Future Music Interview : Del on TRS

[cfg@netcom.com (Carlos Francisco Gomez)]

Hello - 

I've been given enough encouragement to post this to gaffa,
so please pardon the bandwidth and I have a happy holiday!

...cfg...
12/21/93

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The following was taken from the November 1993 Issue of Future Music :

_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
TRS.

  Kate Bush, one of the most original songwriter/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 TRS 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 TRS.

  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.  

  TRS is set for release on EMI Records on November 1.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Profile - "Del tells what Katie Did"

"ODDLY ENOUGH, the idea of the 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 Elliot 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 TRS 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 TRS 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 TRS came together.

RUBBERBAND GIRL - Chosen as the first single from the album, RBG is
up-tempo and infectiously melodic.  Originally, the first single was 
intended to me ETM, but during the production of the film to accompany
the album, RBG seemed to be catching everyone's imagination, and has 
proved to be a substantial chart success.
  Allthough 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 ASIL 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 RBG 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 the tracks.  The bass and drum sound
was important because we wanted to have them consistent throughout the
album.
  Allthough 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.  RBG is one of
the few that worked the first time - it just has a basic rock feel with
a riffing quitar, 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,
allthough 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 -
theres 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 favourite track on the 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 don 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 one style, but he's
a genius at what he does, so that was a highlight for me.  
  The tracks original backing 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, and the rest of it is 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 S1000 samples.  We have only a very small room for acoustic
recording and the sound of the room tends to get on to drum recordings,
so we uses a lot of S1000 drum samples triggered from Simmons pads plus
real cymbals.  Stuart Elliot knows that our drum recordings can be a 
long and arduous process and he might get called back four or five 
times - not because were unhappy with what he's done, but because 
the track changes as it develops.

EAT THE MUSIC - This track, laden with trumpets and 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 RBG 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 TRS) 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 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 like Ken Townsend who will help with annything, including 
loans of equipment whenever we need something.  They don't seem 
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 demands 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 sounds, 
and the 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 the piano."

THE SONG OF SOLOMON - Just as Kate used a section frmo James Joyce's 
Ulysses on TSW album, SOS 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 
Procussion unit but with a boomy bottom-end added - the originals 
were more 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 mxture 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 be 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 conforming 
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 mandolins and mandolas are played by Paddy, who 
has realy 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 emphasizes 
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 emphasize the airiness of the track.  That left the bass part 
very prominent so that was put through a delay to repeat it and 
emphasize 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 
violin and his parts were recorded on analogue in 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 
powerfull."

CONSTELLATION OF THE HEART - Reminiscent of nothing more than a Nile 
Rogers or Prince track as it opens, this one features big American 
sound, lots of synth string chords, guitar processing and West 
Coast-Style backing vocals.  "This one started 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 backing drums 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 
solos 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 Marshal valve guitar amps to be delivered so 
she could create screaming guitar solos.  "It's sort of a 
stocking-filler track, the last one to be written, and has 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 at a 
time, so it's not representative of the band-oriented 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-tracked tapes, with a slave reel returning from Prince's 
Paisley Park studio covered in vocals, quitar 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 approaches.  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 TRS 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 RBG is anything to go by, it seems abundantly clear 
that Kate Bush is back in a big way.

<EOM>