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Kate Bush: Goddess Of Music

Sounds like white reggae to me. She's been possessed by Sting! Must be all that Tantric stuff he does, it's given him special powers.
 
from the Observer:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/s ... 58,00.html

Comeback Kate

After 12 years of silence, pop's prodigal genius Kate Bush returns. We've had a sneak preview of her new album, and can assure you - it's been worth the wait

Barbara Ellen
Sunday October 2, 2005
The Observer

Bush has a double album coming out called Aerial. It's been 12 years since her last one, The Red Shoes; two decades since her masterpiece, Hounds of Love; 27 years since her debut, The Kick Inside; and an astonishing 31 years since David Gilmour of Pink Floyd heard one of her early homemade demos and recommended the gifted doctor's daughter from Bexleyheath to EMI, where she remains signed to this day.

It is to EMI I go to get my sneak preview of Aerial - or at least part of it. I'm allowed to listen to one side - I choose the first - so long as I sit in a room at the EMI offices with a man guarding me, presumably in case I try running home with it, thereby committing the crime of trying to listen to an album properly. Despite these shenanigans, first impressions of Aerial are as good as one hoped. It is in fact vintage Bush: a melodic, organic sprawl of wind, sea, seasons, time passing, dreams, secrecy and revelation, all mixed up with a sound that seems to segue smoothly on from The Red Shoes and The Sensual World.

Elvis Presley seems to be the subject of the first single, 'King of the Mountain' (why does a multimillionaire fill up his home with priceless junk?). Joan of Arc pops up in the stunning, atmospheric 'Joanni'. Most intriguingly, there is a song called 'Bertie' where one hears a whole new Kate Bush - a mature, doting creature both energised and sucker-punched by mother love. 'Where's that son of mine?' sings Kate, adding breathlessly, 'Here comes that son of mine.'

Indeed, for some, the big news about Aerial may be that Bush is now 47 years old and has a seven-year-old son named, natch, Bertie. Which may come as a surprise to those for whom she remains pickled in the public consciousness at 19 years old, performing her debut hit, 'Wuthering Heights', wearing little more than a skin-tight leotard and an anguished expression. For many, this remains the most vivid Kate Bush image of all: the feral child-woman shrieking through the charts like some strange dream the Bronte sisters might have had after too much cheese one night.

However, despite being possibly the most impersonated person ever, Bush could never be dismissed as a joke; a trippy hippy novelty act with windmilling arms. Over her lengthy career, taking in albums such as Lionheart, The Dreaming, Never For Ever and The Sensual World, she has emerged as one of the most gifted, enigmatic and maddening artists this country has ever produced, occupying a unique place in musical history - a leftfield artist, instinctive populist (have you ever tried not dancing to 'Wow'?) and everything in between. And for a 'girl-thing' she seems to pack a male punch. I have noticed over the years that even guys who own no other 'female wailing rubbish' happily tug the forelock to the majesty that is La Bush. She is considered a true pop eccentric: an Ophelia for the masses.

A universally acknowledged genius-perfectionist, Bush combines rock, pop and Celtic tribalism with random elements of theatre, film, dance, mime and literature. All wound up with themes that have taken in everything from love, lust and jealousy to nuclear destruction, war, aboriginal rights (on the 'difficult' album The Dreaming), gay relationships, incest, and, on the song 'Heads We're Dancing', even a night out with Adolf Hitler. Looking at such a list, you can see why Bush once said it was a good thing the tabloids never read lyric sheets.

You can also see why her fans love her, stick by her, even after a 12-year wait. Admittedly, Bush attracts her fair share of the more 'intense' variety of fan. But then there is also the argument that wait was all Kate fans could do. There is, after all, only one Kate Bush.

Certainly Bush has emerged as one of the most influential female artists of all time. The Futureheads covered 'Hounds of Love', and everyone from Katie Melua to OutKast, Muse and PJ Harvey has name-checked her as an inspiration. Former Sex Pistol John Lydon has described Hounds of Love as 'beyond an album - an opera'. However, Bush's reach seems to extend far beyond even that. Her superb musicianship aside, she actually kick-started her own genre, being the first woman to risk looking demented, unhinged; even 'ugly'. Not in terms of those tight leotards (which I'm sure many a gentleman found very fetching), but in terms of exposing the beautiful mess that is the full-blown female psyche.

Now that everyone from Alanis to Tori, to Madonna, Courtney and Bjork, has spilled their guts, it is difficult to imagine that BK (Before Kate) this really didn't happen that much; if at all. As a fellow fan said to me, it was as if Bush 'got all the madwomen down from the attic and into the charts'. She certainly gave them a new voice. When Joni Mitchell spoke directly to men ('I'm as good as you'), and Patti Smith was even more direct ('I'm better'), from the start, Bush seemed to speak above and around men, and only in so far as they fitted in with her vision.

It was precisely this non-girlie self-absorption, this commitment to truly expressing herself, which made Bush so revolutionary, and spread her influence far beyond music: not just encompassing the likes of Dido, Alison Goldfrapp, Gwen Stefani and Edie Brickell, but as far afield as the art of Tracey Emin, and the books of Alice Sebold and Elizabeth Wurtzel.

It may also have played a large part in the reason people were prepared to wait for her. And wait they have. Despite the 12-year hiatus, Aerial and the first single, 'King of the Mountain', are still confidently expected to top the charts.

What's more, remarkably for a female artist a whole pop generation before Madonna, Bush did it all on her own terms. Shy, insular, easily bruised, Bush has long refused to compromise in any way. She has only ever done one tour (tried it in 1979; didn't like it); she also built her own studio to ward off any kind of creative interference and has a reputation for being an obsessive self-doubter, which may be why she is taking longer and longer to produce albums (in 1993, when The Red Shoes came out, Tony Blair was just a twinkle in new Labour's eye). In fact, Bush's time-keeping is fast becoming part of her legend. There is even a novel, Waiting for Kate Bush by John Mendelssohn, which starts with a scene in which a man agrees not to leap off a building only if she releases an album within the next six months. If Bush's track record is anything to go by, she'd probably have let him jump.

Apart from that, the self-described 'shyest megalomaniac you'll ever meet' is so reclusive she makes Prince seems sociable (collaborating together for a track on The Red Shoes, the pair never met, preferring to exchange tapes). On the rare occasion Bush grants interviews, the High Priestess of Pop Mystique has remained stubbornly unknowable, adamantly refusing to discuss 'anything but the music', insisting that it is the only thing that's interesting about her.

'I am just a quiet reclusive person who has managed to hang around for a while,' she said recently. However, if Bush is a tight-lipped recluse, she is damned good at it. In these uber-media-saturated times it says something that no one knew that son Bertie had been born for 18 months, until long-time family friend Peter Gabriel let it slip.

Personally, I believe there's a slight whiff of sexism about the way Bush's aloof countenance in interviews is endlessly commented upon. (No one slagged off Picasso for being hard to talk to.) However, maybe it is out of this void that the Kate Bush myths spring. Is it really true, as various news reports will have it, that Bush is now an overweight paranoid hermit, skulking in her secluded mansions in Berkshire and South Devon, with her new partner, Danny McIntosh, spending her days crying at her reflection in the mirror, and taking Bertie to school in a limousine with blacked-out windows?

Probably not, but I was ready to believe anything by the time I listened to Aerial. What I discovered is that nothing much has changed in Kate Bush's world, except perhaps everything. She's still seething with strangeness and brilliance. Even the fact that she's a mother now isn't likely to change anything. Bush has always written beautiful songs on all manner of themes including motherhood, and will doubtless continue to do so. It's just kind of cute that far from being coy and privacy-obsessed (What me? Have a baby? No way!), Bush can't seem to shut up about it. As well as the song one of Bertie's drawings graces the cover of 'King of the Mountain'; he's credited on the sleevenotes as 'The Sun'. Finally, you might cry, the human face cracks though the Pop Ophelia's ethereal visage.

Mind you, for some of us, it always did.

· 'King of the Mountain' is released on EMI on 24 October, Aerial on 7 November
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Kate Bush' music video of 'King of The Mountain' is now available for streaming on KateBush.Com
 
And the single is available from the iTunes music store. Haven't seen it in shops here yet.
 
It grows on you.

Mercifully i moved from Radio 1 work-environment to a Radio 2 work-environment, and they seem to be playing the single quite a bit.

At first I thought 'nice but unremarkable'; now, I really quite like it.
 
It does grow on you but sorry Kate, forgive me but I have sinned , the new video was naff - Not enough of the lovely Kate in it either.

never went for all that Dance Theatre stuff either - - For such a "perfectionist", the moving images are certainly not her strongpoint.

-
 
I always think she looks as if she's dancing in front of her bedroom mirror in her videos.
 
Review: Kate Bush's Aerial
By Darren Waters
BBC News entertainment reporter



Kate Bush releases her first album in 12 years next week but has it been worth the very long wait?

When EMI invites a group of journalists to the Royal Academy of Music, in London, for a one-off listen to Kate Bush's new album, they are sending a clear signal - this album is not to be dismissed lightly.

Aerial is in two distinct halves - the first side, A Sea of Honey, is a collection of distinct, highly personal, sometimes impenetrably personal, songs.

Side two, A Sky of Honey, is an old-fashioned concept album - complex, layered, perhaps pretentious, but also a dazzling aural masterpiece.

A Sea of Honey has seven wildly different songs which touch on aspects of her daily life, both public and personal.

Single King of the Mountain opens the album full of swelling synthesizers and pounding beats and with its almost cryptic lyrics sets the tone for side one.

All of the songs have a swirling, almost uncontrolled creativity as if Bush has had these songs bottled up for more than a decade.

Her voice escapes, rather than emerges, in that familiar part-piercing, part-haunting tone that uniquely can carry across consonants and vowels with seductive ease.

Folk melody

Bertie, about her young son, has a simple, pleasing folk melody but lyrically feels slightly mundane.


She sings: "Here comes the sunshine, here comes the son of mine. Here comes everything, here comes a song for him."

"You bring me such joy. Then you bring me more joy," she recites, almost unconvincingly.

How to be Invisible is side one's stand out track, with a real sense of menace in its driving beat.

"I found a book on how to be invisible. On the edge of the labyrinth," she sings.

Strangest song

The strangest song on the whole album is Mrs Bartolozzi, a plaintive wail seemingly about domestic chores.

"Washing machine, washing machine, washing machine," she cries. Listening to this, I felt like I was trapped inside the washing machine on the spin cycle.

The final song of side one, A Coral Room, is a deeply moving elegy about her mother's death that is so private it feels almost intrusive to listen in.

Seven songs in and it seems a poor return on a 12-year wait. It also gives little clue to the sheer majesty of side two.

Lyric poem

A Sky of Honey is, in a sense, a lyric poem set to music. Full of lush, fecund melodies which swing from jazz to rock, it is threaded through with bird song and chatter and feels distinctly organic and earthy.

There is also a painterly quality to the nine linked songs, a feeling which is enhanced by the appearance of Rolf Harris who both speaks and sings - thankfully briefly - on two tracks.

Side two is the album Pink Floyd might have made if Kate Bush had been their lead singer and lyricist in 1979.

Many people will hate the concept album feel to the songs and it is an acquired taste but is both sonically and lyrically a fine achievement.

It takes the listener on a journey - from a young boy's innocent statement of "Mummy, daddy, the day is full of birds" to a dynamic conclusion more than 40 minutes later where Kate Bush herself seems to have become the birds and takes flight.

Reaction

"I want to be high up on the roof," she sings.

Often playful, Bush seems aware of the reaction some listeners will have.

"What kind of language is this? Tell me are you singing?" she asks.

Musically the nine songs of side two - which are parts of a whole rather than distinct tracks - are splashes of piano, bass and drums, layered with 1980s synthesizers which give the album a retro quality.

It is a very English album, with the rural feel of a John Betjeman or AE Houseman poem.

'Laughing'

"All of the birds are laughing. Come let's all join in," she sings as her voice emerges from the sound of birdsong.

A Sky of Honey is a celebration of song itself, which has a child's joyful lack of inhibition about it - Kate Bush is heard laughing freely towards the end while a young child, possibly her son, is heard several times.

Wild guitars, pounding drums, dashing across the left and right channels of speakers, carry the album to its conclusion where both bird chatter and the sound of a cuckoo rise and then fade away.

It is difficult to know how successful the album will be - certainly it is not for the iPod generation - but Aerial stands alongside The Hounds of Love and The Kick Inside as her finest work.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 386346.stm

Published: 2005/10/28 16:09:18 GMT

© BBC MMV
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Its beautiful - the 2nd half is like a return too the second side of Hounds of Love.
 
I am so excited. I cannot wait to get the album.
 
Wonderful. Every track. Pi is my current favourite, but the rest are close behind. 8) 8) 8) 8)
 
The album is generally excellent, particularly the second CD which is almost flawless. Some of the tracks on the first CD haven't yet appealed to me that much, while others have. Overall, well worth the 12 year wait. :)
 
According to believable sources she has been in the studio again.

Wonder how long it will take for next album to be released? She spent six years recording for the Aerial album. And it was 12 years between the release of The Red Shoes album and the Aerial album.
 
Perhaps the favourable reception of Aerial has encouraged her to produce more "public" work. I sincerely hope so!
 
More exciting news regarding Kate Bush!

13th December 2009: This morning BBC Radio Scotland broadcast an interview with double bass player and Pentangle founder member Danny Thompson about his friendship with John Martyn, who passed away last year. During the chat Danny discusses his current projects, including "Recording - how about this - with Kate Bush, a week ago. What a lovely lady she is. She's so fantastic. Stunning." Danny has previously played on The Dreaming and Hounds of Love albums. We obviously don't know if this is work on Kate's next album, but welcome news nonetheless. (with thanks to Al Lehgori on our forum). Hear the interview here (Kate mentioned at 8m 30s) Apart from working with Kate, Danny is a very busy man, including working with Anne Marie Almedal (who sung The Man With The Child In His Eyes with her band Velvet Belly). Read more about Danny at his Myspace page here.
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http://www.katebushnews.com/katenews.htm
 
I'm a great Kate Bush fan but I wasn't totally convinced by Aerial. I'd like to hear the new thing, anyway.
 
I found Ariel hit-and-miss. There was plenty that sounded quite wistful and delicate (if you know what I mean) but there were one or two tracks that seemed very introspective to the point of self-indulgent.

But I was delighted that she'd returned to making music and, on the whole, wasn't disappointed. I'd be happy if she gets back into regular "production" of music.
 
I adore the second CD (A Sky Of Honey) of Aerial, it really resonated with me.

The first CD was very hit and miss with some great tracks but also some poor ones (Mrs. Bartolozzi for example).

Still, got to let Kate experiment as someone with her considerable talents will usually produce something outstanding.
 
Hogarth999 said:
I adore the second CD (A Sky Of Honey) of Aerial, it really resonated with me.

The first CD was very hit and miss with some great tracks but also some poor ones (Mrs. Bartolozzi for example).

Still, got to let Kate experiment as someone with her considerable talents will usually produce something outstanding.
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Couldnt agree more :) CD2 is amazing and now i cant hear the local pigeons waking up without chanting "the birds are singing" too myself
 
:D

I just find it so incredibly atmospheric and evocative. It's pure joy and very blissful to listen to, yet at the same time is ever so slightly strange (but in a nice, relaxing way). :D
 
And her `Bertie`

Anyone else singing about their annoying and tiresome brat would be doubleplus biggy revolting.

But with her its pure motherly delight.
 
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