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Volume 15 No. 13

Tony Horkins     Copyright    Northern and Shell plc
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                What Katie did next

Tony Horkins delves deep into the private life of  Kate  Bush  to
discuss her new cut, The Sensual World.

Sitting comfortably in the  high  tech  surround  of  Abbey  road
studios, Kate Bush, that most English of English roses, is trying
to define exactly what English music really is.

"I think lyrically there's a lot that defines English music,  and
I suppose a certain approach to sounds," she considers emotively.
"There are very definite American approaches to  sound  -  guitar
sounds,  approaches  to  songs, the Fender Rhodes; as soon as you
hear that it's  America.  But  to  actually  define  African,  or
American."

Which may go some way to explain why her new album,  The  Sensual
World,  is  so  mixed  in  its influences and so far removed from
anything we may immediately consider to be  English.  A  swirling
mass  of  eastern  European  rhythms,  Bulgarian  singing,  Irish
fiddling and that unique vocal and lyrical quality  that  belongs
to  Kate Bush. But then Kate Bush isn't the type to be influenced
by day time radio; not for her hours spent tuned in to the  inane
ramblings of Gary Davies and co.

"I don't spend much time listening to radio, and  when  I  do  it
tends  to be Radio 4 . I guess we spend so much time listening to
music in a very sensitised way, in recreational terms,  that  you
need  relief  for  the ears. I tend to listen to more when I just
finish an album, rather than during, which is stupid.

"A good example of this is that when I finished the last album, I
heard   this   Bulgarian   music.   (Les  Voix  de  Bulgare,  the
extraordinary close-harmony choir whose two  Les  Mystere  albums
were  surprise  hits  for  4AD). I thought 'Shit, I wish I'd have
heard this while I was working on the album.' I think it was good
in  one  way  because  I  had  a  lot  of time to think about the
possibility of doing something with them. The  thing  that  would
worry  me  a bit is that if you like something you are influenced
by it, and I'd probably try and connect to other  people's  music
of  that time. it takes me such a long time to make an album that
it would be drastically out of date."

This is, perhaps, something of an underestimate. It's been nearly
four  years  since  we  had  the  opportunity to discuss her then
current album, Hounds of Love.  Surely she hasn't been working on
The Sensual World since then?

"I  was  saying  to  Del  (Palmer  -  boyfriend/   bass   player/
programmer/ mixer) that I think my tapes wouldn't know what to do
if they weren't left sitting around for  years.  I  think  they'd
have  a nervous breakdown - they go through a fermenting process.
Like wine, or something. I don't do anything to the songs, I just
sit and let the tapes mature.

"I think in real terms it's been about two and a half years,  and
it's  been  done  in  bits.  We started and then took quite a few
months off to do a few things at home, and also it was  the  only
way  I  could  cope with this album - to keep taking breaks. It's
quite an intense process - especially Del and I working  together
so isolated. We had to take a lot of breaks to think about stuff.
A lot of time with this album was spent  thinking.  Not  actually
doing, but just thinking."

                Home is where the Art is

As with Hounds of Love, The Sensual World was recorded mainly  in
Kate's  home  studio,  with orchestral parts added at Abbey Road,
Irish extras in Windmill Lane, Dublin, and  the  Bulgarian  women
recorded  at  Angel  studios.  The  result is as diverse as it is
interesting, and on first listening much more  complex  than  her
other albums.

"Some of them are really  bizarre  -  I  worry  about  my  sanity
sometimes,  really.  All of the tracks have taken such completely
different processes."

Including the opening track, also the first single, which  didn't
quite end up as Kate imagined it initially would.

"Now that was a really complicated process for a  track  to  come
together.  It  started  off  with a song - no words. I'd had this
idea for about two years to use  the  words  from  Molly  Blooms'
speech  at  the end of Ulysses, which  I think is the most superb
piece of writing ever, to a piece of music. So  Del  had  done  a
Fairlight pattern, and I'd done a DX riff over the top of it, and
I was listening to it at home, and the  words  fitted  absolutely
perfectly.  I  thought God this is just ridiculous, just how well
it's come together.

"We then approached the relevant people for permission to use the
lyrics,  and they just would not let me use them. No way. I tried
everything. So I thought if we're  really  getting  nowhere  with
this,  let's  take a different approach to the song. I heard this
piece of music which a fan sent in about two years  earlier,  and
we  put the tune in the choruses in place of what we had. So that
went in, and all the lyrics I had to change.

"To try and keep the sense of the original words,  but  something
that  would  be original, I came up with this idea of Molly Bloom
stepping out of this speech into the real world. And in the  book
she's  such  a  sensual  woman  - womanly, very physical, it just
seemed that she would be completely taken by the fact  that  this
2D character could actually go around touching. So that's what it
turned into. The fact that they didn't  let  me  use  the  lyrics
turned  the  song  into  something  very different. It was such a
complicated process, and really quite painful to actually let  it
go."

The Fairlight still plays  a  large  part  in  the  music  making
process  for  Kate, even though many others may have abandoned it
for more contemporary, and cheaper sampling sources.

"I think it's a very good instrument  still.  It's  just  one  of
those  things.   Everyone  I  know  is  the same; we pull out the
Fairlight and they go, 'Oh no sounds rubbish. Eventually  you  do
find  sounds  that  really  work.  I  think  the whole process of
sampling instruments is  becoming  very  boring,  wading  through
sounds..

And she further proves her reluctance  to  purchase  This  Year's
Model by raving about a recently acquired DX7.

"I was very impressed. Initially I thought I'd just  use  it  for
ideas, but we've used it quite a lot on the album. We blend it in
with other stuff, and hopefully it doesn't sound too like a  DX7.
I use mainly pre-sets. I think it's amazing how different you can
make pre-sets sound  if  you  treat  them  differently  and  bung
another   sound   with  them.  It  takes  on  quite  a  different
character."

One of the first tracks she wrote for  the  album  was  Love  and
Anger. Again, the track didn't exactly write itself.

"I couldn't get the lyrics. They were one of the last  things  to
do.  I just couldn't find out what the song was about, though the
tune was there. The first verse was always there,  and  that  was
the  problem, because I'd already set some form of direction, but
I couldn't follow through. I didn't know what I wanted to say  at
all. I guess I was just tying to make a song that was comforting,
up tempo, and about how when things get really bad, it's  alright
really  -  'Don't  worry old bean. Someone will come and help you
out.'

"The song started with a piano, and Del  put  a  straight  rhythm
down.  Then  we  got  the drummer, and it stayed like that for at
least a year and a half. Then I thought maybe it could  be  okay,
so  we  got  Dave  Gilmour  in.  This is actually one of the more
difficult songs - everyone I asked to try and play  something  on
this  track  had problems. It was one of those awful tracks where
either everything would sound ordinary,  really  MOR,  or  people
just  couldn't  come  to terms with it. They'd ask me what it was
about, but I didn't know because I  hadn't  written  the  lyrics.
Dave  was  great  - I think he gave me a bit of a foothold there,
really. At least there was a guitar that  made  some  sense.  And
John  (Giblin)  putting the bass on - that was very important. He
was one of the few people brave enough to say  that  he  actually
liked the song."

Do you give your musicians quite a free hand?

"When I don't know what's happening, yes. But that song was  just
so  bizarre. In some ways it's a very ordinary structure compared
to the other songs. I  think  putting  the  Valiha  on  was  very
important.  It's a beautiful sounding instrument - it looks a bit
like a Zither, and it's from Madagascar. It sounds like  sunshine
-  it  has  this  really happy, bubbly sound. I think that really
helped to give the song a  different  perspective.  It's  a  very
straightforward  treatment  -  drums, bass, guitar, piano - and I
think for me it's one of the more straightforward  songs  on  the
album. A chirpy little number."

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To  be continued ...

Neil

nbc@inf.rl.ac.uk