No Subject

[nbc@inf.rl.ac.uk]

Here is the article from the November issue of Future Music. N.B. it has been
scanned and OCR'd so ther may be some mistakes I have not spotted. Also,
there were two insert boxes of stuff which did not scan as they were
on a coloured background. I will try to typr those later.

Neil
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Del Palmer on Kate Bush

Well red

After a four-year silence, Kate Bush is back with a 
new album. Mark Jenkins quizzes producer Del Palmer 
on the ins and outs of her opus The Red Shoes.

KATE BUSH. One of the most original songwriters/musicians in the 
popular music world, and certainly the most distinctive British female star 
around. It's been four years since her last album The Sensual World - only 
Kraftwerk and Peter Gabriel seem quite as tardy in coming up with new 
material. Despite a few collaborations with The Comic Strip, Kate hardly 
seems to have been busy during this time. What has she been up to?

One reason for the silence has been a complete changeover in the set-up at her 
impressive personal recording studio, at which she started work on The Red 
Shoes using 48-track analogue techniques, but changed midway to digital 
recording - along with all the advanced editing possibilities that implies.

At the time of writing, Kate is busy working on videos for the new album, but 
FM has tracked down Del Palmer. He's worked on all of Kate's albums and 
engineered and produced Tbe Red Shoes.

He's undoubtedly the best man to supply us with background on the inspiration 
behind Kate's latest work, the recording techniques involved and to offer a 
blow-by-blow account of the genesis of each of the album's 12 tracks.

The Red Shoes is set for release on EMI Records on November 1.

Del tells what Katie Did

"ODDLY ENOUGH, the idea of this album," explains Del, "was to get it 
recorded quickly and get out on to the road with it." Kate's only previously 
played one short tour. "It didn't work out that way, but the idea did influence 
the way the album was put together. Because I wanted to concentrate on 
engineering and didn't want to be in the live band, I didn't play much bass on 
the album, and we used the same drummer and bassist - Stuart Elliott and John 
Giblin - almost throughout. A lot of the time we got them to play together live 
to create a consistent backing for a song, even if we had to go back and change 
that as the song developed.

Now, with plans for live performances of The Red Shoes  shelved, listeners are 
left with an album which has a preponderance of tight, live-sounding tracks. 
Some of these will be aired in a 50-minute film which, like the album itself, is 
influenced by the tale of The Red Shoes  filmed by Michael Powell in the 
1950s. The film will feature Kate herself in an acting role as well as Miranda 
Richardson, choreography from Lindsay Kemp and work from Terry (Monty 
Python) Gilliam's animation studio.

Let's take a track-by-track look at how The Red Shoes came together.

Rubberband Girl 
Chosen as first single from the album, Rubberband Girl is  up-tempo and 
infectiously melodic. Originally, the first single was intended to be Eat The 
Music. but during the production of the film to accompany the  album,  
Rubberband Girl seemed to be  catching everyone's imagination, and has 
proved to be a substantial chart success.

Although  the  song  has a relatively straightforward pop/rock feel, the vocals 
are multi-tracked and some of them seem incredibly low-pitched. "This song 
and And So Is Love are typical of the live band feel," explains Del. "We were 
trying to create a very accessible, live sound and the fastest way to record was 
to have at least two or three people playing together initially.

"On Rubberband Girl the bass, drums and basic keyboards were all done 
together, but we did change the whole track afterwards in the sense of editing 
it digitally rather than re-doing tracks. The bass and drum sound was 
important because we wanted to have them consistent throughout the album."

Although Stuart Elliot and John Giblin's performances tended to go on to tape 
'live' at an early stage, this didn't avoid the need for subsequent changes. 
"When you put later tracks down, the earlier ones sometimes have to change 
because the whole feel of the piece changes. Sometimes we had to do the bass 
and drums three or four times, not because we were unhappy with the original 
performances, but because the feel of the song had altered as new tracks were 
added. Rubberband Girl is one of the few that worked first time - it just has a 
basic rock feel with a riffing guitar, the backing vocals went down first and 
then we tried various lyrics and lead vocal ideas.

"In most songs the lyrics change a lot during the recording process, although a 
basic seed remains solid. It often gets to the point of struggling over just one 
word which has to be returned to many times -there's never any pressure to 
write a song to fill a particular function, like acting as a single or being a very 
slow ballad, so the whole feel can often change,"

And So Is Love
Del says this is his favouritc track on album. "This one seems to have the 
most effective band sound to me; we had Gary Brooker (from Procul 
Harum) on Hammond organ and Eric Clapton on guitar, and that was 
just a couple of months after his son died. I admired him for doing that - 
he'd promised to do it and he wanted to stick to his commitment. Eric 
only really plays in one style, but he's a genius at what he does, so that 
was a highlight for me.

The track's original  backlng  is a  sequenced 4-bar Fairlight pattern 
which was played to the musicians to give them a feel for the piece.

"Usually we keep more of the Fairlight sound", says del, "but in this case 
it got scrubbed apart from the toms so it could all stay in strict tempo, so 
it could all be played live."

Kate's Series III Fairlight is pretty obsolete now, and most of its
capabilities could be reproduced by a computer and a couple of Akai S1000s.
However, she's got used to the machine over the years and has a lot of
favourite sounds on it. "On this track there's a little flute/reed sound, but
the Fender piano sound is a real one and the drums are Sl000 samples. We only
have a very small room for acoustic recording and the sound of the room tends
to get on to drum recordings,  so we used a lot of S1000 drum samples triggered
from Simmons pads plus real cymbals. Stuart Elliott knows that our drum 
recorcling can be a long and arduous process and he might get called back four 
or five times - not because we're unhappy with what he's done, but because the 
track changes as it develops."

Eat The Music
This track, laden with trummpets andl light percussion, has a very Latin 
American feel which actually stems from the music of Madagascar. "It uses a 
small guitar called a 'caboss' which is one of the instruments Paddy (Bush, 
Kate's brother) discovered and brought back with him. He's very into ethnic 
music of all kinds and has always contributed a lot of ideas to the 
albums - he helped bring in some authentic players and the track 
started off with bass guitar which was then replaced by an acoustic bass - but 
that sounded a bit too Latin. The horn section's real, of course."

The decision not to release this track as the first single from the album 
represents one of the few times Kate has been influenced by outside opinions 
in this respect -the interest in Rubberband Girl winning out in this case.

Moments of Pleasure
Like tracks on many of Kate's previous albums, this represents the piano 
and orchestra style of composition and was recorded largely at EMI's Abbey 
Road studios. Abbey Road's Studio 2 is equipped with the same SSL. 
automated mixing desk as Kate's own studio, and she has always 
recorded at least part of each album at Abbey Road. "There does seem to be at 
least one of this type of song on each album, although the vocals proved a 
struggle this time. It's inspired by a visit to the USA in 1989 which included a 
meeting with Michael Powell (director of the original film  The Red Shoes) 
which took place in a flat in New York, and a lot of the lyric lines refer to 
that occasion."

The piano parts were actually recorded in Kate's studio using a Grotrian 
Steinweg -built by an offshoot of the Steinway company - while the orchestra 
was produced by Haydn Bendall. "I'm not too proud to say that he was the 
man for the job," acknowledges Del. "Abbey Road is the best studio in the 
world, and it's all down to the people there like  Ken  Townsend  who  will  
help with anything, including loans of equipment whenever we need 
something. They don't seemq to mind that we're taking business away from 
them by recording in our own studio as well."

Microphone technique for piano recording can be a case of trial and error. "It 
all depends on the player. A couple of Shure SM87s in the lid, with the lid 
propped up as high as possible, gives you about 18 inches of microphone 
spacing from the  strings. They're usually above the iron section to give a 
slightly metallic sound, and then we have Massenberg equalisation units to 
tailor the sound. The equalisation on the SSL. desk is too violent and you can't 
get very specific, which is great for some things but not for the piano."

The Song of Solomon 
Just as Kate used a section from .James Joyce's Ulysses on The Sensual World 
album, Song  of Solomon uses biblical texts almost verbatim. "This is one of 
the first tracks we mixed and it's very simple. The sampled harp sound on the 
Fairlight alternates with the piano - the toms were originally played, but the 
final sounds are sampled from an Emu percussion unit but with a boomy 
bottom end added - the originals were more like tablas and they sounded too 
lightweight along with the ethereal harp and piano. The original tom sound is 
gated so that it just produces a short click, and the click is used to trigger the 
Fairlight. We had to advance the track on the digital multi-track to get the 
timing right, then move it back again with a digital delay so you've got a 
mixture of toms where some are on the beat and some are slightly off it. The 
good thing about the Fairlight is that it's stereo so you can sample a whole 
drum kit in one go."

Lilly
This track opens with a voice recording of a simple prayer. "Lilly is a healer 
who helps Kate a lot and this is a little prayer she uses," reveals Del. "It just 
says that you have to have hope to be able to carry on. The track includes an 
instrument called a Fujara, played by Paddy, which comes from Yugoslavia - 
the very soft opening lulls you into a false sense of security, then you get what 
sounds like a drum loop, but in fact it's all played live. This is another track 
where the original bass and drums had to lie re-done at a later stage because 
the feel had changed almost to a hip-hop style." This very short track might 
seem an attempt to enter the indie rock field, but Kate would insist that there's 
no intention of confoming to specific styles in this way. 

The Red Shoes 
The album's title track seems to have an Irish folk music influence, with a big 
bass drum sound and an unusual legato bass part, but again this stems from the 
music of Madagascar.  "It's  fascinating  how  music from different parts of 
the world can have these  similarities.  All  the  mandarins  and mandolas are 
played by Paddy, who has really gone into this sort of music, and he also plays 
all the various whistles and flutes on the track". 

Top of the City 
Again featuring .John Giblin's unusual high pitched bass line, this track 
has a very theatrical approach and emphasises the power of Kate's 
voice to deliver an emotional ballad. "The impression is of being high up 
in the clouds over a city, and originally there was more rhythm section, 
but a lot of it was taken off to emphasise the airiness of the track. That left 
the bass part very prominent so that was put through a delay to repeat it and 
emphasise its effect." 

The track was one of the first recorded for the album, but changed an awful 
lot during the studio sessions.  "Nigel  Kennedy features on violon and his 
parts were recorded on analogue on 1990. There was a complete  
metamorphosis  in  the  editing process and we lost a lot of the cymbals, which 
made the track sound quite sparse but a lot more powerful."

Constellation of the Heart
Reminiscent of nothing more than a Nile Rogers or Prince track as it opens, 
this one features a big American sound, lots of synth string chords, guitar 
processing and West Coast-style backing vocals. "This one staarted off as a 4-
bar rhythm with this little chant going about turning telescopes inwards on 
ourselves. That turned into a sort of chanting, soul-style backing, and again it 
was a track that metamorphosed into something new and had to have the 
original bass and drums backing done again. Now it has a sort of Sly Stone 
feel to it..."

Big Stripey Lie
This track is fascinating in that the bass and guitar sounds which seem typical 
of dub specialist .Jah Wobble and quirky American indie rock bands are in 
fact all played by Kate herself, who picked up a guitar during the recording 
sessions and within a couple of weeks was asking for Marshall valve guitar 
amps to be delivered so she could create screaming guitar solos. "It's a sort of 
stocking-filler track, the last one to be written, and has a sort of Captain 
Beefheart impersonation on the bass and guitar."

The bass sound is  intentionally  overdriven on the mixing desk, but also 
partly results from Kate's style of playing it - her energetic style overloads 
the compression on the desk without actually creating distortion due to high 
volume. Chirpy keyboard sounds on a Yamaha DX7 and an 
unexpected  violin part combine to make this one of the most 
absorbing tracks on the album, despite the fact that it's untypical in 
its overall recording method - "this one was done quite quickly by the 
old method of putting down one track ata time, so it's not 
representative of the band-orientated approach on the rest of the 
album."

Why Should I Love You
This one actually was recorded in collaboration with Prince - Kate went to 
see him at a gig and was flattered to be asked to meet him after the show, 
when they discussed a collaboration. Unable to physically get together in 
the same room, they swapped multi-track tapes, with a slave reel returning 
from Prince's Paisley Park studio covered in vocals, guitar solos and 
keyboards.
"The problem then was to put the track back together into something 
resembling its original form while retaining the best of what Prince had 
done. He hadn't added one of the vocal parts which would have been 
particularly good for him, so it basically took two years to put it back 
together. What's left is his lead guitar, some digital synths and some chorus 
vocals. Then Lenny Henry came in to do a vocal on the end - he's really got 
a great voice and ought to be doing a serious record of his own."

You're The One
Again  featuring Hammond  organ  and Fender piano, this track also includes 
a rare synthesizer melody  line and features Jeff Beck on guitar. "His style is 
completely different from Eric Clapton's - they're both great players but with 
very different aproaches.Jeff came in a couple of times to fix things up 
because he wasn't completely happy with them, and the end 
result is like classic '70's and 80's rock, with the Hammond from Gary 
Brooker again."

If you're deeply committed to pop of a particular persuasion, listening to 
The Red Shoes can be  a very unsettling experience. Kate Bush has little regard 
for fashion, transitory musical tastes or transparently obvious lyrics.

If you're in the mood for a sonic experience which stretches the limits of 
style, vocal technique and compositional mixing and matching, this could be 
the album for you - and if initial response to the single release of Rubberband 
Girl is anything to go by, it seems abundantly clear that Kate Bush is back in a 
big way.


Subject: Kate Article in Future Music