musics with Jon Hassell, who intended to collaborate with Eno and Byrne on the album, but could not afford to fly to California for the recording sessions.

[16] Rather than conventional pop or rock singing, most of the vocals are sampled from other sources, such as commercial recordings of Arabic singers, radio disc jockeys, and an exorcist.

[19] Soon after the album was released, the Islamic Council of Great Britain objected to the use of samples of Qur'anic recital in the track "Qu'ran", considering it blasphemy.

"[26] The official short films accompanying two tracks, "America Is Waiting" and "Mea Culpa", were each made by collage filmmaker Bruce Conner.

[27][28][29] According to music journalist Simon Reynolds, many initial reviews of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts dismissed the album as "an eggheads-in-the-soundlab experimental exercise.

"[37] In Rolling Stone, Jon Pareles rated the album four out of five stars and applauded it as "an undeniably awesome feat of tape editing and rhythmic ingenuity" that generally avoids "exoticism or cuteness" by "complementing the [speech] sources without absorbing them".

[38] Village Voice critic Robert Christgau was less impressed, giving it a "C+" and finding the recordings "as cluttered and undistinguished as the MOR fusion and prog-rock it brings to the mind's ear," while lacking "the songful sweep of Remain in Light or the austere weirdness of Jon Hassell".

[40] AllMusic critic John Bush describes it as a "pioneering work for countless styles connected to electronics, ambience and Third World music".