Tag: Kate Bush

Replied to Gen Z Has Finally Discovered Kate Bush, and I’m Thrilled by Liam Hess (Vogue)

After Bush’s 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill” featured in an episode of “Stranger Things,” it brought the British musician a new generation of fans—and not a moment too soon.

Growing up, I knew Kate Bush for Wuthering Heights, Babooshka and her duet with Peter Gabriel from nights watching Rage. However, I had never gone past that. Sadly, I did not have a cool older sister. I actually remember being introduced to Running Up That Hill via a cover by Placebo, but I still did not take my curiosity further. It was only more recently through steaming services that I have really dived in. I was in part inspired by Dylan Lewis.

In regards to Running Up That Hill, it was interesting to watch Bush do a rendition with David Gilmore where he plays the main hook on guitar.

And hear Bush talk about it on the Woman’s Hour. Watch Big Boi thoughts on the track:

Watch Trash Theory’s discussion of the steps and choices that led to Running Up That Hill:

Listen to Reverb Machine’s breakdown of Bush’s synth sound.

And listen to Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding try to make sense of Kate Bush’s renaissance.

Time will tell whether this is just a pure outlier or a part of a wider nostalgia movement:

Bookmarked How Kate Bush’s ‘The Dreaming’ Made My Monsters My Own (NPR)

The Dreaming is a young artist’s attempt to figure out how making music, and the striving for deeper understanding that work demands, makes her a monster not to others, but to herself – strange in her own body and mind. “If identity is shape carrying story,” the scholar Caroline Walter Bynum wrote in her 1998 study Metamorphosis and Identity, “we need not decide between mind and body, inner and outer, biology and society, agency and essence. Rather we are living beings, shapes with stories, always changing but also always carrying traces of what we were before.” What has been identified as monstrous, Bynum’s words suggest, is simply human, though it has been called fearsome and degraded within hierarchies devised to limit and oppress. The Dreaming is not a perfect work, any more than I lived an ideal or even always defensible life when just starting out in the world. But it fights against this banishment of difference and desire, and I still can feel the ferocity of its roar.

Listened Before The Dawn (Live), by Kate Bush from Kate Bush

As with the residency, the album is split into three parts, comprising seven miscellaneous songs, the complete Ninth Wave suite from Hounds of Love, and A Sky of Honey from Bush’s 2005 release Aerial. Presented in the same order as the original show, the album’s performances are culled from various shows throughout the residency.

Before the Dawn contains the song “Tawny Moon”, performed by Bush’s son, Albert McIntosh. It also contains the track “Never Be Mine”, which did not feature on the Before the Dawn residency, but was recorded when the show was performed without an audience for the purposes of filming the production.

When Dylan Lewis spoke about going to see Kate Bush in London, I did not realise that she had not actually performed since 1979. I discovered this fact listening to the Bandsplain podcast. One of the things I like about the album is how the live performance ties all her songs together.

It is interesting to properly find Kate Bush’s music. Although I always knew Kate Bush, it never really went beyond the story of being discovered by David Gilmore and watching the various film clips on Rage. I did not have any friends who really listened to her music.

Listened Kate Bush from Bandsplain

Yasi Salek and Ann Powers meander through Kate Bush’s musical career across three hours. Some of the interesting points that I had not considered was that Bush’s influences are not clear. In part, this is why it can be so difficult the categorise her music. I also liked the suggestion that artists belong to an ‘imagined communities’.

Being a Spotify podcast, it was nice hearing the songs in context.

Some other pieces on Kate Bush include BBC’s The Kate Bush Story and Double J’s The J Files.

Listened Kate Bush, Radio 4 on Music – BBC Radio 4 from BBC

In November 2005, Kate Bush broke a 12 year silence with the release of her double album ‘Aerial’, In this programme she gives a very rare interview to John Wilson in a special edition of Front Row, where she talks about why the album took so long to appear and tells some of the stories behind the songs.

Kate Bush reflects on music, the influence of technology and way in which she crafts her work.

I think that it would be a shame that, amoungst all this technology, for us to lose our sense of humanity. Music is suffering greatly from the overuse of computers and taking away the human element, which art is about human expression. I think machines and technologies should be used by people, you should not be a slave to them.

This reminded me of the discussion of Nigel Godrich’s use of tape in the production of music as a part of episode two of the Soundbreaking documentary.

via Austin Kleon