[mod.music.gaffa] Kate-echism V.1.xxi

Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (01/22/87)

Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU

>P.S.: ``I'' ``can'' ``get'' ``you'' ``an'' ``Indonesian'' ``CD'' ``of''
>      ``the" `` `Dreaming' '' ``for'' ``$50.''
>
>-- Bob Krajewski

Sorry for the late reply, Bob, your message was delayed in transit for a
while. If the above announcement is not just a silly joke, then
please, let's discuss it further!
The origin of the CD has meanwhile been taken up and laid to rest in L-Hs.

>Speaking frankly, when you say that you consider "Experiment IV" to be
>"the Universe", do you mean that the essence of it permeates every
>molecule in existence?  I mean, it's a nice song and all, but it's
>kind of a disappointment GIVEN THE QUALITY OF MUSIC KATE IS CAPABLE OF
>PRODUCING - lyrically, I find it absolutely wizard & intriguing, but
>I think the music is a bit flat, as is the production - the ending
>helicopter "sweep" is a nice device, but she's used it twice before!
>Compared to just about everything else around, it's still a phenomenon,
>but compared to some of her other works, it's a bit lacking - this is
>all my opinion, of course.
>
>-- Jon Drukman

IED hopes you don't mind, Jon, IED's reprinting of the
above private message in L-Hs. Your points are well
taken, and deserve a careful reply. First, of course,
you're entitled to your opinion, and IED can understand
how you might not see "X4" in quite the same light that
IED does.

We seem to have no dispute about the quality of the lyrics,
or the theme. Musically, there is some difference of opinion.
You are right, however, about the helicopter sound being
somewhat old hat for Kate, after its use in The Ninth Wave
and, even earlier, in "Pull Out the Pin". Although the sound
is treated differently in all three tracks, it still produces
a kind of deja vu (or deja entendu!) feeling in the habitual
KT listener.

This is not in any way a weakness in the track, though. We
come back once again to our old L-Hs argument about whether
art has always to be NOVEL to be GOOD. The way IED sees it, a given
sound or musical motif reappears in Kate's music so seldom,
that any such recurrence is a cause for paying more attention to it,
not less. In this case, the helicopter sound links
"X4" with its predecessors in the KT canon. It has
become a kind of ritual sound for her; one might even say that
she is a little obsessed with it. In IED's opinion,
this is a fascinating development in her music, and we might all
benefit by listening out for uses of the sound in future Kate Bush
recordings.

As for the quality of the musical material in "X4", IED cannot
agree with you at all! "X4" is packed with stunning musical
ideas, so many, in fact, for a track of only four minutes or so,
that alot are barely noticeable, and two or three don't really
make themselves known in the original 7" version at all, but
can be appreciated fully only in the 12" mix. The most obvious
of these is the brief but overwhelming passage for strings (actually
for solo violin, accompanied by double-stop backing by the same
instrument, or a Fairlight re-creation of the double-stops) which
serves as the introduction to the twelve-inch mix; but
at least two more equally fascinating ideas are relegated to the remix.
This particular idea (the string passage) is absolutely unlike any other
musical motif in Kate's earlier oeuvre. In fact, it is utterly unique
in twentieth-century popular music. (Actually, its apparent
source of inspiration -- although not for actual melody or harmony,
of course -- is a passage in Vaughn-Williams's "The Lark Ascending".)
How you can find the production "flat" is beyond IED, who
jumps a little in his chair each time he hears the CD track begin. The
sheer impact of "X4"'s sound is devastating, and is unequalled
by any earlier recorded pop music other than her own.

And if you still think "X4" is not as brilliant -- or as subtle --
as anything Kate has ever done, try using the following phrase as
a mantra, repeating its syllables while contemplating the song:

I BET MY MUM'S GONNA GIVE ME A LITTLE TOY!

You might be surprised.

Subject:  the last word on kate bootlegs (Jon Drukman)
>>IED forgot to mention last time that the track listings on the
>>back cover are inaccurate and jumbled up strangely.

>that's because some tracks repeat.  Also, the Hammersmith Odeon
>concert tracks are listed in order _within_ the jumbled listing.

Aha!

> As a final note, I was extremely pleased to find that IED was
>mistaken in telling me that the Hammersmith Odeon was transferred
>in monaural - I was listening to it today at work, and I could clearly
>hear the synthesizer in "Kite" swirling from channel to channel, as well
>as the guitar licks in "Don't Push Your Foot..." distinctly separate.

Mm-hmm... Upon re-checking, IED has found that he was wrong and you are
right, Jon, although the sound quality, as well
as the phasing and channel separation, are far superior on the
earlier bootleg, and of course on the Hammersmith video's Hi-fi audio
track.

>Thanks to Andy for posting (or reposting) his personal essay
>on Hounds of Love. (Andy, did you say that you had written others
>as well?) His interpretations were interesting, and probably quite accurate.
>
>-- Mark Kat(e)souros

Thanks to Mark for his thanks. IED has been working on Part 2 of
"Venturing", which is a stab at analyzing the para-musical content
of The Ninth Wave, but it may not be ready for a while.
If you're really interested, a long letter by IED, supplementing and
updating "Venturing, Part 1", can be found in Break-Through No. 10.

Actually, IED would have counted himself lucky just for getting away with
the re-posting without incurring the wrath of L-Hs from around the globe,
so an actual compliment is very gratifying indeed. Really, though,
it's not "Venturing" that should be gleaning praise from the pack,
but the Second True and Only Gospel, Parts One and Two, both of
which seem to have fallen into the phosphour gaps without eliciting
any reaction at all. That interview is, in IED's opinion, the most
edifying, uninhibited and atmospheric slice out of Kate's life that
has yet been published anywhere, and it should be precipitating heaps
of fervent praise.

>Incidently, hounds are known
>for their deep, resonant voices, and Kate *did* sing lower on this album than
>on any other.

An interesting point. Someone should ask Kate if she stuck
any backwards tracks in Houndese somewhere in the LP. After
all, we already know about the secret Giraffese track in the
U.S. College Music Awards message...

>...a repeat of the Comic Relief show. The latter was shown on BBC2 on
>Dec. 27th and featured the infamous duet between Kate Bush and Rowan
>Atkinson where Kate sings a rude word (well almost). Kate is also glimpsed
>at the finale of the show for the communal rendition of 'Do they know its
>Xmas' led by Saint Bob himself. Unfortunately, the TV show does not feature
>Kate alone singing 'Breathing' - this is however on the Comic Relief video
>which has been available for some months (in England at least).
>
>-- Neil Calton (England)

Thanks for your continuing updates, Neil, which are always
eagerly awaited. (Has that guy already been canonised? IED thought
your queen only just finished giving the bugger an honorary knightship!)
Now, if you should happen to know of someone
over there who has actually been video-recording all these
recent Kate appearances...

>Subject: Re: the KaTastrophic state of music in our time
>>For the sake of argument (and out of a profound sense of
>>desperation), IED challenges anyone reading this to name ONE record
>>made since the early Seventies that attains a level of thematic and
>>musical complexity, multi-level meaning and sophisticated cohesion of
>>music and production comparable to that achieved by Kate Bush since 1982.
>>IT CANNOT BE DONE! SUCH MUSIC DOES NOT EXIST!

>David Sylvian's "Gone to Earth."
>
>        Rob Rosen
>        Computer Systems Support Group
>        University of California

With due and sincere respect to Sylvian, Rob, the example you
choose is an excellent confirmation of IED's claim, not a refutation
of it. Gone to Earth is unquestionably a fine collection of tracks,
and contains a lot of beautiful and powerful music. But it in no way
approaches the level of complexity and sophistication achieved by
Kate in either The Dreaming or Hounds of Love. In fact, it is a
good example of an album which, although respectable in every
respect, does little more than amplify an aesthetic statement already
presented earlier (in Brilliant Trees, in this case). Its
instrumentation, arrangements, song structures, singing style,
even the keys in which the songs are performed, are for the most part
interchangeable with those found in Sylvian's earlier solo recordings. The
whole instrumental LP of Gone to Earth, in fact, could very easily have
been released as a continuation of the soundtracks from "Preparations
for a Journey" (or "Steel Cathedrals"), so much of a kind are they.
In these respects Sylvian is verging perilously on mere routine.
Furthermore, Sylvian's records contain very little original Sylvian
MUSIC, since, aside from contributing very occasional instrumental work,
he acts primarily as a vocalist and arranger of his relatively simple
chord-and-melody concoctions, leaving most of the performance --
which is largely improvised, anyway -- to guest musicians. And
despite real effort on his part to vary the general sound of his
solo music, the general impression one is left with is of a
jazz-fusion-cum-avant-garde-progressive-rock band, easily marked, labeled
and limited by recurrent use of such easily identifiable and categorized
"sounds" as Frippertronics and the pervasive presence of Hassellesque
trumpet and fluegelhorn.
(By contrast, while a fluegelhorn might pop up in a
future Kate Bush track, it is inconceivable that she would use such
a specific and readily categorized instrument repeatedly, not only
over the course of a whole album, but over several albums! The only
instrument Kate uses nearly always is the piano, which is strongly
associated in her mind with the act of composition itself, and which,
besides, is the classical ideom's most non-inflective, generic and
polyphonic instrument.)

But beyond this, there is something much more fundamental
about a work like Gone to Earth which places it on a decidedly
lower level than The Dreaming or Hounds of Love, and that
has to do with the aesthetic AMBITION of the musician in charge.
Sylvian's album is a masterful expression of a very small-scale
aesthetic ambition: to record a collection of rock-derived or -associated
"avant-garde" songs and "ambient" instrumentals, using musicians
associated with specific progressive sounds to fill in the gaps,
rather like a wash of watercolor might be applied over a delicate
pencil drawing after the composition is finished, in order to
"fill it out" and give it body.

Kate's approach, at least since 1982, has been altogether more
dynamic, ambitious and complex. First of all, she has taken the
responsibility of the music entirely upon herself, directing and
executing virtually every aspect of the creative process. Second,
she sees the capacities of music as much larger, broader and deeper than
song-writing, arranging, performing and recording. Instead, each
moment of every recording becomes a crucial component of the whole, and
each recording is built up of hundreds of such crucial details, which
combine to offer the listener a multitude of musical and textual messages
to investigate. Furthermore, none of the effect of her art is left to
chance or accident -- improvisation, therefore, plays a minimal role
in her finished recordings. The eternal possibilities of music are
not confined or reduced to the mere NOTES played by her musicians, nor
are they determined merely by the WORDS which follow or lead the melody.
Since Kate does not count on such formulae as these to carry the magic
of her art, only specific passages of particular tracks,
such as the ending sections of "Wedding List" and "The Big Sky",
or the "Alternative Hounds of Love" mix -- allow for truly spontaneous
expression, and then only because spontaneity is directly related to
the theme of the song in question. Because Kate succeeds so well at this
at once grander and stricter vision of the possibilities of music,
her art shines far more brightly than does Sylvian's modest production.

For all his bows to the "progressive" exponents of current
music, Sylvian's approach remains thoroughly mired in
conventional attitudes towards the forms, functions and artistic
capabilities of recorded music. Conversely, for all her concessions to
the traditions of twentieth century popular music, Kate's recent
recordings, more than any others since the late Beatles LPs,
successfully dare to take the rock ideom into areas never before
imagined for it. This is what, IED believes, Doug is talking about
when he describes The Dreaming as a recording of music BY the
studio, in which "the studio IS the instrument". It's true.
But such an observation signifies a larger ideological orientation
on the part of the artist: one in which conventional attitudes -- or,
worse still, currently fashionable ones -- have no hold over
a sincere and personal aesthetic vision.