Radio 2 will be the first radio station in the world to play the new Kate Bush single, “Deeper Understanding” on Monday 4 April 2011. The song will be played within the Ken Bruce show at approximately 11.10am. Ken Bruce told us ‘The listeners to my show are very vocal when it comes to their musical loves, so I know that having the world exclusive of Kate’s new single will surpass their extremely high standards. I can’t wait to hear it myself.’
The song will be the Record of the Week on Radio2 and will be played each day on the Ken Bruce’s Show and Alex Lester’s programme. Jeff Smith, Head of Music, Radio 2 and 6 Music – ”Kate’s music is as influential today as it was when it was first released, so I’m delighted to have this world exclusive.
To celebrate the news from Radio 2… We bring you love and Deeper Understanding…
A Swedish CD store (link here) is listing the Director’s Cut tracklisting as follows. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED!
UPDATE: The Swedish site have removed the tracklisting. As we said, this is not confirmed by EMI or Kate. We will await any official word.
1 Flower of the Mountain
2 Song of Solomon
3 Lily
4 Deeper Understanding
5 The Red Shoes
6 This Woman’s Work
7 Moments of Pleasure
8 Never be Mine
9 Top of the City
10 And so is Love
11 Rubberband Girl
Kate’s official Facebook Page has a note for the fans regarding her official fan club:
Dear all friends of the official Kate Bush Facebook page and members of KBC. We’re really pleased to see so many people using this page and appreciate all of your wonderful comments. Like everyone else we’re moving forward in this digital world and will therefore not be accepting physical mail to KBC any more. So with that, we’re very proud to announce that this page is now the official place to go to and leave your comments. We’ll be posting regular updates so please continue to stop by and look out for the single release of Deeper Understanding on 5th April. You can also still join us on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/katebushmusic) and follow on Twitter (http://twitter.com/katebushmusic) too!
Amazon has added Deeper Understanding to their MP3 store – the song will be available on April 5th. You can listen to a preview clip here. New Kate! The track is listed as having a running time of 6 minutes 32 seconds (that’s almost two minutes longer than the original version).
Well, we were the first site to announce the Aerial album and today we have the pleasure of being the first place you’re going to hear this AMAZING news! Seán, Peter, Krys & Dave.
KATE RELEASES “DIRECTOR’S CUT” ON MAY 16TH, A NEW ALBUM WHICH SEES HER RE-VISIT A SELECTION OF TRACKS FROM THE SENSUAL WORLD & THE RED SHOES!!!
NEW SINGLE “DEEPER UNDERSTANDING” RELEASED IN APRIL!!!
CONFIRMED: KATE CURRENTLY WORKING ON NEW MATERIAL!!!
From the press release:
London, 11 March 2011
Kate Bush releases an unusual new album “Director’s Cut” on May 16 on her own label Fish People, in conjunction with EMI.
On “Directors Cut” Kate revisits a selection of tracks from her albums “The Sensual World” and “The Red Shoes”, a process that presents a fascinating portrait of an artist in a constant state of evolution. She has re-recorded some elements whilst keeping the best musical performances of each song – making it something of a director’s cut but in sound, not vision.
A new version of “Deeper Understanding” will be released as a single in April. Although written some twenty years ago, the song may be more relevant today than ever…
Kate is currently working on new material although no release date has been set for this.
“Director’s Cut” will be released in the following formats: Digital Album, Standard CD in a case-bound book, Deluxe CD (three disc package, including Director’s Cut, The Sensual World and re-mastered The Red Shoes) in a case-bound book and two-disc vinyl. Other digital and vinyl formats will be made available on katebush.com. Details will be published shortly.
Note: we realise that this moment of elation for Kate Bush fans coincides with the shocking news of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and elsewhere today. We have heard from our friend Sozo in Japan who provides the Japanese version of this site – he is in the West of Japan and is safe, but fears for his fellow Japanese in stricken areas. Here is a website which outlines how we can all give practical help.
We’ve set up a Facebook page today – this’ll help you to keep track of our updates here at the site. Click on the “like” button here and tell your friends! 🙂
Today in Paris the Fall Winter collection by Miuccia Prada for Miu Miu was set to an edited soundtrack of Kate songs, namely The Infant Kiss, Breathing, parts of Hammer Horror and L’Amour Looks Something Like You and In Search of Peter Pan.
Kate’s official Youtube channel was announced today on her official Facebook page. We’ve seen this being put together over the last few months with good quality videos being constantly added – worth checking out here. Kate’s new Twitter profile can be viewed here. The latest tweet heralds the Youtube debut of King of the Mountain in hi-def!
Audio Fidelity, the US company that remastered Kate’s Hounds of Love album last year (in a popular gatefold vinyl edition) is releasing a limited edition 4-track 10″ vinyl Hounds of Love EP, with tracks chosen by Kate, on April 16th. Pressed on pink vinyl, Side 1 features The Big Sky and Cloudbusting and Side 2 features Watching You Without Me and Jig of Life. Audio Fidelity tell me that Kate also personally selected the cover art. Click on the image to go to the Audio Fidelity site for more info. This release is to coincide with Record Store Day 2011. Support your local independent record shop!
While this release features remastered tracks from both sides of the Hounds of Love album which are previously released, this is nonetheless (I think!) Kate’s first 4-track vinyl release since the UK 12″ of Love and Anger in 1990, and possibly her first official release in the 10″ vinyl format. Email me if you know different of course. EP cover photo is by John Carder Bush. EP priced at $14.99, limited run of 1,000 copies. Audio Fidelity will be offering this title only to their subscription club members and through independent retailers. Online retailers, such as Amazon, will not be able to carry this special title.
From the Audio Fidelity subscriber email:
“On Saturday, April 16th, the music community comes together and honors the independent record retailers on RECORD STORE DAY.
This is a one day event and last year 1,400 retail outlets around the world participated in this special day.
Audio Fidelity will be participating this year with a special 10″ colored vinyl Collector’s Limited Edition of Kate Bush’s “Hounds Of Love”.
This 10″ colored vinyl will have 4 tracks and will retail for $14.98. As this is a special collector’s limited edition, with Kate’s blessing, we will only be manufacturing 1,000 copies. Once those are gone, we will manufacture no more.
You will be able to purchase only one (1) copy per club membership should you choose to purchase this title.
We need to have your order in ASAP to reserve your limited edition collector’s copy. As I mentioned, we are only making 1,000 copies and the demand from retail far surpasses that number.”
A personal dream come true for me, the wonderful comedian Noel Fielding (The Mighty Boosh) has danced to Wuthering Heights in the BBC charity programme “Let’s Dance for Comic Relief.” The studio panel has rightly voted Noel’s performance as Kate through to the final on March 12th! We will be providing voting links for the final when they happen. There’s not much more to say except: enjoy the clip and please consider donating to Comic Relief, one of Kate’s favourite charities, here.
And here is Kate’s message to Noel:
“Hi Noel, it’s Kate here. I really love your work and I just want to wish you luck for tonight. Break a leg. Well, actually no, no… don’t break a leg. Just win baby, WIN!”
Sadly the Youtube clip of Kate’s message seems to have disappeared: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UZ49nvm364
Regular visitors to this site give us much feedback on our promotion of the creative work of not just Kate but also those closest to Kate; Paddy, John and Del. One of the of the most interesting connections that we’ve picked up on in the last few years has been the journey of Syd Arthur – a band based in Canterbury, England, that features Kate’s nephew Raven (John Carder’s son) on fiddle. With a very distinctive sound the band have built on earlier successes and are justifiably proud of their impressive new Moving World EP. Pre-order it here. We recommend you get it.
The band is four Canterbury-based devotees of sound immersed in the simple pleasures of songwriting, performance and their abilities for exploratory improvisational musical interplay. Live, the band has been together since 2006. On record, it all starts from here.
Syd Arthur’s intricate, high-energy live sets have been what the band are founded on, and over the past 5 years they have created a large following on the underground scene across the South of England, Europe and beyond. Festival veterans, the band have played from Glastonbury to the Secret Garden and back. Summer solstices and green gatherings number against self-funded UK tours and trips to pretty much every country in Europe. With the level of live recognition so far to simply pigeonhole Syd Arthur as an underground act is something of a mistake. This is an accomplished live band looking to make a further stamp on a music industry there for the taking.
As with all great live bands, capturing a definitive take on record is always a challenge, one that up until recently the band have neglected to take on. But in 2009 the band began the task of setting up Wicker Studios, their own self-funded studio space on the outskirts of southeast London. Greatly inspired by the sonic pioneers of the late 60s and early 70s, they patiently learned how to engineer, produce and mix themselves, using an innovative hybrid of analogue and digital techniques.
Not alone in their plight, the band have found themselves at the heart of an exciting new music scene bubbling away in the Canterbury area. United by an encouraging spirit of cooperation and mutual support, together with a shared love of (among others) Soft Machine, electric Miles, Eno, Can, Zappa, Beefheart, Fela Kuti, King Crimson and Sun Ra, several bands have developed strong ties. The `Furthur Productions’ collective, of which Syd Arthur have been an integral part, has provided the ideal platform for this scene, forging a uniquely `organic’ aesthetic and experimenting with immersive audio-visual environments and hybrid analogue lightshows. Several of these new Canterbury bands were also brought in to record at Wicker Studios. And so a record label was born. On 28th March 2011, the Dawn Chorus Recording Co. will release its first creation, Syd Arthur’s Moving World EP.
Recorded in an intensively creative week at the end of 2010, the tracks on Moving World represent the most powerful possible expression of the band’s potential up to this point. To liken Moving World to the original `Canterbury scene’ artists like Soft Machine, Caravan, and Hatfield and the North is an easy starter, but this is what the Canterbury Sound artists might have come up with had they grown up with an extra 30-40 years of music history culture, WOMAD festivals and the entire world’s musical output at their fingertips rather than just blues, jazz and R&B records. Here, Syd Arthur exhibit a genuine merging of worlds, rather than a forced or contrived `world fusion’ music.
Raven Bush
And this is just the beginning! Syd Arthur’s debut album is currently being recorded. Dawn Chorus Recording Co. plans to release an album a month from artists including Zoo For You, Rae and The Boot Lagoon from April onwards. And each of the bands have their own busy live schedules to promote. The time for Syd Arthur to rise up and be taken notice of is now!
A very good round up of the performance of Kate’s singles and albums in music charts around the world can be found on Music Chart Heaven
This is where you find that Aerial and King of the Mountain did better in Sweden (no.2) than in the UK (no.3), The Kick Inside did better in the Netherlands than in the UK (same chart positions), that The Man With the Child in His Eyes was no.1 in France, and many other strange and interesting things.
Kate Bush: Enigmatic chanteuse as pop pioneer
by Holly Kruse, University of Illinois, Urbana, Champaign
In the early 1970s record industry executives noticed that adventurous musicians could actually make money. Kate Bush was one of the artists to profit. In 1974 EMI made an unusual move and gave Bush some money “to grow up with,” and she spent three years continuing her dance studies, honing her vocal skills, and developing a more mature songwriting style. In 1977 she recorded her first album, The Kick Inside, and the first single, “Wuthering Heights”, reached the number one spot on the British pop chart just one month after its release in early 1978. However, though Kate Bush has been a best-selling artist in the U.K. for almost ten years, she stayed virtually unknown in the U.S …
Soundscapes.info November 2000. Read the full article here
Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory
Deborah Withers’ book is not a biography of Kate Bush. Instead, says Sian Norris, it is a treasure map to the theories underpinning the cultural icon’s work.
Having been a huge Kate Bush fan from a young age, and very impressed and excited by Deborah N Withers’ recent book Self Publishing and Empowerment I was really looking forward to reading her cultural theory explorationAdventures in Kate Bush and Theory. And I wasn’t disappointed. This book is a superb exploration into the gender, queer, post-colonial and cultural theory that lies behind the music of singer, dancer and cultural icon Kate Bush. It is a joy from start to finish, taking you on a journey from the 1970s to the present, as Withers comprehensively and wittily uncovers the theoretical intricacies in the work of Kate Bush. If you are looking for a biography of Kate Bush then this isn’t the book for you. Instead, it is a biography of music, visual art and three decades of the character Withers calls the “Bush Feminine Subject” or the BFS. This is the female subjectivity that inhabits Bush’s world, a subject who sings, plays and acts out the questions, theories and problems in Kate’s work. Withers argues that as listeners we need to separate out the singer Kate Bush and the BFS when exploring the theory of her work …
The f-word January 2010. Read the full article here
Kate Bush: Performing and Creating Queer Subjectivities on Lionheart.
Deborah Withers
In her second album, Lionheart, Kate Bush continued the process of exploring gender
roles through music, performance and dramatization that began on her debut, The
Kick Inside. From early on in her career, Bush was conscious of how heteronormative,
patriarchal gender roles can delimit restrictive boundaries and designate permissible
sites from which the female sexed subject can speak or sing. From her perceptive
comments in interviews, it is clear that she was aware of stereotypical cultural notions
of femininity circulating within pop music in the late 70s that, I would suggest, only
allowed narrow roles for women singers: to be genteel, emotional and reflective.
Understandably, Bush wished to distance herself and ultimately break free from these
constructions and often spoke of how she identified with male songwriters and styles
as they allowed for more experimentation …
If you know the lurid details of hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Red Shoes,” then Kate Bush’s song of the same name presents a fascinating twist. A dance tune with pulsating rhythms and haunting effects, it encourages and celebrates dance. The song begins with a girl who wants to dance. She gets to dance and along the way takes her listeners for an experience that borders on ecstatic frenzy. Sending a very different message, the 1848 didactic tale positions dance as both sin and punishment. In the story a pretty but very poor orphan girl named Karen falls in love with a pair of red shoes made of shiny patent leather. After tricking her blind but pious benefactor into buying them, she makes the near-fatal mistake of wearing them to her Confirmation and Communion. As punishment for her vanity and excess she must endlessly dance; even when she is lifted off the ground her little feet keep on dancing through the air, totally escaping her control. She wants to go left, they go right; she wants to go home, they dance out into the street, where all can see her terrible state. An angel makes her fate painfully clear: “You shall dance in your red shoes until you become pale and thin. Dance till the skin on your face turns yellow and clings to your bones as if you were a skeleton. Dance you shall from door to door and when you pass a house where proud and vain children live, there you shall knock on the door so that they will see you and fear your face. Dance, you shall Dance …
Women and Music volume 9 2005. Read the full article here
