Re: Nosferatu

[S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk (Steve Fagg's Mac)]

Here's what KaTe had to say on the subject of "Hello Earth" & "Nosferatu"
in the "Hounds of Love" programme on BBC Radio One's "Classic Album"
series:

***** begin transcript *****

"Hello Earth" was a very difficult track to write as well, because in some
ways it was too big for me.   I ended up with this song that had two huge
great holes in the choruses, where the drums stopped and everything
stopped, and people would say to me: "What's going to happen in these
choruses?" and I hadn't got a clue! 

["Hello Earth" is played as far as the first "hole", then continues under
the following.] 

We had the whole song, it was all there, but for these huge great holes in
the choruses, and I knew I wanted to put something there. I'd had this idea
to put a vocal piece in there that was like this traditional tune I'd heard
used in the film "Nosferatu". And, really, everything I came up with, it
was rubbish really compared to what this piece was saying, and so we did
some research to find out if it was possible to use it. And it was, so
that's what we did. We re-recorded the piece and I kind of made up words
that sounded like what I could hear was happening on the original. And
suddenly there were these beautiful voices in these choruses that had just
been like two black holes. 

["Hello Earth" has reached the next chorus and is faded up again. It plays
to the end of the track.] 

In some ways I thought of it as a lullaby for the Earth. And it was the
idea of turning the whole thing upside down and looking at it from
completely above, like you would if you were lying in water at night and
you were looking up at the sky all the time. I wonder if you wouldn't get
the sense that, as the stars were reflected in the water, a sense that you
could be looking up at water that's reflecting the stars from the sky that
you're in.  And the idea of them looking down at the Earth and seeing these
storms forming over America and moving around the globe.  And they have
this huge, fantastically overseeing, view of everything. Everything is in
total perspective and way, way down there somewhere there's this little dot
in the ocean that is them.

[The programme moves on to "The Morning Fog"]

***** end transcript *****

--
Regards

Steve Fagg      ( S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk +44-279-402437 )
BNR Europe Ltd., London Road, Harlow, Essex, CM17 9NA, UK

*** "Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won't drown". ***