Category: Reviews Page 9 of 10

MORE REVIEWS: The terrific reviews for Kate’s eighth studio album are stacking up…this album is already an enormous critical success for Kate, each successive review getting us more and more excited for the release day. Here’s a brief look at most of them, reminding you that the full text of reviews can be found in this section of the Gaffaweb archive. The upcoming Mojo magazine we are all waiting to get our hands on gives Kate not just a 5 star review but also their “Instant Classic” rating! Jim Irvin writes: “Kate Bush is the greatest living British artist in song and this is her masterpiece.” Mark Blake in Q Magazine has given Aerial a 4-star review: “…committed Katewatchers can while away the winter nights joining the dots between Aerial and songs on her previous albums. It’s all here (again): cities under water, the harnessing of sexual energy, the elemental power of Mother Nature; lots of watery, windswept shagging, then. King Of The Mountain rallies the troops in a leisurely march heavenwards, name-checking Elvis in a voice less mannered than of old. The song smoulders and the same trick works again on How To Invisible, all bare musical bones rattling behind lyrics touching on some never quite specified fear waiting “at the end of the labyrinth”…when real life creeps back in elsewhere, it gets a welcome twist. Mrs Bartolozzi takes a washing machine and its mundane contents, subverting domestic drudgery into a metaphor for something more exciting. By the song’s “swishing, swoshing” spin cycle, Bush has tumbled Allce In Wonderland-style into the Hotpoint and ended up “wading into the surf” where “fish swim between my legs”. Earlier, on Pi, she counts down numbers against spidery keyboard fills and an elastic bassline, sounding like a female-fronted Talk Talk or a telephone sex line for kinky mathematicians…on the first disc’s closing track, A Coral Room, though, Bush proves she can excel with just her voice and Gary Brooker’s piano as tools. Here, she spins a tale of an Atlantis-style sunken city into the memory of, presumably, her late mother. It’s a spellbinding performance and the equal of anything on 1985’s revered Hounds Of Love…for everything-but-the-kitchen-sink thrills, though, there is still the nine-part A Sky Of Honey. Bush embarks on another quest, pulling the listener under water and up mountains, this time with twittering birdsong, children’s voices, maniacal laughter, a jazz rumba and even a spoken-word turn from Rolf Harris, building in the manner of vintage Kate Bush – Cloudbusting, The Big Sky, Breathing – into an overblown spine-tingling denouement; this time with Danny McIntosh playing a guitar solo that will put most in mind of Bush’s mentor, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. “Could be we are here, could be in my dream,” she declares as the piece winds to its explosive conclusion. And it’s a statement that encapsulates the never-never land invented on Aerial. You could lose yourself for days here. The world is a better place with Kate Bush in it. She really should do this sort of thing more often.” The magazine also made King Of The Mountain their video of the week here…

Aerial is Music Week‘s Album Of The Week: “12 years out of the spotlight has done little to dim either Bush’s allure or her musical potency. Indeed, she sounds as vital as ever on this 16-track, two-CD set – a dense, hypnotic album that couldn’t have come from anyone else. As interesting musically as it is lyrically, Aerial takes in samba, classical, folk and even a touch of drum & bass, but it is the narrative, arrangements and production that elevate it into something special.” The December 2005 issue of Record Collector has Kate on the cover and a 9 page full-colour feature on “Collectable Kate” and a four star review of Aerial: “…choc-a-bloc with familiar motifs and the elaborate, sculpted music that made millions worship her in the first place…what she has delivered is probably her most wholly satisfying work since 1985’s Hounds of Love.”

The Irish Times has also given Aerial a 4-star rating and made it their CD Of The Week. Tony Clayton-Lea writes: “…this has more sonic smarts and intelligence than most of the sharpest current musical operators you can think of…an album with not a hint of the conventional about it, Aerial is a record made by a person whose values have shifted with age and experience, and which are suitably reflected…it doesn’t work all the time, but when it does it’s a triumph of warmth, depth and clarity.” The Channel 4 site provide a great track by track review of the album here. They describe ‘Bertie’ as “a beautiful, warm and carefully structured song”, and are generally extremely enthusiastic about the album, despite saying a lot of it is “nuts”!

The BBC have reviewed the album on their website: “…her voice escapes, rather than emerges, in that familiar part-piercing, part-haunting tone that uniquely can carry across consonants and vowels with seductive ease…How to be Invisible is side one’s stand out track, with a real sense of menace in its driving beat. “I found a book on how to be invisible. On the edge of the labyrinth,” she sings…Aerial stands alongside The Hounds of Love and The Kick Inside as her finest work.” The Daily Express ran their review under the heading “It’s bizarre – but Kate’s quirks work”. “…this is an album that gradually wins you over…it’s hard not to be impressed by its vision and artistic integrity. The second CD is the real treasure, with its extended song cycle about art, love and nature…the lyrics, music, use of sounds and the way Bush manages to bend and shape her voice in this section all add up to create a truly moving piece of work that is relatively free of her usual annoying eccentricities. Who’d have thought it? A Kate Bush album that’s actually a pleasure to listen to.”

Kitty Empire in The Observer (October 30th) writes: “It is extraordinary – jaw-dropping, no less. It’s also tearjerking, laugh-out-loud funny, infuriating, elegiac, baffling, superb and not always all that great. Her beats are dated, for instance; unchanged since the Eighties. For a technological innovator with the freedom of her own studio, Bush’s whole soundbed really could do with an airing. And there’s a sudden penchant for heady Latin rhythms here that sits a little awkwardly, even for this enthusiastic borrower of world music. More problematically, however, Bush’s whimsies have never been quite so amplified. If you thought the young Bush prancing around to Bronte was a little de trop, this album is not for you. There’s a song about a little brown jug and one about a washing machine (both, though, are really about other things). There are several passages where Bush sings along to birdsong, and one where she laughs like a lunatic. Rolf Harris – Rolf Harris! – has a big cameo. But Aerial succeeds because it’s all there for a reason. And because the good stuff is just so sublime. ‘King of the Mountain’, Bush’s Elvis-inspired single, is both a fine opener and a total red herring. Bush’s juices really get going on ‘Pi’, a sentimental ode to a mathematician, audacious in both subject matter and treatment. The chorus is the number sung to many, many decimal places. It’s closely followed by a gushing ode to Bush’s son, Bertie, that’s stark and medieval-sounding. The rest of disc one (aka A Sea of Honey) sets a very high bar for disc two, with the Joan of Arc-themed ‘Joanni’ and the downright poppy ‘How to Be Invisible’ raising the hair on your arms into a Mexican wave. Disc two, subtitled ‘A Sky of Honey’, is a suite of nine tracks which, among other things, charts the passage of light from afternoon (‘Prologue’) to evening (‘An Architect’s Dream’, ‘The Painter’s Link’) and through the night until dawn. Things get a little hairier here. The theme of birdsong is soon wearing, and the extended metaphor of painting is laboured. But it’s all worth it for the double-whammy to the solar plexus dealt by ‘Nocturn’ and the final, title track. In ‘Nocturn’, the air is pushed out of your lungs as you cower helplessly before the crescendo. ‘Aerial’, meanwhile, is a totally unexpected ecstatic disco meltdown that could teach both Madonna and Alison Goldfrapp lessons in dancefloor abandon. It leaves you elated, if not a little exhausted. After the damp squib that was The Red Shoes, it’s clear Bush is still a force to be reckoned with. The problem, though, with female genius – for many men at least – is that very frequently it is not like male genius. And with its songs about children, washing machines going ‘slooshy sloshy’, Joan of Arc, Bush’s mother, not to mention the almost pagan sensuality that runs through here like a pulse, Aerial is, arguably, the most female album in the world, ever. There’s an incantation to female self-effacement that rewrites Shakespeare’s weird sisters: ‘Eye of Braille/ Hem of anorak/ Stem of wallflower/ Hair of doormat’. Even the one about maths is touchy-feely. But the artistry here is so dizzying, the ambition and scope so vast, that even the deafest, most inveterate misogynist could not fail to acknowledge it. Genius. End of.”

Will Hermes, writing in The New York Times in their Sunday Oct 30th edition says; “Like 1985’s Hounds of Love, perhaps her best record, her latest is split between a group of individual songs and a suite. But where “Hounds” is dense and agitated, busy with sounds created on the Fairlight synthesizer…Aerial is expansive and relatively relaxed. Recorded with longtime associates, including Del Palmer on bass, many of the album’s songs are arranged simply for voice and piano, like the exquisite A Coral Room…sometimes Aerial is so relaxed, it drifts into smooth jazz territory. But Bush’s voluptuous, slightly alien voice usually corrects by contrast: purring, trilling, cackling, jumping octaves and echoing itself, witchlike, in multitracked choruses.” The PLayback programme on BBC Radio 6 gave an overall positive review, with Aerial being described as an “intense emotional rollercoaster”, a “return to form” and “definitely thumbs up”. How To Be Invisible was said to be the possible second single (US promo posters for Aerial are also highlighting this track). Rob Chapman in The Times writes: “Aerial is a double album and, like most doubles, it has its ponderous moments. Thankfully, it also contains half-a-dozen tracks that are as good as anything she has done, and its closing triptych, Somewhere In Between, Nocturn and Ariel, represents the most joyous and euphoric finale to an album that you will hear all year. If the recent single and opening track, King of the Mountain, hinted at a newfound maturity in her voice, it also confirmed the increased sophistication of her lyrics. Who else inhabits the kind of skewed terrain where Elvis morphs into Citizen Kane? And who else would have written a homage to pi? “3.1415,” she coos over a rich bed of acoustic guitars. “926535,” she continues fetchingly…the second half of Aerial abounds with twittering birdscapes, melting suns and artists who morph into their paintings, the whole shebang culminating with that extraordinary trio of songs in which Kate seems to merge with the birdsong. There really is no one quite like her. There are moments on Aerial when you wish she would cut loose with the arrangements — which at times remain far too linear and rooted in a soundscape that she hasn’t tampered with significantly since the 1980s — and collaborate with a Massive Attack or a Future Sound of London. But all is forgiven the moment you hear a song such as Mrs Bartolozzi, in which a life of domestic drudgery is suddenly transformed into something magically sensual just by watching a blouse and a pair of trousers intertwining in a washing machine. Shine on you crazy Hotpoint-wielding diamond.”

Finally, The Timespublished a piece compiling qutes from many famous fans of Kate’s, and commented on Aerial thus: “With the arrival of Bush’s new album, Aerial, a sprawling double-CD of pagan poetry, artists from every genre and generation are lining up to pay homage to the faerie queen of British pop. Her perfectionist mastery of arranging and producing, her ability to juggle music with motherhood, her lyrical hinterland of heightened emotion and ripe sensuality — all have been interpreted as defiantly feminine, even feminist statements.” And finally BBC 2’s Newsnight Review panel were split over the merits of the album. The presenter and one guest felt it was a good album that would grow with every listen while others couldn’t get around Kate’s lyrics from Mrs Bartolozzi and complained that Kate wasn’t being “the right kind of eccentric”.

p.s. click on the promo photos for the BIG versions 🙂

So far so very, very good – Aerial is raking up a crop of very enthusiastic reviews. The Independent in the UK have reviewed Aerial in the 21st October edition, under the headline “Finally, something for the grown-ups“…”Early next month, Kate Bush releases Aerial, her first new album since The Red Shoes back in November 1993. Even by the relaxed schedules adopted by pop’s more established artists, this is an extraordinary career hiatus – not quite the 20 years separating Steely Dan’s Gaucho and Two Against Nature, perhaps, but well on the way there. Entire pop scenes and musical movements have budded, bloomed and withered in the interim…the more pertinent concern is whether her music remains relevant in a music landscape that has seen Britpop come and go, grunge atrophy into skate-metal, hip-hop conquer the known world, and talent-contest TV reduce chart pop to a production-line of vacuity. Changes flash by ever more rapidly in the modern, computer-assisted music world, and in decoupling from its dizzy progress for a dozen years, Kate Bush runs a serious risk of getting flattened like a hedgehog crossing a motorway upon her return. Extraordinarily, she manages to traverse both carriageways with only superficial damage to a few spines: indeed, such is the idiosyncratic nature of her work that she could probably disappear for a half-century and still sustain her own unique position in the pop firmament. But then, who else would write about an obsessive-compulsive housewife or attempt a vocal duet with trilling birds, or, in the most courageous of the album’s many unusual strategies, sing huge strings of numbers, a gambit that brings new meaning to the old critic’s chestnut about being happy to listen to someone singing the telephone directory? The only track so far available from the album, the single “King Of The Mountain”, employs references to Elvis and Citizen Kane to illustrate her musings upon fame and wealth and isolation. “Why,” she wonders, “does a multi-millionaire fill up his home with priceless junk?” The rest of the album – particularly the extended song-cycle that occupies the entire second disc – seems like her own suggestion as to how to use that lofty position more profitably, in a spiritual and aesthetic manner. A reggae lilt underscored with misty synthesiser textures, ” King Of The Mountain” has the gently insistent quality that proved so effective on several of her previous singles. The picture adorning the single’s sleeve is by Bush’s young son, ” lovely, lovely Bertie”, whose presence toddles joyously through much of the new album, clearly illuminating her world. Many years ago, back near the start of her career, she regarded the domestic demands of motherhood as a dubious prospect, claiming her work was her love, and how could she do that and bring up a child at the same time? The answer, presumably, was not to work for a dozen years. Ironically, childhood – and particularly the struggle not to relinquish it – has always been one of the driving concerns of Bush’s work…it’s certainly still a factor on Aerial , both in the track “Bertie” itself and in the memories and reminiscences that cobweb some other songs. But compared to the darker corners of the mind sometimes mined in earlier songs, the new album seems a much sunnier affair: an enduring image I took away from it – not necessarily a lyric, though it might have been – was of windows flung wide open, their curtains billowing out in the breeze, a room’s long-dormant dust stirred into life again…at around an hour and a half, Aerial is unquestionably a substantial piece of work, and its manifold peculiarities and quirks offer much more interesting fare than that available from today’s AOR mainstream. It’s also a more mature undertaking than any of her previous albums, an extended meditation on art and light, fame and family, creativity and the natural world. Indeed it seems, come to think of it, like an expansion of the theme of Laura Veirs’ gorgeous “Rapture”. And since that was the finest song of last year, I’d have to say that leaves Kate Bush still operating at the cutting-edge of intelligent adult pop, every bit as relevant now as at any point in her career. Just a little bit weirder, thank heavens.” Read the full review at the Independent online edition here.

The Irish music magazine Hot Press has long revered Kate, and the new issue published today has the front cover headline “Kate Bush: A Work Of Genius”. Tara Brady has given the album the top rating, 10 out of 10. She writes: “We may never know Kate Bush, but we may know this – she’s been very happy thank you very much. Both parts ofAerial – A Sea Of Honey (the collection she calls ‘Kate songs’) and A Sky Of Honey , a concept album inspired by birdsong and in part, Rolf Harris, are infused with joy. A Sea almost functions as a brand new retrospective, a classically watery wall of sound with gorgeous pop hooks. There are millions of impossibly beautiful things about it – the hippity hoppity reggae beats across the oceanic pop of ‘King Of The Mountain’, the pretty jangling guitars of ‘Pi’, the bongo sensuality of ‘Joanni’, the Latin noodles on ‘How To Be Invisible’, the familiar Hey Nonny Nonny Ophelia groove of ‘Bertie’, an achingly sweet ode to her son (“Here comes the sunshine/Here comes that son of mine/The Most truly fantastic smile I’ve ever seen”) which suddenly sweeps into a baroque masquerade ball. There’s an arch wit to match the playful rhythms. ‘Mrs Bartolozzi’ is a brilliant inverted mock epic with thundering theatricality about a washing machine spiralling out to the sea before returning to a chorus that runs ‘Swishy Swashy’. A Sky Of Honey , though rather daunting and potentially new age on paper, is equally delightful. Decadently and pleasingly fashioned from birdsong, giggling and electronics, there’s a nice circularity in Sky ‘s bassy echoes of Dark Side Of The Moon , bringing Kate right back to Dave Gilmour where it all began. It’s apt. It’s a neat reminder that this most girlish talent – a woman who sings of posies and kisses and crushes on Heathcliff – has always, beneath the whimsy, been skilled enough in musical architecture to fit snugly into record collections built around Kraftwerk and Can. If there’s more where Aerial comes from then we’ll wait and we’ll like it.” Portrait by Jon Berkley (www.holytrousers.com) for Hot Press.

Also in Ireland, in the online Sigla magazine, Sinéad Gleeson raves about the new album: “The single…is seen as a positive precursor of what’s to come on the album. Bush presents the story of Elvis the lost genius, through swooping, sweeping strings. A wood percussion sample (marimba? xylophone?) runs through adding a playful note and with one song down, it’s so far so good. Pi reminds us that we’re in Kate Bush land, where song titles about circles and numerical rambling are delivered via Bodhrán beats and keyboards stabs. By song three, you begin to notice something. The velvet pitch of her voice not only sounds as good as expected after a 12-year hiatus, it has a deeper, bewitching resonance. Production on some of the earlier albums tended to accentuate its shrill quality, not doing justice to Bush’s capability as a vocalist. Here, every nuance is teased out, arching along the spectrum of imagination. ‘Bertie’ oozes pride and spirituality. Mandolins swirl around the line “you bring me so much joy/and then you bring me more joy”, repeated like a maternal mantra. ‘Mrs. Bartolozzi’ is a real surprise; on the surface a simple domestic tale of washing machines – “splashy sploshy… get those cuffs and collar clean” – hints at something darker. Could anyone else sing about doing laundry and make it sound so beautiful? This is in part, due to a camerilla of contributors who she has worked with consistently over the years. The musical arrangements by long-time (and sadly late) Michael Kamen echo the multi-layered orchestration of The Sensual World. Most obvious on the single and ‘Joanni’ (about Joan of Arc), strings and drums build to the kind of epic mysterious highs we’ve come to expect. ‘A Coral Room’, a reflective piano piece recalls her mother and strikes the same poignant chimes as ‘This Woman’s Work’…In ‘Prelude’, vocals mimic wood pigeons and a child cackles happily, ‘Prologue’ boasts a cello echo bouncing off strings and grand piano. Much has been made of Rolf Harris’ appearance on the album – on ‘An Architect’s Dream’ and ‘The Painter’s Link’ – but this time he’s without his didgeridoo, offering subtle vocals instead. The latter is troubled by more overbearing bass but it segues in to the chameleon ‘Sunset’. All three contain the same recurring motifs, rhythms and sounds. Kate tells us “this is a song of colour”, apt imagery for her broad canvas of moods and sounds. The tempo quickens and out of nowhere Spanish guitars usher in a mariachi skiffle. It’s obvious CD 2 is a test site of sorts for Bush’s continuing interest in non-linear musical form and eclectic instruments. ‘Aerial Tal’ continues the birdsong and the most palpable electonic flashes surface briefly. Before it all gets too vague and unhinged, Kate delivers the best track on the entire album. ‘Somewhere In Between’ consolidates the overall epic rush of Aerial, but its off kilter drums, bass-heavy beats and dreamy incongruity make this the most original piece here…the title track ‘Aerial’, is sheer hysterical abandon. Violin loops fade in and out, tribal beats steer bird tweets and mandolin. By the end, you literally can’t help yourself stamping your feet…these are songs of the imagination that transport you to a place where you want to daydream compulsively.” Read the full review here.

Classic Rock magazine has a 7/10 rated review from Hugh Fielder: “The opening, reassuringly familiar-sounding King Of The Mountain is all about whistling winds, rising storms, and ‘the snow with Rosebud’. By track four she’s up to her waist in water with ‘little fishes swimming between my legs’. Only at the end of the record, when she gets into a fit of the giggles, do you suddenly realize you are listening to the sound of middle-aged laughter. There have been other changes, of course. Most notably, Kate has become a mum; and she definitely become the woman with the child in her eyes on Bertie – ‘More joy and such joy that you bring me,’ she trills above the medieval backing. Such domesticity has also inspired Mrs. Bartolozzi where, before her encounter with the aforementioned fishes, she is fascinated by a washing machine, watching as the clothes swirl around, her skirt entwined with his trousers…elsewhere she gets intrigued by numerology and circles on Pi, the chorus recites Pi’s never-ending value. But you’re never far from finding ‘clothes on the beach and footprints leading to the sea’… after only one listen it’s hard to grasp the threads. But her patient fans will be delighted that there is honey still for tea.”

The UK gay media have been ardent Kate supporters and in this month’s Attitude magazine (Madonna cover) Patrick Strudwick gives Aerial a 5 out of 5 rating, describing the album as “the ultimate in unbridled, unself-conscious masterpiece.” Strudwick gives Aerial a glowing review: “Bush followers, who have been gnawing at their flesh for 12 excruciating years in antsy anticipation of this eighth studio album, will weep with joy. In part from relief, that after all this time Ms Bush has delivered 84 exquisitely non-commercial minutes to rival her most celebrated Hounds of Love album. But also because the music itself is glistening with such euphoria as to render anti-depressants unnecessary. Seven years ago Kate gave birth to Bertie. If ever an album conveyed a mother viewing the world with the wide-eyed wonder of youth again, then Aerial does. Debut single King of the Mountain , the opening track on the first album (entitled A Sea of Honey ), is a red herring, though. The whistling winds and haunting musings about Elvis are like the darkest hour just before dawn. Daylight doesn’t break just yet, mind. First you have funky-bassed Pi , where Kate sings the mathematical calculation to 84 decimal places. (Would love to see Jessica Simpson attempt that). Next comes Bertie , a rinky-dink paean to her son, hailing directly from the 16th century, thanks to Renaissance guitars and a three-time jig. The mood saddens with Mrs. Bartolozzi . Remembering when her now late husband returned home so muddied that she had to clean all his clothes, she watches the washing machine spin round and mourns. “Slooshy, sloshy/Slooshy sloshy/Get that dirty shirty clean.” Though seemingly uninfluenced by pop music of the last 12 years, Kate’s production, particularly on How To Be Invisible , is cutting-edge. Other-worldly electro-glitches dance around her voice as she conjures a piss-take witches’ spell: “Eye of Braille/Hem of anorak/Stem of wallflower/Hair of doormat”. Fans of This Woman’s Work will swoon at A Coral Room where Kate’s incomparably beautiful voice – now even richer – soars over sumptuous piano chords as she laments her late mother. This is the English rose of old, emotions erupting, lava-like. Day breaks on the second disc, A Sky of Honey , which is homogenized by sprinklings of sampled and imitated birdsong as Kate guides us through a perfect summer’s day in the countryside. It’s impossibly poetic. Sunset opens with a running stream of a piano accompaniment, with pizzicato double bass, you’re then transported to Spain with a flamenco dance of the utmost gay abandon. The effect is so exhilarating it’ll have you stomping your feet and flapping the ruffles of an imaginary red dress. Or perhaps that’s just me. On Somewhere in Between you’re up a mountain drinking in the vista, as rhumba-esque rhythms infuse her marvelling at the dimming light. Night has fallen now with Nocturn seeing our storyteller head to the beach. “No one is here/We stand in the Atlantic/We become panoramic.” A thumping beat climaxes as the sun comes up. “Rising and rising in a sea of honey/A sky of honey”. Aerial , the finale, finds Kate wanting to “go up onto the roof”, as a bravura electric guitar solo crackles like an aerial conducting lightning. A crash sounds, leaving the birds tweeting and fading into the distance. Worth the wait? Every. Last. Second.” Gay Times also have a 2 page article about Kate’s return by Chelsea Kelsey and Richard Smith in the November issue. The Pink Paper continues to run the “Up Queer Street” cartoon strip which often references Kate such as in this recent one >here.

David Smyth in The Evening Standard has also previewed Aerial here although he explains that he was only allowed to hear A Sky Of Honey, the first disc: “I can report that disc one’s seven distinct songs constitute a fascinating listen, demonstrating all that Bush does best and showing a notable change in her outlook. The slightly unhinged wailer is nowhere to be heard here. Since her last album, The Red Shoes in 1993, she has become mother to Bertie, now seven, and there is a peaceful contentment evident throughout the new songs. Along with A Coral Room, Mrs Bartolozzi is one of two songs played solo on piano; it revels in domestic bliss, being principally about a washing machine. On Pi, Bush continues to find beauty in the mundane, softly reciting the infinite number over a waltzing rhythm and echoing synths. As ever, plenty of nature imagery is conjured, especially on the spooky spell described on How to Be Invisible. For lyrical complexity she remains worlds ahead of the likes of Franz Ferdinand, probably our most articulate contemporary band. But while she continues to employ layered electronics to great effect, nothing here sounds overly dramatic or elaborate. Even Joanni, about Joan of Arc going into battle, remains stately and restrained. A reserved Kate Bush is still more adventurous than a boatload of hip new guitar bands.”…Music Week has the Aerial artwork on its front cover this week, with a large picture of Kate on the inside cover detail release dates and album/single formats. The album is on their playlist “Two CDs, 16 tracks, 80 minutes of musical eccentricity, bordering on genius, this album will challenge all listeners – the release of THAT voice should be cherished.” King Of The Mountain is their Single of the Week “There is huge expectation for this single…it begins quietly with a loping dub-like rhythm, with Bush’s mysterious vocals seeming to tell the story of a powerful man and the emotional cost of his success. Already climbing the UK airplay chart, primarily because of Radio Two’s support, there is little doubt that she is back with a bang.”

The Guardian has published a fascinating piece written by Michael Berkeley on his involvement with the recording of Hello Earth in 1984, well worth a read here…Billboard in the US has reviewed King Of The Mountain: “Her first work in 12 years is predictably ethereal, mosaic and nonconformist. That is to say that it takes several listens to fathom what is going on, and even then, it is a best guess. But there is that voice: angelic, fragile and ever bewitching. It is all about atmosphere here.”…King Of The Mountain also gets a review on the Channel 4 site here…EMI Canada have an Aerial E-Card which you can send here, also Canadian fans in British Colombia can enter an Aerial preview competetion here…NME 15th Oct issue have a 1 page feature on Wuthering Heights and beyond…UK freebie gay mag Boyz has a Kate feature this week see here…Entertainment Weekly in the US are running a pollasking which album its readers are most anticipating, Kate is in second place as I write…iTunes 6 (free download) now offers video downloads of 4 Kate videos Rubberband Girl (US video), Eat The Music (similar to, but different from, The Line, The Cross and The Curve version), The Red Shoes and And So Is Love. Priced £1.89 each…Kate has contibuted to a book to be presented to the family of the electronics genius Colin Sanders of Solid State Logic (SSL), the brand of mixing desk Kate uses. Mr Sanders tragically died in a helicopter crash in 1998. The book will go on permanent display at the Colin Sanders Innovation Centre in Banbury. Read more here…finally one blog owner has done a very detailed analysis of the soundwave on the Aerial cover, see it here.