Update: Roundtable review now confirmed by Kate’s official site. Read more here. Also, Kate’s new single is Record of the Week on BBC Radio 2 next week, and on the BBC Radio 6Music B playlist for the week commencing Saturday 15th October.
The BBC singles review programme Roundtable hosted by Steve Lamacq is on Radio 6 Thursday 13th October at 18.00. It is highly likely that Kate’s new single Wild Man will be reviewed by the panel which will include Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, DJ Huw Stephens & Slow Club’s Rebecca Taylor.
You too can comment by entering the Listener’s Roundtable. Log on via the BBC 6Music website and enter your opinion with a collection of other 6Music listeners, or via twitter with the hashtag #roundtable. This sort of feedback can really help – you can also email your thoughts on the track to BBC Radio 2 and to your local commercial radio station.
Harry Horton
On you tube: “Kate Bush “Wildman” – new single available now!” RobbJMcToo was the donater. October 11 2011. Complaints the track was sped up somewhat. 6:32 was the time duration of this video—7:16 was the album version running length of time, but still good quality of sound and tone and timbre exists in the piece. The video is colorful in its progression of a story of researchers camping out in the cold winter night looking for the Yeti. Good striking visuals of snow covered mountains as eventually the researchers try to catch and trap the Yeti near video’s end.
Nanette
I just listened to an episode of Roundtable. (I’ve never heard it before.) What a ghastly show. No intelligent discussion whatever.
Peter
Kate has generally been treated quite well on Roundtable over the years. A few exceptions. The panel didn’t like *The Dreaming* single. Memorable lavish praise for *Breathing* (Anne Nightingale) and *Sat in Your Lap* (Rick Wakeman)
Rod McKie
How many artists at this stage of their career can have a seasoned DJ admit that a song sounds so alien to him that he doesn’t “know what to make of it”? That was priceless. You do have to work at a Kate Bush song, and whilst the Big Foot lore, the exotic dialects and place names, and the strategically placed flora, have been identified and slotted into place by Kate Bush’s keen fans, they really threw the guy for a loop. As John Lyndon pointed out, Kate allows you to piece it together yourself, and I’m not sure the little panel had the time to do that, and I found the entire show very disappointing.
Personally, I wanted to hear if anyone else thought that Andy Fairweather-Low was brilliant on the chorus, and if anyone else had to hear the later chorus to decipher the first, and if there were one or two, just one or two, darker notes added to the mix to drive home the word “kill”, and if anyone else heard the Wild Man padding off, free, at the end of the song, in the longer edit. I give the panel 4/10.
Peter
Reminded me of the Roundtable panel’s reaction to *The Dreaming* single back in 1982. Non-plussed. So lets talk about overindulgence and producers.
BSB
Found Ed O’Brien’s comments bizarre… the suggestion that she should work with someone like Jamie XX in particular. He didn’t get Kate in 1985, and clearly doesn’t get her now. I hope Nigel Godrich has 50 words with him
fleasus
The listeners gave it 8/10 – so happily, people power prevailed!
giulio
I listened to the BBC Radio 6 Music review programme.
I won’t go into details, but I just wish to say that
Kate Bush needs no further production. A different
production could smother her unique and original style.
+ ‘Wild Man’ is not a ”safe” song: you don’t run for
cover singing about a yeti in danger, creating such
a personal music and performing with such original
vocals.
I hope Kate Bush (and the musicians and artists
who work with her) will not mind too much.
Thankyou Kate for this wonderful song 😉
No superficial review could ruin you stellar Music.
Peter
Yes. I think this is very much the point Del has been trying to make. The sound you hear is the sound Kate wanted. “using a producer” indicates that Kate should compromise on the sound she wants, ergo not Kate’s creation.
John H
I think the big surprise for a lot of people is how well the public do get Kate.
She is cherished for doing exactly what she wants and completely realising her own vision.
Vaguely remember a Radio 1 public vote where This Woman’s Work was a clear winner yet airplay was very low. And now it is hailed as an all time classic.
Ahead of most and we can be sure her music will convey its magic to many generations to come.
Harry Horton
The roundtable review was not totally overly favourable, I only listened to the first minute or so, so I did not know whether they continued or addressed Kate Bush later on in the program, it only seemed like a flippant minute or so review. In anycase one of the major obstacles Kate Bush may encounter is simply age. Looking back at the videos from the 1980s up into the early 1990s, she possessed youthful vitality and youthful attractiveness along with the youthful creative energies that went into her music. These earlier career years as such ,ironically, is going to be her major obstacle because on a subconscious basis people are going to compare her today to the earlier career youth oriented years, where she will automatically fall short to, because of her older age of today and those earlier youthful years are gone. But anycase that situation does not outrule her present day substantial creative abilities and music.