nbc@INF.RL.AC.UK (11/28/89)
From International Musician and Recording World - December 1989
Volume 15 No. 13
Tony Horkins Copyright Northern and Shell plc
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What Katie did next
Tony Horkins delves deep into the private life of Kate Bush to
discuss her new cut, The Sensual World.
Sitting comfortably in the high tech surround of Abbey road
studios, Kate Bush, that most English of English roses, is trying
to define exactly what English music really is.
"I think lyrically there's a lot that defines English music, and
I suppose a certain approach to sounds," she considers emotively.
"There are very definite American approaches to sound - guitar
sounds, approaches to songs, the Fender Rhodes; as soon as you
hear that it's America. But to actually define African, or
American."
Which may go some way to explain why her new album, The Sensual
World, is so mixed in its influences and so far removed from
anything we may immediately consider to be English. A swirling
mass of eastern European rhythms, Bulgarian singing, Irish
fiddling and that unique vocal and lyrical quality that belongs
to Kate Bush. But then Kate Bush isn't the type to be influenced
by day time radio; not for her hours spent tuned in to the inane
ramblings of Gary Davies and co.
"I don't spend much time listening to radio, and when I do it
tends to be Radio 4 . I guess we spend so much time listening to
music in a very sensitised way, in recreational terms, that you
need relief for the ears. I tend to listen to more when I just
finish an album, rather than during, which is stupid.
"A good example of this is that when I finished the last album, I
heard this Bulgarian music. (Les Voix de Bulgare, the
extraordinary close-harmony choir whose two Les Mystere albums
were surprise hits for 4AD). I thought 'Shit, I wish I'd have
heard this while I was working on the album.' I think it was good
in one way because I had a lot of time to think about the
possibility of doing something with them. The thing that would
worry me a bit is that if you like something you are influenced
by it, and I'd probably try and connect to other people's music
of that time. it takes me such a long time to make an album that
it would be drastically out of date."
This is, perhaps, something of an underestimate. It's been nearly
four years since we had the opportunity to discuss her then
current album, Hounds of Love. Surely she hasn't been working on
The Sensual World since then?
"I was saying to Del (Palmer - boyfriend/ bass player/
programmer/ mixer) that I think my tapes wouldn't know what to do
if they weren't left sitting around for years. I think they'd
have a nervous breakdown - they go through a fermenting process.
Like wine, or something. I don't do anything to the songs, I just
sit and let the tapes mature.
"I think in real terms it's been about two and a half years, and
it's been done in bits. We started and then took quite a few
months off to do a few things at home, and also it was the only
way I could cope with this album - to keep taking breaks. It's
quite an intense process - especially Del and I working together
so isolated. We had to take a lot of breaks to think about stuff.
A lot of time with this album was spent thinking. Not actually
doing, but just thinking."
Home is where the Art is
As with Hounds of Love, The Sensual World was recorded mainly in
Kate's home studio, with orchestral parts added at Abbey Road,
Irish extras in Windmill Lane, Dublin, and the Bulgarian women
recorded at Angel studios. The result is as diverse as it is
interesting, and on first listening much more complex than her
other albums.
"Some of them are really bizarre - I worry about my sanity
sometimes, really. All of the tracks have taken such completely
different processes."
Including the opening track, also the first single, which didn't
quite end up as Kate imagined it initially would.
"Now that was a really complicated process for a track to come
together. It started off with a song - no words. I'd had this
idea for about two years to use the words from Molly Blooms'
speech at the end of Ulysses, which I think is the most superb
piece of writing ever, to a piece of music. So Del had done a
Fairlight pattern, and I'd done a DX riff over the top of it, and
I was listening to it at home, and the words fitted absolutely
perfectly. I thought God this is just ridiculous, just how well
it's come together.
"We then approached the relevant people for permission to use the
lyrics, and they just would not let me use them. No way. I tried
everything. So I thought if we're really getting nowhere with
this, let's take a different approach to the song. I heard this
piece of music which a fan sent in about two years earlier, and
we put the tune in the choruses in place of what we had. So that
went in, and all the lyrics I had to change.
"To try and keep the sense of the original words, but something
that would be original, I came up with this idea of Molly Bloom
stepping out of this speech into the real world. And in the book
she's such a sensual woman - womanly, very physical, it just
seemed that she would be completely taken by the fact that this
2D character could actually go around touching. So that's what it
turned into. The fact that they didn't let me use the lyrics
turned the song into something very different. It was such a
complicated process, and really quite painful to actually let it
go."
The Fairlight still plays a large part in the music making
process for Kate, even though many others may have abandoned it
for more contemporary, and cheaper sampling sources.
"I think it's a very good instrument still. It's just one of
those things. Everyone I know is the same; we pull out the
Fairlight and they go, 'Oh no sounds rubbish. Eventually you do
find sounds that really work. I think the whole process of
sampling instruments is becoming very boring, wading through
sounds..
And she further proves her reluctance to purchase This Year's
Model by raving about a recently acquired DX7.
"I was very impressed. Initially I thought I'd just use it for
ideas, but we've used it quite a lot on the album. We blend it in
with other stuff, and hopefully it doesn't sound too like a DX7.
I use mainly pre-sets. I think it's amazing how different you can
make pre-sets sound if you treat them differently and bung
another sound with them. It takes on quite a different
character."
One of the first tracks she wrote for the album was Love and
Anger. Again, the track didn't exactly write itself.
"I couldn't get the lyrics. They were one of the last things to
do. I just couldn't find out what the song was about, though the
tune was there. The first verse was always there, and that was
the problem, because I'd already set some form of direction, but
I couldn't follow through. I didn't know what I wanted to say at
all. I guess I was just tying to make a song that was comforting,
up tempo, and about how when things get really bad, it's alright
really - 'Don't worry old bean. Someone will come and help you
out.'
"The song started with a piano, and Del put a straight rhythm
down. Then we got the drummer, and it stayed like that for at
least a year and a half. Then I thought maybe it could be okay,
so we got Dave Gilmour in. This is actually one of the more
difficult songs - everyone I asked to try and play something on
this track had problems. It was one of those awful tracks where
either everything would sound ordinary, really MOR, or people
just couldn't come to terms with it. They'd ask me what it was
about, but I didn't know because I hadn't written the lyrics.
Dave was great - I think he gave me a bit of a foothold there,
really. At least there was a guitar that made some sense. And
John (Giblin) putting the bass on - that was very important. He
was one of the few people brave enough to say that he actually
liked the song."
Do you give your musicians quite a free hand?
"When I don't know what's happening, yes. But that song was just
so bizarre. In some ways it's a very ordinary structure compared
to the other songs. I think putting the Valiha on was very
important. It's a beautiful sounding instrument - it looks a bit
like a Zither, and it's from Madagascar. It sounds like sunshine
- it has this really happy, bubbly sound. I think that really
helped to give the song a different perspective. It's a very
straightforward treatment - drums, bass, guitar, piano - and I
think for me it's one of the more straightforward songs on the
album. A chirpy little number."
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To be continued ...
Neil
nbc@inf.rl.ac.uk