Article 5453 of rec.music.gaffa: Path: ut-emx!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!think!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!WWU.EDU!8548222@WWU.EDU From: 8548222@WWU.EDU (Dave Armstrong) Newsgroups: rec.music.gaffa Subject: It may be long but it's about Kate Message-ID: <9002281006.AA26755@GAFFA.MIT.EDU> Date: 28 Feb 90 10:06:00 GMT Article-I.D.: GAFFA.9002281006.AA26755 Posted: Wed Feb 28 04:06:00 1990 Sender: daemon@eddie.mit.edu (Mr Background) Organization: Love-Hounds Anonymous Lines: 214 Approved: nessus@eddie.mit.edu This article is in _OPTION_ which just came out. This is the first of two parts. I will try to get part two out tomorrow. PERFECT VISION The Insights and Sounds of Kate Bush by Maria Montgomery Sarnoff "I don't know about being a perfectionist," says Kate Bush, describing her attitude towards creating her unique brand of baroque pop music. Coming from one whose recordings demonstrate utmost control and an immaculate sense of detail, the remark seems practically modest. Though she might not call herself a prefectionist, Kate Bush's music has achieved, over the course of her career, an unparalleled type of musical chiaroscuro - especially in her latest release, _The_Sensual_World_. As her musical development progresses, Kate Bush has found many voices beside the ethereal one featured on her initial hit,"Wuthering Heights." Her first two albums, _The_Kick_Inside_ and _Lionheart_, were dominated by Bush's trademark soprano voice set amid finely-crafted, effervescent songs. Since then, her voice has acquired an earthy, sybaritic quality that she exploits in such new songs as "Walk Strait Down the Middle," in which she trills in Brazilian , as she alternately hums and growls to create a more sumptuous aural atmoshpere. Her lyrics are set in richly ornate musical settings which upon first listen can be almost too much to consume. But like other rich comestibles, her work is seductive in its luxuriant excess. "It's a layered procedure. I take a lot of time writing, and thinking." She emphasizes the latter as she sits back on the couch, describing the process by which she produces her musical strata. "The actual performances from people are got very quickly. So hopefully, there's a tremendous amount of spontaneity performance-wise. But I have taken a lot of time between to change bits of the songs. "You'll do something with people that works out really well," Bush explains. "And it works out so well it starts taking you somewhere else. You think, `I wish that worked so well that I could do THIS with the song.' Some- times I do that - take the song away and make it become something better. Working with other musicians is often the key. What worries me is that although the process is very spontaneous, I always feel that it sounds com- plicated." It's a chilly day in Manhattan, so cold that the ice statues by the Plaza are still in their pristime state. The threat of snow hangs in the air. Kate Bush snuggles deeply into her forest green blazer as she looks out into gray sky, soaking in her wintry surrounding. Even from the comfort of the indoors, Bush is one evidently immersed in the world around her. She ponders a question as to whether she is trying to create an aural environment with her densely textured songs. "Yes," Bush answers. "That's kind of what it feels like and I'd hate that to sound pretentious, because it could. It's like trying to paint a picture. Each song is like a little picture, and you've got to have the hill there, at the right proportion." Her hand motions toward an imaginary landscape. "When you look at a painting, even a simple painting, it's still got to have the proportions and everything that goes with that. Some songs will be so quick and easy to write. Some lyrics will be so quick. And yet on other songs they won't. They are all individual, and each one has a tricky bit. "I suppose from a production point of view, the main thing I work toward is a sense of texture. When a song starts, you probably want it to be just sometimes quite small. And then you want it to get very big here so that there's a real sense of climax, and then bring it down again or keep it building. All these thing have shape and texture," she continues, as if visualizing her music in front of her. "I suppose that's just how I work. It's like trying to give the song the right proportions so that when it's big, it's really big and not too big and not to small. Instruments, different sounds and flavors, really affect all that. "I think the voice is very much an instrument. Especially with backing vocals, because you don't have to have the emphasis on trying to carry the whole story. You can really treat it like an instrument. It's fun just experimenting with different sounds and shapes." Perhaps it is Bush's preoccupation with experimentation which has kept her from breaking through to a mass audience in this country. Fame, on the scale which the English singer and composer has experienced in the United Kingdom and Europe, has so far eluded her here in the states. Despite this, there exists a huge cult following that fosters Kate Bush fan clubs and fanzines, both here and abroad. Her first two albums, _The_Kick_Inside_ and _Lionheart_ (both 1978), are filled with piano-dominated songs that hold the promise of things to come. On those early works she was already using her voice for unusual effects in the overdubbed backing vocals. Unusual instru- ments such as mandolins, beer bottles, mandocello, and panpipes were being integrated into her songwriting. _Never_For_Ever_ (1980), her third album, is in many ways a transitional one for Bush. On that LP she was introduced to the Fairlight synthesizer, which has since become integral to her compositions and arrangments. "The Fairlight was incredibly important," she relates, "because it was really what I had been looking for but had never thought possible. I used to play the piano, and the only instruments I had to work with from that were the piano and my voice. So I used to put a lot of emphasis on backing vocals and arrangements on the piano, because they were - in a way - trying to be violins and trumpets, and my voice was trying to be strings. That's all I had to work with. I was into the CS-80, but I really didn't like synthesizers as such, because they weren't natural sounds, and that's what I really loved. Discovering the Fairlight gave me a whole new writing tool as well as an arranging tool, like the difference between writing a song on a piano or on a guitar. With a Fairlight you've got everything, a tremendous range of things. It completely opened me up to sounds and textures. And I could experiment with these in a way I could never have done without it. It would have cost too much money. The Fairlight gave me a very private experimental instrument." As an example of Bush's adventurous arrangements, the title track of Bush's latest release, _The_Sensual_World_, has a unique blending of both celtic and middle eastern sounds. The song was adapted from a traditional Macedonian piece sent to Bush by a fan, Jan Libbenga. "It was so beautiful that I was completely taken by it. So we used that piece and adapted it." The celtic flourishes are provided by uillean pipes, which Kate has also used on her previous albums _The_Dreaming_(1982) and _Hounds_of_Love_(1985). The text for "The Sensual World" was inspired by a completely different source: the Molly Bloom speech at the end of James Joyce's _Ulysses_. The lyrics were at first supposed to have been derived directly from the original; when Bush petitioned the Joyce estate, they denied permission. But this road- block, she explains, helped more than hindered the composition. "What was interesting was the fact that through their lack of cooperation, that they wouldn't let me use the lyric, the original piece, the song actually became something else. So I think in many ways them not helping us out turned the song into what it is. The song grew and changed into something more inter- esting. Certainly not lyrically, but as a piece of music." The album, _The_Sensual_World_, is the first time Bush has worked with other female vocalists. Listeners who are surprised by her adaptation of Bulgarian harmonies into her own songs really shouldn't be. On _Hounds_of_ _Love_, the song "The Morning Fog" incorporates a piece of Russian choral music that was featured in the plague scene of Werner Herzog's film _Nosferatu_. As with "The Morning Fog," Bush is able to adapt and use ethnic music without making the result sound like a pastiche. "Rocket's Tail," on the new album, unites the acclaimed Trio Bulgarka with Bush and audaciously sends them off with a searing David Gilmour guitar solo. "I think the hardest thing about working with the Trio Bulgarka was just having enough courage to go ahead and do it," says Bush, with charactestically self-effacing bashfulness. "Once I actually did that and I met them I and worked together, it was heaven. It was so easy, we had fantastic communi- cation. You know what the language problem is like. But in terms of music it was no problem. We just communicated emotionally and just kind of cuddled each other and sang to each other. It was just the most incredible experience to meet them as people as well as musicians, and to work with women like that - on a creative level. The whole thing was very exciting. "Also what was extraordinary was the arranger that we worked with, Dimitri Penev. Without him I don't know if it would have been possible. Although I communicated directly with the girls, he was really the one who pulled all the arrangements together. He was just fabulous, so enthusiastic! I'd say to him, `I want something like this...,' and he'd think and go work on it, write some- thing out, and get the girls to rehearse and come back in ten minutes. He'd come back and ask, `Do you like this?,' and he'd get the girls to sing some- thing and I'd say, `Yes that's absolutely brilliant,' or `we've got to work on this bit here.' Again, the communication with him was extraordinary. He didn't speak English either. There was just a tremendous musical chemistry. I'd love to work with them again." While growing up, Bush was exposed to both traditional and non-western musics through the influence of her brothers. (And her career is still a family affair - brother Paddy Bush has contributed musically to all her releases, while John Carder Bush, her other brother, has photographed all of her LP covers since _The_Dreaming_.) This rich background shows up on each of her albums, which features didjeridus, bazoukis, balalaikas, celtic harps, penny whistles, and tupans. "That's definitely the influence of my brother, Paddy, who has always collected ethnic music, made musical instruments, and just had a tremendous enthusiasm for tradional music from around the world. "With my mother being Irish, Irish music has a real hold on me. Since I was very little, there was always that type of music being played, so it had a big influence on me. When I was tiny both my brothers used to be playing it all the time at home. When I go to Ireland I feel the blood surge through my veins! We go there quite alot and work with musicians there, so I think the Irish connection is probably the strongest influence. But the other colors come very much from the instruments my brother has, or something heard that was played to me." 1982's _The_Dreaming_, Bush's first self-produced album, was also the one in which she began working more rhythm into her songwriting. Since that time, rhythms have become increasingly important to the overall sound of her work. "_The_Dreaming_ was really my first move into production by myself. So it was the first time I could try things that I didn't feel brave enough to do before. There was a lot of weight on the drummers, and they were fabulous because it was very difficult for them. I was trying to get them to do things they had never done before. They were wonderful. "By the time we were getting on to _Hounds_of_Love_, being in our own studio, and working with Del (Palmer, her recording engineer), I think the rhythms took on a more solid feeling. There was a tremendous amount of experimenting going on in _The_Dreaming_, and it was great. It was more controllable doing the rhythms from, say, a Fairlight or a Linn drum machine and then getting a drummmer in. That way, what we found was that we started getting an interaction built where the drum machine wuld have a nice strong mechanical feel which works for tracks a lot. Then you add a very human feel to the same song by putting a drummer in there with it. That's the technique we've carried on with, and obviously the more we work together the more we're developing that process." As a producer and songwriter, Bush ofter uses the recording studio as a necessary component to her creative process. Because of the inevetably long periods of time she was forced to spend in a recording studio, she decided, with _Hounds_of_Love_, to start working out of her own studio at home. "I don't think I could work in commercial studios anymore. The reason we got our studio together is because it was getting so prohibitive to try and spend the time I wanted to spend in writing. In a commercial studio we were paying God knows how much. So for _Hounds_of_Love_ we had our own studio. And I think it's actually been the best move I've ever made creatively. It gave me so much freedom. Suddenly I was a relaxed person, working and writing in a studio, and this was completely new to me. I was able to take half a day off if things were absolutely awful. "Quite often, in a commercial studio, you feel the pressure to keep work- ing, and sometimes you don't get any work done at all. For lots of reasons it became a more intimate process. By having my own studio, I didn't have people popping in at all times. The studio was always set up. And particularly important was the fact that I was working with Del, whom I know so well, on a more extensive basis. By the time we were working on this album he actually recorded everything. He was THE recording engineer. So I was in a position where I could write material in the studio with Del. I couldn't really do that with anyone else. It's a very private thing. I couldn't really write in front of other people. This is the end of part 1 of 2.