Kate Bush: Surrounded By Music
By the age of sixteen English born Kate Bush—christened Catherine Bush on but it shot to number one and went down in history as the first self-written number one song by a female artist, ever.
Bush’s music populates the strange place in the brain where fairy-tale magic combines with vivid story-telling to create a dynamic, passionate, unmistakeable sound. Calling it a sound seems almost condescending, though, because the songs themselves, as is the case with whatever she touched, are so much more than the sum of only lyrics and music: each song is a story layered deeply on complex layers of intersecting sounds—by the end of a Kate Bush song you haven’t only heard something great, you’ve seen something visual too. Each one a journey, a whole Kate Bush album seems like an almost total separation from listening to other types of similarly defined music.
Much has been said of Kate Bush’s voice and the evocative nature of her songs; a common attribute you’d think, but she uses it differently to the majority, shrieking and contorting sounds into fantastical and bizarre shapes which anyone else would turn into nonsense drivel.
Another stand-out quality has to be her expert handling of music production; a record producer herself, Bush understands every facet of the music-making process as well as anyone, and as such is able to hack and cut at her songs, warping them at will, but keeping the original integrity of her voice in check.
By the way, I have just checked out the Enigin Geek website that Chris recommended to me and I have to say that it really did answer all of those questions I kept asking him about energy savings. Really useful site!
