International Musician article - Part 2

[nbc%INF.RL.AC.UK@mitvma.mit.edu]

I have not seen love-hounds digests for several days - hope this
does not go into a black hole or repeats what someone else has
already posted.


Part 2 of the article in International Musician

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                Misty Business

The  next  track,  The  Fog,  finds  Kate  once  again  exploring
atmosphere and emotion through music; like a lot of her material,
the motivations and expressions behind the lyric and the way  the
track  is recorded are inseparable. One very clearly dictates the
other.

"That started at the  Fairlight.  We  got  these  big  chords  of
strings, and put this line over the top, and then I got this idea
of these words - slipping into the fog. I thought wouldn't it  be
interesting to sort of really visualize that in a piece of music,
with all these strings coming in that would actually be the  fog.
So  I  wrote  a  bit  of music that went on the front of what I'd
done, and extended it backwards with this bit on the  front  that
was  very  simple and straightforward, but then went into the big
orchestral bit, to get the sense of fog coming in.

"Then we put a drummer on, and Nigel Kennedy, the violinist, came
in and replaced the Fairlight violin, which changed the nature of
it. He's great to work with - such a great musician. The times we
work together we sort of write together. I'll say something like,
'what about doing something a bit like  Vaughan  Williams?',  and
he'll  know  the  whole repertoire, and he'll pick something, and
maybe I'll change something. By doing that we came up  with  this
different musical section that hadn't been on the Fairlight.

"So when I got all this down it seemed to make sense  story-wise.
This new section became like a flashback area. And then I got the
lyrics together about slipping into the fog,  and  relationships,
trying to let go of people.

"It sounded great with the Fairlight holding it together, but  it
just  didn't have the sense of dimension I wanted. So we got hold
of Michael Kamen, who orchestrated some of the last album, and we
said  we  wanted  this  bit  here with waves and flashbacks. He's
really into this because he's always writing music for films, and
he  loves  the idea of visual imagery. So we put his orchestra in
on top of the Fairlight.

"Again a very complicated process, and he was actually  the  last
thing to go on.  I don't know how anything comes out as one song,
because sometimes it's such a bizarre process. It  does  seem  to
work together somehow."

                Stepping Out

However, some come quicker than others, like track four,  one  of
my personal favourites, Reaching Out.

"That was really quick, really straightforward.  A  walk  in  the
park  did  that one for me. I really needed one more song to kind
of lift the album. I was a bit worried that it was  all  sort  of
dark and down. I'd been getting into walks at that time, and just
came back and sat at the piano and wrote it, words and all.

"I had this lovely conversation with someone around  the  time  I
was  about to start writing it. They were talking about this star
that exploded. I thought it was such fantastic imagery. The  song
was taking the whole idea of how we cling onto things that change
- we're always trying to not let things change. I thought it  was
such  a  lovely  image of people reaching up for a star, and this
star explodes. Where's it gone?  It  seemed  to  sum  it  all  up
really.

"We did a really straightforward treatment on the track; did  the
piano  to a clicktrack, got Charlie Morgan (Elton John's drummer)
to come in and do the drums, Del did the bass, and Michael  Nyman
came  in  to do the strings. I told him it had to have a sense of
uplifting, and I really like his  stuff  -  the  rawness  of  his
strings.  It's  a bit like a fuzzbox touch - quite 'punk'. I find
that very attractive - he wrote  it  very  quickly.  I  was  very
pleased."

Kate's always used a wide variety of musicians  on  her  records,
but  drummer  Stuart  Elliot  seems  to  have been there from the
beginning, even though he sometimes shares the  drum  stool  with
Charlie Morgan.

"He's the only one that's worked on every album - he's lovely  to
work with. I think it's good to keep that long term relationship.
He's so easy to  work  with  because  he  knows  what  I'm  like.
Occasionally  I  even ask him to use cymbals on a track now! He's
been through that  whole  stage  where  I  just  couldn't  handle
cymbals  or  hi  hats.  Now that I'm actually using them again he
can't cope.

"I always found them something that we used too much. I felt they
were leant on too much. It held the music down in such a specific
way. They're very marked. Not using them is just a way of opening
up  the music, I think. I learnt a lot from it. It's always been,
'this is the drum kit, so let's use  it.'  I  always  found  that
extraordinary.  But  I  think now that I've taken that break from
it, I see it very differently."

Even though both Stuart and Charlie get  to  contribute  on  most
tracks,  The  Sensual  World  features more programmed drums than
earlier recordings.

"We replace a lot, but there's a lot that's still there. We  used
the  Fairlight  for  the drums this time, and because the quality
was so much better we could keep them all.  It's  just  the  last
album, with the Linn patterns, they had to be much more disguised
because they sounded like  a  Linn  machine.  We  had  much  more
finished  drum  tracks  to work with - that caused some problems.
They were so good that I didn't want to get in and  replace  them
at  an  early  stage  like  on  the last album. I had to be quite
brutal and get drummers to just get in there and  throw  bits  of
the Fairlight away, just to give it different levels. On the next
track, Heads We're Dancing, it was all based around the Fairlight
pattern  that  Del did, which is the basis of the whole song. The
only thing I think we replaced was the snare."

Why bother?

"Because I think it gives it a human feel, even though  he's  got
to  stay  in  with the machine. There's still a certain amount of
movement, and there's all this human energy. I even believe  that
the  sounds  a  drummer makes can be part of the track - they all
make sounds, sing along while they're playing,  grunting  ...  It
puts air in there. It's nice to get someone else's input as well.

"I like to use real musicians - it's so  exciting.  Machines  are
great  but  you can get such great feedback from people when they
think they're working on something intimate. Things  you'd  never
think  of. Like Mick Karns' bass on Heads We're Dancing puts such
a different feel to the song. I was really impressed with Mick  -
his  energy.  He's  very  distinctive - so many people admire him
because he stays in that unorthodox area, he  doesn't  come  into
the commercial world - he just does his thing."

Not a totally different position to her own.

"I suppose so, but I take an awfully long time to do it.  What  I
admire  about  people  like  Mick is the way they travel from one
environment to the other, but keep themselves intact. For me, I'm
so used to being in my own studio now, that if I'm put in another
one I actually get so nervous. I suppose it's finding a  balance.
When  I  did work in commercial studios all that time, I did find
it very uncomfortable, because there was so much pressure, and so
many  distractions.  I  love  working at home so much - though it
does leave me quite vulnerable when I go outside."

Sentiments which  must  have  inspired  the  next  track,  Deeper
Understanding.

"It's about someone being trapped in the city,  in  isolation  at
work,  where  they  just  spend  all the time with this computer,
actually really developing a relationship with it. Which a lot of
people  seem  to do - they talk to it.  So the idea is in sending
off this programme for the lonely lost; they put it in  and  this
sci-fi being comes out and says 'I know you're lost, but I'm here
to help you, we love you.' This person doesn't have human contact
any more, he's just kind of addicted to the machine. I suppose in
subject matter terms I really do see it visually.

"So I had this thing and started to write it on the Yamaha  piano
at home - one of the old CP90s, which is still great. I asked Del
for a rhythm, and he put down  this  very  mechanical  rhythm  on
Fairlight.  I  put  DX7  over  the  top, John Giblin did the most
beautiful bass - though it took a while. It always  does  when  I
work  with John - the main problem is that he just makes me laugh
so much."

Deeper Understanding is also the first track to feature the  Trio
Bulgarka.

"That song was sort of finished when  I  got  involved  with  the
Bulgarian  singers. I just thought of all the people to represent
a being that exudes divine love,  it  had  to  be  the  Bulgarian
singers.  The  idea  was  to  put  them  in  the chorus where the
computer was singing, so that they'd have this ethereal sound."

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to be continued ...

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Neil Calton                            UUCP:   ..!mcvax!ukc!rlinf!nbc
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory,        ARPA: nbc%inf.rl.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Chilton, Didcot, Oxon  OX11 0QX        JANET:         nbc@uk.ac.rl.inf
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