FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: You Lady (Room for the Life)/Lyra (Lyra)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Aris

You Lady (Room for the Life)/Lyra (Lyra)

__________

IN terms of albums…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush arriving at the Music Day at the Palace event at Buckingham Palace on 1st March, 2005. The Royal reception was held to recognise the excellence of British music, and the contribution it makes to the culture and economy of the U.K./PHOTO CREDIT: Fiona Hanson/Tim Graham Picture Library/Getty Images

from Kate Bush that I can illuminate for their characters, The Kick Inside still has ammunition. I am going to reference Wuthering Heights, Moving and finish this run of features with Them Heavy People. This is a case of an anonymous character in a Kate Bush song seen as one of the weakest offerings from The Kick Inside. You could say that ‘Woman’ is a character in the song, but this is Bush referring more widely to women. However, right near the start of the song, Bush sings “Hey there you lady in tears/Do you think that they care if they're real, woman?”. I want to focus on You Lady. It is a vague character, though someone that gives me a lead into this track. I will come to an interesting analysis and interpretation of this track, as it raises some interesting points. One of the rare distinction of Room for the Life is that it is rarely mentioned in interviews from 1978. Kate Bush didn’t really talk about this track. In terms of subjects, I want to discuss the tracklisting on The Kick Inside, womanhood and birth and how Bush was so mature and different to songwriters at the time, before coming to a fascinating article from Dreams of Orgonon. However, first, an expert from a BBC Radio 1 Personal Call Interview with Ed Stewart and Sue Cook from 1979. A caller named Wendy asks a question that provokes an interesting response:

“Wendy: Hello, Kate. Both your albums seem to me to be very woman orientated like Room For The Life and In The Warm Room. Would you say that you are for or against woman's lib?

K: I'm always getting accused of being a feminist. Really I do write a lot of my songs for men, actually. In fact, "In The Warm Room" is written for men because there are so many songs for women about wonderful men that come up and chat you up when you're in the disco and I thought it would be nice to write a song for men about this amazing female. And I think that I am probably female-oriented with my songs because I'm a female and have very female emotions but I do try to aim a lot of the psychology, if you like, at men”.

In 1978, the idea that a female artist would react negatively to being seen as a feminist. One of the negatives when we think about Kate Bush in 1978 is a naivety and ill-informed side. One can forgive her, as she was only nineteen when The Kick Inside came out and only just in her twenties when this interview was conducted. However, that feeling she was being ‘accused’ for something that is a positive. Now, I think Bush would not react that way. She has inspired so many women in music, and she is a feminist icon. Even if Room for the Life is not discussed much or seen as a lesser song from The Kick Inside, it is actually a feminist anthem.

t is compelling that Bush wrote from a female perceptive but aimed a lot of that psychology and insight to men. Room for the Life is about the strength of women and how they can find this power inside because they are pregnant and find the courage when things are bad. How there is room for life in the womb. The magic of pregnancy and how women are stronger than men in many ways. It was quite a bold song to put on an album in 1978. A scene dominated by men, where there was this misogyny and lack of women at the forefront. A young Kate Bush releasing a debut album that was feminist and female. One of the most female albums ever released. Room for the Life is almost an unofficial title track. If you think about what a kick inside is. A foetus. The title track ends the album, though it does not specifically focus on pregnancy. The song involves a sister who is impregnated by her brother and she feels this shame. She takes her own life and, with it, her unborn child. It is tragic but also beautiful. It does not celebrate pregnancy and women creating life. Room for the Lie, whilst an inferior song, is more positive and empowering. Even today, you do not see many female artists discuss pregnancy and its vitality and wonder. Concerning abortion rights and nations like the U.S. where women’s body autonomy has been put under threat, would there b too much risk for female artists to write songs about pregnancy?! In 1978, when Punk was raging and few women were highlighted and very few songs about pregnancy and childbirth was included on albums (I can’t think of any others), it does make Room for the Life very special. Some fascinating lines: “Night after night in the quiet house/Plaiting her hair by the fire, woman/With no lover to free her desire/How long do you think she can stick it out?/How long do you think before she'll go out, woman?/Hey! Get up on your feet and go get it, now/Like it or not, we keep bouncing back/Because we're woman”. I am not sure if the woman in this verse is the lady from the opening lines. You Lady is someone I see as a specific character. Perhaps the same woman as the one here. So many things to unpack. How, through The Kick Inside, there is this very classic and almost old-fashioned quality.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankwoitz

Women and characters who could have existed centuries ago. Like classic literature or some part of history, there are relatively few ‘contemporary’ characters on the album. You imagine You Lady being this Victorian woman who is by the fire and bereft. Also, this idea that a woman would be distraught or crying because she has no man. Bush saying that it does not matter and women are stronger than that. That said, rather than being an all-out feminist and empowering women, a lot of her sympathies go towards men more than women. Although raised in an artistic family, it was a conservative one. More male influences and role models. I will bring in more sections from this article, though this is what Dreams of Orgonon write about  Kate Bush and feminism; “A couple entries ago we made it clear that Kate Bush is at the bare minimum not a conscious feminist. Her work is useful for women’s sexual liberation and art, but Bush’s beliefs are broadly conservative. I’ve gone on at length about Bush’s soft spot for men — she’s generally inclined to treat them well and make them paragons of beauty and virtue. Sometimes she’ll even do this at the expense of failing to call men out when they commit immoral acts, as we’ll see in “Babooshka.” Bush is a heterosexual woman, and one with an unusually positive view of men. One of the primary effects of this preference is that her songs predominantly feature conversations between men and women, often of a romantic or sexual nature (or both). It’s a terribly heteronormative dynamic, although one Bush will push against at times”. Even if we can debate whether Kate Bush was misguided in terms of the importance of feminism and standing behind that or positive because she didn’t villainise men and saw them as flawed by good – when many of her female peers castigated men and tore them down -, there is no denying that Room for the Life is a fascinating song that was so different to anything released around at the time. I have softened to it. Even though The Kick Inside is my favourite album ever, Room for the Life is my least-favourite track. I do love Bush’s vocal on it, though the repetitive idea of women having room for life in them is hammered home! You gets smacked around the head. Less sophisticated or clever than other songs on the album, it would be ridiculed today, as it has a weaker feminist message than she could have created. Kate Bush was a genius when she recorded the album, so I feel she holds back and could have written this empowering song. Even so, you could argue it is a feminist anthem.

In 2023, Far Out Magazine wrote how Room for the Life is misunderstood. Even if Kate Bush did not consciously set out to write a feminist anthem, in years since, you can see this track as such. Also, what compelled Bush to write the song in the first place? Was she keen to show how amazing women are and how they are resilient and strong because life as we know it depends on them? Even if she was being kind to men and she was not particular feminist, she does champion the power of women:

“Yet, for many, Bush provided a role model for women who could exist and do their own thing within the music industry away from the men who dominate it. It is perhaps for this reason that a number of her tracks are often hailed as ‘feminist anthems’ in spite of the artist’s controversial view on the topic.

One such song is ‘Room For The Life’, the penultimate track from her debut album, The Kick Inside. On a surface level, it is easy to see how the lyrics, “Like it or not, we were built tough, because we’re woman”, purport feminist empowerment. Quite the contrary, though, Bush shared in a 1980 interview with Sounds that the song was supposed to be a message to be “a bit easier on men”.

As is commonplace within her interviews, the composer and performer goes on to say: “We are the ones with survival inside us, we carry the next generation, we have the will to keep going, we keep bouncing back. I don’t know if that’s anti-liberationist but I wouldn’t say femininity was very strong in my songs”.

This raises an interesting topic about how much say artists can have about the interpretation of their own work. If ‘Room For The Life’ inspires empowerment in some women, then does it really matter if that was not Kate Bush’s original intention? She said herself, in a 2016 Fader interview, “I’m sure with a lot of paintings, people don’t understand what the painter originally meant, and I don’t really think that matters. I just think if you feel something, that’s really the ideal goal”.

So, while Kate Bush might be apprehensive to think about how works in the canon of feminist art, she at least seems content with the fact that her music means a lot of different things to a lot of different people – and if it has empowered women in the music industry along the way, then so be it”.

I do want to get back to that Dreams of Orgonon feature. I will move to topics I want to cover off first. However, I see Room for the Life as being a close compassion of Strange Phenomena. That songs is about synchronicity and coincidences. Though it also is about menstruation (“Every girl knows about the punctual blues”). Again, in 1978, how many women in music dropped that into their music?! Not many today. Is it seen as too controversial or unseemly for a female artist to sign about something very natural that should be include in more songs. Aside from Jenny Hval’s 2016 album, Blood Bitch (whose lyrical content is also influenced by menstruation, 1970s Horror and exploitation films and Virginia Woolf), there are not many recent examples. That is another frank, bold and hugely mature song that people do not talk about much. It also contains the refrain of “Om mani padme hum” (Om Mani Padme Hum is one of the most powerful mantras in Tibetan Buddhism, primarily associated with Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. It encapsulates the essence of the Buddha's teachings—the pursuit of enlightenment through the union of method (compassion) and wisdom).

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankwoitz

I am digressing. Maybe the tracklisting on The Kick Inside is not perfect. Having Room for the Life right next to The Kick Inside. The two songs that mention pregnancy and have some similarities. Also, the sonic and lyrical dynamics. Room for the Life seems jarring when you lead into The Kick Inside. It also comes after Them Heavy People. I think Room for the Life should have followed Strange Phenomena. Make it track four. Put Kite on the second side. You may say that Room for the Life and Strange Phenomena are similar in terms of menstruation and pregnancy. However, if Room for the Life is a lesser track, easier to bury a bit at the top than right near the end. The Kick Inside is a sublime closing track, so should Room for the Life be the track that it follows? I think there are merits to it. Bush’s singing is fantastic. The emotion and movement she brings to the track. People might find the “A-mama-woma-mama-woman-aha!” chant grating, though I feel it offers this quirk that elevates the song from being considered pedestrian or bland. I would have loved to have seen her in 1979 during The Tour of Life and seeing how this under-highlighted song went down! I do think that You Lady is this interesting character. Not named, and perhaps just meant to be this normal woman, the first verse suggests men do not care if women cry. Or they see it is part of “the deal”. Bush implores the woman not to get heavy with the man as women are born strong. It both empowers women and spotlights their brilliance, but it is also fair and balanced to men. This mutual understanding. Maybe tipping ahead to 1985’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and that masterpiece from Hounds of Love, where men and women could better understand one another if they were in each other’s shoes.

I am keen to get to the second song in this feature, though Dreams of Orgonon have written more about Room for the Life – more negatively than positively, mind – than pretty much anyone else, so it would be foolhardy to overlook it. Rare that Bush wrote a song that is a dialogue between two women. Bush herself talking to this woman in the song. You Lady or ‘Woman’. Suffering from a slightly ham-fisted or embarrassing take on female strength and pregnancy, it is amazing that few people have ever talked about this song! In terms of the womb and writing a song that was more progressive and less naïve, you can look at Breathing from 1980’s Never for Ever. This Woman’s Work from 1989’s The Sensual World. Though, in 1978, could an artist like Kate Bush have expected to pen something less regressive when she was surrounded by male artists in a music industry that was sexist and misogynistic?! The gender politics on Room for the Life is something that Dream of Orgonon highlight:

“In addition to its musical tastelessness, “Room for the Life” is out of touch. Bush has identified herself with male artists, admitting that a lack of interesting female songwriters was the reason (she cites Joni Mitchell, Billie Holliday, and Joan Armatrading as exceptions). When she writes about two female characters in “Room,” things fall apart (this isn’t always the case — my favorite Kate Bush song is a woman-centered dialogue, as we’ll see). The song is addressed from one woman to another, telling of the magical power of women, expressed as a singularity with the oddly agrammatical phrase “because we’re woman.” It’s an oddly naïve little song, and one with strange conclusions on how to be a woman. “Lost in your men and the games you play/trying to prove that you’re better woman,” Bush chides her friend. How dare she try to get ahead of men. The audacity of it.

But the apex of the song’s regressive gender politics comes in… its conclusion that women are special because of their wombs. Really. The room for the life is the uterus. “Inside of you can be two.” I mean… what do you do with that? Infertile women and trans women are pretty straightforwardly excluded from the deal. That’s something Pat Robertson garbage might peddle. It’s a vulgar and outdated form of the Feminine Mystique. Yes, this is pretty much orthodox women’s rights stuff of the period. And it’s the point where you’re almost ready to call it quits on the Seventies. Bush will get better on gender in many ways — we’re going to see some amazing stuff from her in the future directly related to wombs”.

I am going to flip things way forward. From a 1978 album track to a standalone 2007 single, we arrive at a curious offering. The character I am discussing is Lyra. That is from the song of the same name. If Room for the Life is seen as one of the weaker tracks on The Kick Inside, then Lyra is often seen as one of the weaker singles from Bush. Not to pick on the tracks or expose anything. However, I do think that they both have merits. Lyra did get nominated for Best Original Song at the Satellite Awards. It is used in the closing credits of the film. Bush was commissioned to write the song, with the request that it references to the lead character, Lyra Belacqua. This allows me to once again link Kate Bush to literature. So many of her songs have either been inspired by literature, or they are about a literary character. From Wuthering Heights to The Sensual World to Get Out of My House, Kate Bush has always had this attraction to the written words and charters within. There are a few different things to discuss when it comes to Lyra. In The Golden Compass, Lyra Belacqua was played by Dakota Blue Richards. She was thirteen when she played the character. I do like how Bush was commissioned to write a song about the lead. Whether you see it as a good single or one that fits into her cannon, it still has its place. Bush was thirteen (though she says she was sixteen) when she wrote The Man with the Child in His Eyes. An extraordinary talent at that age. Here, Bush writing about a character played by an exceptional thirteen-year-old actor Also, this is another case of Bush writing for a film. She contributed Be Kind to My Mistakes for 1986’s Castaway. She was offered a role in that film, but she wisely turned it down, as it would have involved a lot of screen time of her naked alongside the horrid Oliver Reed. Even so, she did give a pretty decent song to the film. This Woman’s Work featured in John Hughes’s She’s Having a Baby in 1988 – a year before it was heard on The Sensual World. A T.V. series rather than a film, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was remixed for inclusion on Stranger Things in 2022. Her songs have appeared in a range of other films, including The Mother and Palm Springs. This was an occasion that Bush herself wrote an original for a film. In 2018, when ranking Kate Bush’s twenty-nine singles, The Guardian placed Lyra twenty-third and said this: “A single by default, not design: it charted on downloads from the soundtrack album of The Golden Compass alone. Belying Bush’s reputation as a pernickety studio perfectionist, it apparently took 10 days to write and record. It’s not her greatest song, but its ambient synth and choral backing is luscious and enveloping”. Classic Pop selected Kate Bush’s best forty tracks last year and put Lyra in eighteenth! So kindness towards a song that is really good, though not one that is among Bush’s very best (in my view).

What is notable is that she wrote around this literary character. If you are not aware of who Lyra Belacqua is (later known as Lyra Silvertongue) is fascinating. In terms of who Lyra is, she “is the brave and rebellious 11-year-old protagonist of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy, which begins with The Golden Compass (originally titled Northern Lights). Raised as a supposed orphan at Jordan College in Oxford, Lyra's world is one where human souls exist outside the body as shape-shifting animal companions called daemons. Her daemon is named Pantalaimon”. If Room for the Life is Bush perhaps writing a song that later would be seen as a feminist call and anthem, here I feel she is more overt. Writing about this brash and amazing girl. Headstrong and fearless, can you draw comparisons with Kate Bush when she broke through? I do wonder how that commissioned happened and why Kate Bush was appreciated. According to the late Del Palmer (who was an engineer on many of Kate Bush’s album, played on most of her albums, and was in a long-term relationship with her), Bush was asked at short notice to write Lyra. The song was produced and recorded by Bush in her own studio, and features the Magdalen College, Oxford choir. Interestingly, it contains the introduction of an unused song written for Disney's Dinosaur. I do wonder why Bush turned that down or why she chose to recycle that introduction and use it here. The fantasy element is key. In terms of literature and what influenced some of Bush’s songs, we might look at horror or darker elements. That said, James Joyce’s phenomenal 1922 novel, Ulysses (which Bush was inspired by when writing The Sensual World’s title track and got to use Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in 2011’s Flower of the Mountain), chronicles a single ordinary day - 16th June, 1904 - in Dublin, following advertising canvasser Leopold Bloom, intellectual Stephen Dedalus, and Bloom's wife, Molly. I forgot that Bush also contributed a song to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. That track is Brazil (Sam Lowry’s First Dream). That is a vocal version of the 1939 Jazz standard, Aquarela do Brasil (Watercolour of Brazil). The original music and English lyrics were written by the Brazilian composer, Ary Barroso, and American lyricist, Bob Russel. You can read more about Brazil here.

This life-long bond with cinema. Bush inspired by film. How she did write songs for films but didn’t appear in them herself. It is one of those great what-ifs when we think about artists who could have been great actors. She starred in her own short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve, from 1993, though I could have seen a 1980s Kate Bush appearing in comedies, psychological thrillers and romantic epics. She must have been offered a lot of these, though she was so focused on work. I wonder if her son, Bertie, inspired her decision to write Lyra. He was about nine when the film came out and must have been in her mind to an extent. This was an interesting post-Aerial time. It would take until 2011 (with Director’s Cut) when Bush would release another album. The 2005 double album was one very much influenced and affected by motherhood and new family. So much of its positivity and spellbinding beauty is because Bush’s heart and soul were full and happy. There was not much written about Kate Bush in 2007. Apart from this article from The New Yorker, it was a quieter time in general. Bush focusing on motherhood rather than putting out another album. A nice moment to write this song and not have to include it as part of an album. I do think Bush was in mind because she and author Philip Pullman (2007’s Lyra is based around his 1995  novel, Northern Lights). Pullman appeared on BBC Radio 6 Music’s Paperback Writers, and he chose a Kate Bush song as one of his selection. Philip Pullman wrote the short story, The Collectors, which is set in the His Dark Materials universe, in direct tribute to Kate Bush. He has noted that the story originated from a tale Kate told him about two strange paintings she owned, and the book is dedicated to her. Pullman has frequently named Bush as one of his favourite musical artists. The admiration goes both ways, as Bush is known to be an avid reader and admirer of Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Thanks to BBC for that information. It seems more natural and understandable Bush would have been asked to write a song for The Golden Compass. Was she asked at short notice because someone else dropped out, or were there no plans to have a song over the closing credits? You would tuamine the latter. Not a case of Bush being a second choice, as she was for Peter Gabriel’s song. Don’t Give Up. Gabriel had Dolly Parton in mind for that song but she turned it down. You can’t imagine anyone but Kate Bush singing this duet!

IN THIS PHOTO: Philip Pullman/PHOTO CREDIT: Massimiliano Donati/Awakening/Getty Images

You can read more about Lyra Belacqua here. The final topic I want to introduce relating to this character is the lyrics to the song. Many people might not have seen The Golden Compass. I didn’t. It did not receive great reviews. Even so, I think that the lyrics on Lyra are among Bush’s best. They may seem quite simple, though the words alone evoke so much emotion. Consider these lines: “Who's to know/What's in the future/But we hope/We will be with her/We have all our love/To give her, oh/Lyra, Lyra/And her soul/Walks beside her/An army stands/Behind her/Lyra, Lyra”. Perhaps a slight stretch, though I see comparisons to Joanni from Aerial. About Joan of Arc, another person with an army behind her. Through their lives and fates were different, it is Kate Bush writing about strong and influential females. One from fantasy and fiction and the other from history. If you did not see the film, I feel Bush’s Lyra does compel curiosity around the books. Titled The Golden Compass in the U.S. but Northern Lights here, you can read more about it here. 1995 is when that novel came out. Two years after The Red Shoes. Burned out and needing to step away, I can imagine that she did read that first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy (1995-2000), Lyra arrived two years after Aerial. A much happier time, I do like how the two had respect for one another’s work. Pullman undoubtably connected with Bush because of how she wrote. In a literary and imaginative way. Looking at Northern Lights, in this world (of the novel), humans' souls exist outside of their bodies in the form of sentient ‘dæmons’ in animal form which accompany, aid, and comfort their humans. An important plot device is the alethiometer, a truth-telling symbol reader. That plot and aspect does seem very Kate Bush! In turn, I can see how Philip Pullman might have inspired song ideas and moments for Kate Bush. She and Pullman were close friends, and he has visited her home. The legendary author turns eighty in November. I will investigate rarer or lesser-known Kate Bush songs for this series. I am going to talk about more of her demos and one or two B-sides. I wanted to pair You Lady from The Kick Inside’s Room for the Life with Lyra from the song featured on The Golden Compass soundtrack, as they are tracks that do not get discussed. Vastly different characters, that feature at distinct and interesting times in Bush’s career, yet more examples of…

HER undeniable brilliance.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Whole Story: Kate's KBC Article Issue 21 (Winter 1987)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Whole Story

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing at the Secret Policeman's Ball, in aid of Amnesty International, at the London Palladium on 28th March, 1987/PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Hogan/Getty Images

Kate's KBC Article Issue 21 (Winter 1987)

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I am coming back…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed for the Hounds of Love single cover shoot in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

to a resource that not a lot of people know about. Gaffweb have lovingly collated writings by Kate Bush. Cases where she was interviewed for the Kate Bush Club. In winter 1987, for the twenty-first edition, Kate Bush interviewed herself. The piece was called "Cousin Kate" by Zwort Finkle. This cool alias, it was a nice angle. Rather than having a conventional interview where she was asked about her music and there was this predictable line, she could dictate the course. By winter 1987, Kate Bush had released Hounds of Love (1985) and The Whole Story (1986). Working on The Sensual World (released in 1989), she was twenty-nine when this piece was published. 1987 quite an interesting year. The video version of The Whole Story was released. In March 1987, Kate Bush performed Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and Let It Be with David Gilmour for Amnesty International's Secret Policeman's Third Ball concerts. I am going to bring in some songs from Hounds of Love and Experiment IV (the single recorded for The Whole Story) to punctuate segments of the interview:

“Hi, my name's Zwort Finkle, I'm from the U.S. of A. and I'm a distant cousin of Kate's. We haven't seen each other for years, so I had to fill her in on my life story. I left college three years ago, and have been following a brilliant career in journalism, working for such well known magazines as Blurt, Let's Go Crazy, Let's Go Crazy Again, Son of Blurt and Let's Go Blurt Again. This was my first visit to London, and I was astounded at how you guys can survive this climate, how you manage to keep to one side of the road when the roads are so small, how quaint and cute you all are, and how totally bored and unenthused you all are with things that would make us little old Americans go "Yee-Hah".

Zwort: Tell me, Katie, have you ever thought of living in America?

Katie: There are very few places I've been to that I've felt I could live in--I think too many of my roots are here in England, and so much of my work is based here, and I seem to spend most of my time working. I've only been to America a few times, and then only to New York, L.A. and Las Vegas, but maybe if I visited more parts of America I would find a place that I feel I could live in. I really enjoyed my visits, especially to New York--there's so much energy there, so many different and interesting people and a very social sense between artistic people, that certainly in the music business doesn't exist in this country. People seem to work in great isolation here, whereas in New York, people want to get together and talk and enthuse.

Zwort: Like, er, do you feel there's a lack of enthusiasm here, cous'?

Katie: Yes, I do, and I feel a lot of people, certainly within the music business, are particularly attracted to America by this. "Artistic" people like--possibly even need--a lot of feedback, and Americans are wonderful at making you feel wanted, and are very positive about the launching of new ideas, new approaches. It's exciting to be among this energy, and in England I think we're all a bit hard on each other, but this country has a great wealth of talent and creative ideas, it's just that people have to fight a little to get a bit of enthusiasm going. But maybe that's not such a bad thing--maybe it creates more determination in a cause. What do you think, cousin Rodney?

Zwort: Actually, it's Zwort.

Katie: Sorry?

Zwort: Zwort!!

Katie: Sorry, what's Zwort?

Zwort: My name, of course.

Katie: Oh!

Zwort: What were you doing in Las Vegas? That's an unusual place to visit!

Katie: I was there with a guy from the record company just for a day, and it was really just an opportunity to see the place while he had business matters to deal with. It is an extraordinary place. Instead of saying "How you doing?", everyone says, "Feeling lucky?" It's like a strange oasis stuck right in the middle of the desert away from everything. We took a flight in a small plane over the Grand Canyon, and it was one of the most terrifying experiences I've ever had. The Canyon is totally enormous, and we were so tiny-- I've never experienced that kind of vertigo before or since, and with all the air pockets, we went up and down, up and down.

Zwort: I understand you don't do many interviews.

Katie: That's right.

Zwort: Why is that?

Katie: I find it very difficult to express myself in interviews. Often people have so many preconceptions that I spend most of the interview trying to defend myself from the image that was created by the media eight years ago. That is understandable to a certain extent--that's when I did most of my interviews, and I think the image was created by what the press felt the public wanted, how they interpreted me as I was then, and how I projected myself at that time.

Zwort: You mean like saying "wow", "amazing", and that you were weak and fragile, etc.

Katie: Yes, that is part of it. I was very young, idealistic and enthusiastic about so much then, but I felt they exaggerated these qualities. And I was--and am even more so now--a private person, and perhaps because I wouldn't talk about these areas of my life they turned to the "wow", "amazing" girl, even when I didn't use those words. The few interviews I do, people still seem to dwell on this old "me", and I find it disappointing when I want to talk about my current work.

Zwort: Do you , like, er, think enthusiasm was an unfashionable thing, particularly at this time, when punk and street cred were the "hip" thing?

Katie: Yes, I do. I think it still is, particularly in this country. But I think clever people hide their unfashionable faces from the public. Perhaps in a way, I was too open with the press, maybe I should have "performed" for them, and puked and gobbed at the cameras, but it's not my nature, I was brought up too well. The interviews I've sat through patiently, sometimes hanging onto my patience with the skin of my teeth, thinking it's good for my tolerance and might make me a better person.

Zwort: But you do occasionally talk to the press?

Katie: Yes. There are good people to talk to, they're not always talking about the past, or deliberately trying to make you look like an idiot, and are genuinely interested in my work. But it's like I said, I find it hard to express myself in interviews. It depends how I feel--sometimes they're fun, especially if I know the journalist, and the questions are interesting--they make you think about areas you might not have even considered before. But sometimes I find myself saying things just to please them, or just to give a question an answer. Sometimes I get verbal diarrhoea and just burble complete rubbish, and sometimes I feel so guarded that I invert, and feel like a trapped animal. Quite often I go over an interview in my head afterwards and realise I've said something completely contrary to what I believe, but I put most of it down to being quite a private person, and being someone who likes to think carefully about how I say something. Words are very special things, and are so easily misinterpreted-- I much prefer to write lyrics than do an interview. I feel I'm a songwriter, not a personality, and I find it difficult to even talk about my songs, sometimes. In a way, they speak for themselves, and the subjects or inspirations can be so personal, or just seem ridiculous when spoken about.

Zwort: Do you think it's important that people know what the songs are about?

Katie: No, I think it can be interesting for people, but their interpretation is what matters, and I find it fascinating how people do seem to understand so much about a song that must be totally obscure and is so personal to me, but maybe they just feel it, they feel the emotions of the song, somehow grasp the meanings. It's so hard for me to tell because I know what it's about, but for example, some of the stuff on The Ninth Wave are so obscure lyrically, and yet people seem to know exactly what I'm trying to say. That's a great feeling. It stops me worrying about that aspect of songwriting--that someone somewhere knows exactly what you're trying to put into words.

Zwort: Do you have favourite lyric-writers, as opposed to "musical" songwriters?

Katie: I'm not sure you can separate the two, because once a word is sung, it can completely change its feeling to the point where you don't recognise the word any more--for me that is part of the fascination. But my favourite lyric just now is The Boy in the Bubble by Paul Simon. The chorus of that is totally brilliant, particualarly the line, "The way we look to the distant constellation that is dying in the corner of the sky." It's poetry, but the impact is the combination of the words with the music, and the way he sings it--it's so good. But quite often I mishear lyrics, and prefer my version to the real words when I find them out. I know a lot of people who have the same experience, and again we're back to what music means to the listener, or how they hear it. Music is a very special thing.

Zwort: Would you say that music is something religious, even holy to you?

Katie: Some of the most beautiful music ever was written for God, for a loved one, in a state of grief, sorrow, suppression--it seems to be an expression from a person on a higher level...? I'm not sure I understand it at all, but music seems to come out of people when very little else can. Some of the great composers wrote beautiful music but, as people, were monsters or maniacs. People who can't speak properly because of stutters can sing fluently. I saw a clip from a programme about a man who only had a short-term memory--he couldn't remember anything: what he'd just said, just done. He lived in a constant state of panic, buecause he didn't know where he was, or why he was there. It was terrifying. The only thing he could remember was he wife, and when he sat at the church organ at his local church he could sing a play complete pieces of music without any problems. It was like he'd suddenly been set free. And yet when he was shown a video recording of him doing this, he had no memory of it whatsoever. Music is a strange and beautiful thing. It means a great deal to me. I love listening to and making music. I am very lucky to be able to be involved with music--I hope I always will be.

Zwort: Do you think music comes from the soul? This is what some people believe.

Katie: I don't know. I just know that music is something special, and also something very personal for people.

Zwort: Going back to the obscurity of some of your songs that are personal to you, and how you feel people pick up on this-- can you give some detailed examples?

Katie: Mmmh, let me think.

Zwort: I'll make a cup of coffee and you have a think, cous'.

Katie: Rod--er, Zwort?

Zwort (from kitchen): Yeah?

Katie: Can I have tea?

Zwort: Yeah, sure--you English and your tea. It's so quaint! Can we have scones and I'll have tea too?

Katie: Sorry, haven't got any, but there's some fig rolls...

(ten minutes later...)

Zwort: Okay--teabreak over.

Katie: Right, back to your question. I think it works on the basis of: if it moves you, it could move others. Hitchcock was talking about his films and saying the best subjects for his films that were frightening were things that frightened him--like Vertigo. Apparently he was terrified of heights. It seems logical, doesn't it?

Zwort: Yeah, sure. Hitchcock was brilliant.

Katie: Yes, I agree, a genius. An engineer we were working with picked out the line in And Dream of Sheep that says 'Come here with me now.' I asked him why he liked it so much. He said, 'I don't know, I just love it. It's so moving and comforting.' I don't think he even knew what was being said exactly, but the song is about someone going to sleep in the water, where they're alone and frightened. And they want to go to sleep, to get away from the situation. But at the same time it's dangerous to go to sleep in water, you could drown. When I was little, and I'd had a bad dream, I'd go into my parents' bedroom round to my mother's side of the bed. She'd be asleep, and I wouldn't want to wake her, so I'd stand there and waid for her to sense my presence and wake up. She always did, within minutes; and sometimes I'd frighten her--standing there still, in the darkness in my nightdress. I'd say, "I've had a bad dream," and she'd lift bedclothes and say something like "Come here with me now." It's my mother saying this line in the track, and I briefed her on the ideas behind it before she said it. And I think it's the motherly comfort that this engineer picked up on. In fact, he said this was his favourite part of the album. Cloudbusting is, again, lyrically very obscure. I think the idea is easy to grasp, but the story behind it is very involved, and in a way the video that accompanies it is equally so, but I've spoken to several people who have felt very moved by the song or the video or both, and they all say they feel this really personal relationship between the child and his father, how real it seems, how sad it is. For me, that is wonderful--the book that originally inspired the song and video moved me so much! It's so sad, and it's also a true story, and somehow even if people don't understand the story, they pick up on the feelings, the emotions--this is a very rewarding experience for me.

Zwort: Did the writer of the book get to hear the song and see the video?

Katie: Yes. These were worrying moments for me--what if he didn't like it? If I'd got it wrong? But he said he found them very emotional and that I'd captured the situation. This was the ultimate reward for me

Zwort: Do you stay in contact?

Katie: Yes, we write to each other, and I enjoy the contact very much. Many people have tried to get this book [ A Book of Dreams, by Peter Reich], many have read it since and adore it. The trouble is, the book is out of print, and I think it's such a shame that it's unavailable for those that would love to read it. It's very difficult to find copies of it, though I understand that some libraries still carry it.

Zwort: How do you feel about The Whole Story? Were you against the release of a compilation album?

Katie: Yes, I was at first. I was concerned that it would be like a "K-Tel" record, a cheapo-compo with little thought behind it. It was the record company's decision, and I didn't mind as long as it was well put together. We put a lot of work into the packaging, trying to make it look tasteful, and carefully thought out the the running order. And the response has been phenomenal--I'm amazed!

Zwort: Careful, there's that word!

Katie: Surely I can say it once or twice. Everybody else does, and gets away with it--Zzzwort!!

Zwort: Only teasing. How do you feel about the video compilation?

Katie: Again, I was worried initially, because of the release of The Single File and Hair of the Hound, but with the opportunity of getting Experiment IV on it, and the record company being sure there was a market, I felt it could be a good idea. We spent a lot of work on Experiment IV, and because of it almost being an "adult" video, we were sure we'd have trouble getting it shown on TV.

Zwort: Did you have trouble getting it shown?

Katie: Yes. The video took a long time to make, and with having to write and record the single with the tightest deadlines I've ever had, the video was needed before we'd finished it. But we did get a minute clip ready in time to be shown when the single was charting, but Top of the Pops refused to show it, saying it was too violent! It's not violent at all, but we expected a response like this. Pop promos are in a very sensitive area. They're considered "family viewing", but there are many sexualy ambiguous videos shown on children's TV--yet this was considered too extreme. However, The Tube showed it in its entirety, and it's now showing at the cinema with a feature film, so we've made a sort of B-film!! That's quite exciting.

Zwort: I noticed that instead of the Wow video you've pieced together footage from the live shows. Why is this?

Katie: Two reasons, really. Firstly, I really don't like the promo we did for Wow. I think it's silly. And also, looking through the videos I noticed a great absence of "performance" promos, and the tour was an important part of the story. Also, it makes it a more interesting item for people who have some of the other videos. That way it's not just Experiment IV that is a new visual.

Zwort: I understand you directed this clip. How did it go, and why did you direct it?

Katie: Directing is a new experiment for me--actually, it was Experiment III--and with this track I had such strong visual ideas while I was writing the song that I wanted to give it another go. It's the first time the video and song have come together. It was very hard work, but a lot of fun.

We filmed in an old disused hospital, and the conditions were very cold and damp, but everyone got very involved and we had a great time.

The cast included Dawn French, Hugh Laurie, Richard Vernon, Peter Vaughan, Del, Paddy, Jay, Lisa and many friends. It was wonderful to work with people who I admire so much, and a very exciting experience. Paddy played the lunatic, and in every take his sounds were just as impressive as his visuals--I wish I'd put it onto tape. He literally "threw" himself into the part, and the crew were so impressed they applauded him--a great accolade!

Although this was the most complicated of my directions, it was so much easier for me because I appeared in it only briefly, so I could concentrate on being behind the camera, which I really enjoy. And it's so nice to involve the people I like--not only are they great performers, but they're good to be with.

There were some wonderful moments, like filming in East London. We had a field full of "dead bodies" who kept moving about to get more comfortable, so we had to shout out over a loud-hailer, "Stop moving--You're supposed to be dead!" And the music shop that we created for the shot [ Music For Pleasure ] was so realistic that passers-by kept popping in wanting to buy some of the instruments.

Zwort: How do you view the changes audially and visually on The Whole Story album and video?

Katie: I really like the idea of the album being available on video--I've always wanted to make a form of video album, but I never thought it would be a compilation!

I see two main changes, although I'm very subjective. Audially, the important step for me was production, which had led on to our own studio. The process is so much more personal because of this. On the first two albums all my arrangements were contained within the piano arrangement, which was the foundation, but which was then handed over to Andrew Powell as producer to interpret with his string arrangements. And the musicians and I worked in my backing vocals by playing the tapes over and over and singing along. But being producer I could put a lot less emphasis on the piano arrangement and interpret the song through other instruments onto tape, even playing around with the parts after the musicians had gone, and getting our own studio meant I could build up the song straight onto tape, keeping bits that worked and building up ideas even before the musicians came in.

Visually, I see a shift from being inspired by dance (Lindsay Kemp being a big influence), to filmic imagery (being influenced by all the films I love so much). I find the combination of film and music very exciting, and it's very rare for people to concentrate on both with equal concern--film-makers don't want the music to distract, and musicians don't want the visuals to be stronger than the music. But when it works, it's so powerful! For instance, The Wall, Singing in the Rain, Amadeus-- there are definitely people moving this way more and more. It's great.

Zwort: Wouldn't it be great to attack all the senses at once? To have film and music, sensurround fitted to the seats, scents filtered in through the air-conditioning--Yee-hah!

Katie: Oh, Cousin Rodney--that's what I love about you: you're so enthusiastic!

Zwort: It's Zwort!”.

I am going to dip back into the brilliant Gaffaweb, as I love Kate Bush’s writing for the Kate Bush Club. This one stuck out, as Bush asked questions that perhaps an interviewer would have asked in 1987. Looking back on Hounds of Love and the success of The Whole Story. It is great that she did this, and I imagine fans knew all along that Zwort Finkle is her pretending to be this American journalist. A name that makes her sound like someone from space. An alien! IUt is a wonderful interview where she actually is pretty open and humorous. A treat for fans at the end of 1987 that many today have not seen. Another reason why I love doing this series. A brilliant and distinct interview from and by…

A quirky and astonishing genius.

FEATURE: Birth of the Cool: Miles Davis at One Hundred: The Legacy and Influence of a Jazz Giant

FEATURE:

 

 

Birth of the Cool: Miles Davis at One Hundred

IN THIS PHOTO: Miles Davis, 1985/1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Anton Corbijn

The Legacy and Influence of a Jazz Giant

__________

BECAUSE the genius…

IN THIS PHOTO: Miles Davis in N.Y.C. in 1949/PHOTO CREDIT: Herman Leonard

and God-like Miles Davis would have turned a hundred on 26th May, I wanted to discuss his legacy and influence. In terms of the impact he had on music and wider culture. Perhaps he is still seen as niche or for Jazz lovers only. However, the variation of his music is incredible. One could not easily compare Birth of the Cool from 1957 to Bitches Brew from 1970. In 2022, Sounds of Life discussed the legacy of the Miles Davis. In terms of how he changed music, and the artists who followed who are clearly influenced by his music – Kendrick Lamar being among the most acclaimed:

“Miles Dewey Davis III was born in 1926 in Illinois. He started learning to play the trumpet at an early age, inspired by the creative atmosphere of St. Louis. In 1944, he entered New York’s Juilliard School of Music, where he started performing with some of the most well-known jazz musicians of the time.

From the end of the ‘40s to the end of the ‘50s, Davis recorded and played music extensively; he performed together with his legendary nonet, and in 1957 released Birth of the Cool under Capitol Records, his first major release and the one that led him to international recognition.

After recording and touring with his newly formed quintet, Davis released Kind of Blue in 1959, one of the most successful jazz albums in history. It was an instant success that skyrocketed Davis' career and made him a jazz icon.

Most musicians would consider this as the pinnacle of their career and start winding down thereafter, choosing not to explore new sounds but to stick with the ones that made them famous. However, that was never the case with Davis: the legendary trumpeter always tried to push the boundaries of his music. Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, he released almost 20 albums while constantly trying to blend and transcend musical genres.

Some of the albums Davis released at the time were not well received neither by critics nor by fans because they were considered too experimental and hard to follow. Looking back now, Davis was way ahead of his time, and it took us decades to fully understand the depth of his innovation and dedication to revolutionise contemporary music.

Miles Davis took a hiatus from recording and performing between 1975 and 1981. When he came back in the early ‘80s, he was a legend looking for new sources of inspiration, studying the latest technologies and sounds and implementing them in his songs. This final decade of his life proved to be another crucial chapter in Davis' career, defined by extensive experimentation, collaboration with artists across all genres, and relentless creativity.

The evolution of the Prince of Darkness

His ability to reinvent himself and draw inspiration from newer sounds to keep his style contemporary is nothing short of extraordinary. I can’t think of any other artist, in any discipline, who could be so inspired and inspiring for five decades.

If you skip through Davis’ discography on any music streaming service, you’ll hear influences from all possible music genres, from progressive rock to ambient to ethnic music. The variety and complexity of his output are mind-blowing and proof of Davis’ fundamental role in shaping modern music.

You can appreciate Davis’ chameleonic approach to composition since the early stages of his career – the period that led to the publication of Birth of The Cool. With his first commercially successful album, Miles Davis brought jazz closer to classical music with innovative and intricate arrangements that were unheard of at the time.

With his early works, Miles Davis elevated jazz music and upgraded the level of complexity this genre could achieve. Accompanied by an incredibly talented ensemble, Davis managed to be on top of the experimental scene while enjoying commercial success for many years.

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Miles Davis evolved once again and added the influences of rock, electronic and funk to his music. The result was albums that were often misunderstood or altogether ignored at first, only to become seminal works for the following generations of musicians.

An example is the fantastic On the Corner, an experimental album published in 1972 and largely ignored by fans and critics alike when it came out. On the Corner features elements of rock and funk music blended with Indian and African instruments, mesmerising rhythms and moments of pure genius.

It took listeners decades to appreciate the experimentations included in this album, which jumps from one musical genre to another with such nonchalance that it still inspires artists today.

In the final part of Davis’ career, which began at the end of his hiatus in 1981, his usual experimental output is alternated with more accessible works. Two major albums that define this era of Davis’ career are the Grammy-award winning Tutu, and Aura, the last album that was published while the trumpeter was alive”.

His compositions never felt artificial and forcefully experimental. Since the beginning of his career in the 1940s, Miles Davis was always able to reinvent his style according to modern influences while staying fundamentally true to himself. He never tried to please his audience; instead, he chose to push the boundaries of his style until a bridge with a new audience was created.

To thoroughly examine the career of Miles Davis would probably require years of study. The way he pushed the boundaries of jazz, bridging the gap between seemingly unreconcilable musical genres, is something no other musician has been able to do since his death.

His legacy comprises artists who have an avant-gardist approach to music composition. American trumpeter Christian Scott is among those who have been able to reprise the work of Davis and push it forward.

American rapper and producer Kendrick Lamar stated Miles Davis was one of his primary sources of inspiration while recording his pivotal 2015 album To Pimp A Butterfly.

Ambient producer Brian Eno cited Get Up With It as the album that inspired him the most while recording On Land, released in 1982.

Every genre Miles Davis touched in his five-decade career brought to life a new generation of artists who understood the importance of contamination and artistic evolution. The Prince of Darkness paved the way that jazz musicians are still following today: the ultimate testament to the creative restlessness of one of the most incredible musicians ever to exist”.

Last year, IOL celebrated Mile Davis at ninety-nine. As they note, Davis was a “cultural icon, sonic philosopher, and the shapeshifter of the 20th century’s musical identity”. Someone whose genius and innovation is still shaping music. On what would have been his one-hundredth birthday, I know that others will be exploring his legacy and genius. I think there are people who still turn their noses up at Jazz and define it with one thing. Look at an artist like Miles Davis, and he took Jazz in new directions. In terms of his evolution and experimentation. There will be an album for everyone:

“The Reluctant Genius

Miles Davis was not a man to explain himself. He played, and we listened. His genius lay in his ability to intuit what the times required musically, and to deliver it before the rest of us even knew we needed it. From his early bebop collaborations with Charlie Parker, through Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain, Bitches Brew, and into his later funk and fusion experiments, Miles never repeated himself.

He led, often in silence, with sunglasses on, back turned to the crowd, allowing the music to be the only sermon preached.

He understood music as motion. “Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there,” he said once. A mantra that could well be applied to social transformation and leadership. Miles believed in the becoming of things. That spirit of resistance to stasis is what makes him feel more alive today than most of the artists working now.

The revolutionary without a banner

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Miles Davis never positioned himself as a spokesman for Black America, yet his entire being was a refusal of subservience. He carried his dignity with an unyielding confidence, one that infuriated white America’s expectations of Black deference.

He dressed impeccably and challenged journalists, demanded equal pay, and lived large. He expected greatness and returned the favour by delivering it.

His presence in the civil rights era and later during the Black Power movement was more symbolic than vocal. Still, his art thundered louder than most speeches. Albums like On the Corner and Dark Magus were sonic revolts, full of dissonance, distortion, African polyrhythms, and urban edge. Prefiguring hip-hop, Afrobeat, and much of contemporary protest music.

In an era where artists are asked to use their platforms more responsibly, Miles Davis’s legacy urges them to understand that sometimes the most radical thing one can do is to refuse limitation, to make uncompromised art that challenges, confronts, and uplifts all at once.

The African connection

Although Miles Davis never physically set foot on the African continent, Africa pulsed through his work. From the modal compositions of Kind of Blue to the Afro-futuristic landscapes of Bitches Brew. His music mirrored the spirit of African improvisation: fluid, rooted in call and response, and resistant to strict Western forms.

In conversations with Bra Hugh, it became clear that Miles’s influence on African musicians was immense. Hugh often recalled how Miles encouraged him to find his sound, to stop trying to mimic the American jazz idiom and instead blend it with South African traditions.

That advice birthed masterpieces like Stimela and Grazing in the Grass. In this way, Miles did not merely influence Africa from afar, he catalysed a whole generation of African sonic self-determination.

Today, one hears echoes of Miles in the works of artists like Fela Kuti, Khaya Mahlangu, Manu Dibango, and even contemporary Afro-jazz and amapiano fusionists. His boundary-blurring sensibility fits perfectly with the spirit of Africa, where tradition and futurism walk hand in hand.

Lessons for the present

As we stare into the fog of modernity, with algorithms dictating taste, culture succumbing to trend cycles, and musicians often commodified before they are even seasoned, Miles offers crucial lessons:

• Evolve or Perish: Miles was never afraid to shed his skin. Artists, thinkers, and leaders alike must resist the temptation of nostalgia and embrace growth, however uncomfortable.

• Master Your Craft: He practised relentlessly. Miles reminds us that genius is not divine accident; it’s discipline, obsession, and listening deeply to the world.

• Silence Is Power: His pauses were as profound as his notes. In a world of noise, his restraint teaches the value of considered expression.

• Be Unapologetically You: Davis never pandered. He didn’t dilute his identity to please anyone. That kind of sovereignty, artistic and personal, is rare and urgently needed today.

• Mentor the Next Wave: From John Coltrane to Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter to Marcus Miller, Miles surrounded himself with brilliance and helped others soar. He knew leadership meant creating room for others to lead.

• There was a mysticism about Miles. He walked like he was from another realm. His raspy voice, his cryptic interviews, his love of painting, boxing, and silence, all made him something of a philosopher-artist.

He believed that music could heal, disturb, elevate, all in one phrase. His trumpet was an oracle. And for those of us who came to jazz through African ears, Miles was a griot of the future, reminding us that freedom isn’t a final destination but a constant state of improvisation”.

I want to finish off with Pollstar and their feature on Miles Davis at one hundred. There is so much more I could have brought in when it comes to Miles Davis and his music. However, I wanted to combine some features that explore his legacy and how he changed the musical landscape. As he would have celebrated a century on 26th May, many are reflecting on his rare brilliance and incredible talent:

“The surfeit of iconic musicians Davis collaborated with is astonishing: The Birth of the Cool Nonet (1949–1950) with Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, and Max Roach; First Great Quintet (1955–1958): John Coltrane (tenor sax), Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums). Later added Cannonball Adderley on sax. Kind of Blue Sextet (1959): John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans/Wynton Kelly (piano), Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb (drums). Second Great Quintet (1964–1968): Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass), and Tony Williams (drums). Known for post-bop and experimental, modal jazz. Fusion/Electric Period (Late 1960s–1970s): Included John McLaughlin (guitar), Chick Corea (keys), Joe Zawinul (keys), Dave Holland (bass), and Jack DeJohnette (drums), creating the groundbreaking Bitches Brew. 1980s Electric/Funk Group: Featuring Marcus Miller, Mike Stern, John Scofield, and Mino Cinelu, focusing on funk and pop-influenced rock.
Davis was musically omnivorous tastes and has cited influences from non-jazz artists like Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, and B.B. King. He played with a number of R&B/soul vocalists that included Chaka Kahn, Erykah Badu, Bilal and Leidisi as well as blues great John Lee Hooker and mega stars like Prince, Stevie Wonder and Sting. In April 1970, the Miles Davis Quintet famously opened for the Grateful Dead during a four-night run at the Fillmore West. His influence on contemporary is vast and includes a wide swath of hip-hop artists: The Notorious B.I.G., OutKast, J Dilla, Kendrick Lamar, Madlib and A Tribe Called Quest, who all sampled his work.

The various record labels that were stewards of Davis’ catalog are also part of the Centennial celebration. In January, Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, released Miles Davis – The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965, returning the landmark recordings to vinyl and CD for the first time in three decades. In addition, Universal Music Group’s Blue Note Records, Warner Music Group’s Rhino, and Concord’s Craft Recordings will issue a number of releases throughout the year.

“There’s tons of music for people to explore,” says Davis. “And since Miles’ catalog is spread out over four or five labels it gives people a chance to hear from different eras.”

Just ahead of the Centennial last September, Reservoir acquired 90% of Davis’ publishing catalog and rights and royalties from his recoded music. While a figure was not released, the purchase was reportedly estimated at $40 million to $60 million. And a strategic purchase due to the sync/licensing potential for film, TV and luxury brands and the global attention around the Centennial.

“It was both an honor and a privilege for Reservoir to acquire the Miles Davis catalog at such a pivotal moment,” says Golnar Khosrowshahi, Founder and CEO of Reservoir. “Together with the Davis Estate, we approached the Centennial as a celebration of his extraordinary legacy and an opportunity to bring Miles into new musical and cultural spaces, ensuring he continues to influence artists and inspire audiences for the next 100 years.”

The caretaker and artistic hand behind the live part of the Davis legacy is his nephew Vince Wilburn, Jr., drummer, producer and founder/bandleader of M.E.B. (Miles Electric Band) and a Miles’ band member in the 1980s. Wilburn played on and co-produced legendary albums including the Grammy-winning AURA, Decoy and You’re Under Arrest. As a producer, he spearheaded the biopic “Miles Ahead” and the Emmy-winning documentary “Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool.

“It was exciting being on the road and playing with Uncle Miles,” offers Wilburn. “Friends that I grew up with were in the band – Darryl Jones, Robert Irving III. We had a band in Chicago and being on the road meant being out with my friends and an icon. And what was amazing was the effect that Uncle Miles would have on audiences all around the world – in countries where they didn’t speak the language, but the music was universal.”

Touring since his late teens, Wilburn recalls watching Davis from behind the drum kit.

“The audiences were hypnotized,” Wilburn says. “He had a wireless mic so he could go across the stage. And you could feel the energy and the eyes following him wherever he was on stage.”

Today, the stellar M.E.B. ensemble is focused on anchoring major U.S. jazz festivals and cultural events including tastemaker Big Ears Festival March 29 in Knoxville, Tennessee; Jazz St. Louis on April 8; Santa Monica International Jazz Festival May 9; and the Atlanta Jazz Festival kickoff on May 22 before international dates in Winnipeg, Canada, and Budapest, Hungary this summer.

On Feb. 25, the band headlined “Miles Davis Night” at the Miami Beach Bandshell during Montreux Jazz Festival Miami. Davis performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland 10 times between 1973 and 1991. His final appearance was captured in the landmark recording Miles & Quincy: Live at Montreux. Davis died three months after the festival on Sept. 28, 1991.

“Uncle Miles loved going to Montreux and he loved Claude Nobs, they were tight. And Quincy Jones was a close friend of ours,” says Wilburn. “Quincy and Uncle Miles did the recording in Montreux and that was one of his last performances in 1991, so when were asked to be part of this, we were very honored.”

With M.E.B. performing alongside the stellar Kind of Blue Acoustic Band, the Miami Montreux tribute featured an array of special guests including Jojo, Lalah Hathaway, Maurice “Mobetta” Brown, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Ibrahim Maalouf and Sammy Figueroa who played with Davis and recorded on The Man with the Horn), backed by a breathtaking collection of Miles Davis alumni – Jones, Irving (aka Baabe), Munyungo Jackson and Jean-Paul Bourelly – with an array of jazz mavericks including Jason Kibler (aka DJ Logic), Greg Spero, Rasaki Aladokun, Antoine Roney and Keyon Harrold.

“We don’t want to be perceived as a tribute band,” says Wilburn. “We are just trying to have the audience experience our love for Uncle Miles and the musicians before us. This amazing music is our interpretation and we invite people to come with an open mind.”

Preserving the legacy while embracing the future is funneled through a single lens.

“We always say, ‘For the love of The Chief’ because that’s what we used to call Uncle Miles – affectionately The Chief,” confides Wilburn. “That’s in our heart, ‘For the love of The Chief.’” Through the efforts of M.E.B. and the Miles Davis Estate, an appreciation for The Chief is reaching new audiences and the next generation of trumpeters including Marquis Hill.

“When I reflect on the impact that Miles Davis has had on me, a wide range of thoughts and emotions surface,” says Hill. “But above all, one idea stands out – Miles embodies the archetype of pure originality. His originality wasn’t limited to sound – it extended to concept, composition, approach, bandleading and beyond. Through his work, Miles shows us that one of the most essential elements of this music is an unapologetic knowledge of self.”

Davis’ creative self-expression can be found throughout the Centennial, which runs through May 26, 2027. Managing the overall vision is The Miles Davis Estate, which is overseen by Davis’ daughter Cheryl Davis, her brother and Wilburn alongside General Manager Darryl Porter and Attorney Charles J. Biederman.

We Are (MIles’) Family: Erin Davis (Son of Miles Davis), Cheryl Davis (Daugher of Miles Davis) and Vince Wilburn Jr.(Nephew of Miles Davis) at the Miles Davis ‘The Art of Cool’ VIP Reception at the Napa Valley Museum on June 7, 2013 in Napa, California. (Photo by Earl Gibson III/WireImage)

The calendar is full of Estate-sanctioned events and various pop-up tributes honoring Davis as a cultural icon. This includes Laufey, the sublime Gen-Z Icelandic Chinese jazz vocalist whose helping revive jazz for a younger generation is giving her take on “Blue in Green” a seminal jazz ballad from the masterpiece Kind of Blue

Beyond music, Davis – who was ranked No. 1 on GQ’s list of Most Stylish Musicians of All Time – was the inspiration for Milan fashion label Off White’s March 5 fall show during Paris Fashion Week, titled “Mr. Davis.”

The estate is executive producing a feature film titled Miles & Juliette, starring Damson Idris (F1) as Miles Davis and Anamaria Vartolomei (Mickey 17) as Juliette Gréco. Directed and co-produced by Bill Pohlad, alongside producers Mick Jagger and Victoria Pearman, the film chronicles Davis’ first trip to Paris and his romance in the ‘40s and ‘50s with the city and the French singer/actress.

Perryscope, the Estate’s official global merchandising and brand licensing partner, has struck a deal with men’s premium retailer John Varvatos for Davis-themed apparel items.

Other partnerships include a recently released Lexus commercial featuring Davis’ Kind of Blue vinyl cover and a co-branded Miles Davis Centennial cigar lighting up later this year from premium cigar and accessories company Ferio Tego.

“We’ve always felt his music lines up so well with luxury items, the luxury lifestyle, the Miles lifestyle, if you will,” says Davis.

Simon & Schuster will publish a Centennial edition of Miles: The Autobiography. Originally published in 1989, the critically-acclaimed autobiography will be released with new cover and forwards to be revealed soon.

“Sometimes it’s a struggle to get it done,” says Davis of the effort behind curating the career-spanning Centennial. “But when it happens, it’s always beautiful.”

With his enduring impact on style and sound, it’s not surprising that a long list of cultural organizations, orchestras, jazz festivals and venues – from The Jazz Room in Charlotte, North Carolina, to Lincoln Center in New York – are planning tributes of their own including Carnegie Hall’s ongoing United in Sound: America at 250 series—to a Miles Davis-themed week of performances in San Francisco by SFJazz.

“Trumpeter Miles Davis was a pioneering and influential artist known for pushing the boundaries of jazz,” says Clive Gillinson, Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall. “He performed at Carnegie Hall eight times throughout his career, including his landmark 1961 concert with his close collaborator Gil Evans, which was recorded and released to wide acclaim as the live album Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall.”

Carnegie Hall will celebrate the Centennial May 8 with a United In Sound concert in Zankel Hall featuring Grammy-winning trumpeter and M.E.B. mainstay Keyon Harrold. Carnegie Hall and longstanding partner the iconic Apollo Theater will also present “Muted Genius: Celebrating Miles Davis at 100,” a weekend of film, music and conversation exploring Davis’ legacy in May.

“We’re delighted to feature these events as part of United in Sound – coming together to mark this important milestone and celebrate a quintessentially American artist,” adds Gillinson.

“We are very happy it’s being received so well,” Davis said of the way the greater industry is embracing the Centennial. “If they want us to be a part of it, we’ll try to be a part of it. If not, that’s ok, too. We’re just happy people are celebrating”.

Aside from articles being run, there is also radio coverage of his one-hundredth birthday. As Jazzwise write, there is going to be a week-long celebration of Miles Davis. I do think that anyone who has avoided his music or feel like they would not enjoy it needs to investigate it. Listen to a few of his albums.: “Highlights include Sound of Cinema (23 May, 4pm), focusing on Davis’s soundtrack for Louis Malle’s 1958 thriller Ascenseur pour L’Échafaud. On Sunday 24 May (4pm), Alyn Shipton presents Jazz Record Requests: Miles Davis at100, featuring newly remastered tracks from Ascenseur pour L’Échafaud and Birth of the Cool, plus interviews with former band members including bassist Dave Holland and guitarist George Benson. From Monday to Friday (4pm), Kate Molleson and US critic Nate Chinen explore Davis’s five-decade career in Composer of the Week, covering his early years, Kind of Blue, the Second Great Quintet (featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams), the electric fusion period, and his 1980s rebirth with bassist-producer Marcus Miller. Evenings bring The Essay: Miles Beyond (9.45pm) with writer Kevin Le Gendre examining Davis’s impact on politics, fashion and technology, plus ‘Round Midnight (11.30pm) hosted by Soweto Kinch featuring musicians Byron Wallen, Cassie Kinoshi, Marquis Hill and Emma Jean Thackray. Friday’s Late Junction (10pm) pairs trumpeter Laura Jurd with poet Anthony Joseph”. You can feel and hear Miles Davis’s influence on modern music. Artists from Hip-Hop, Jazz and beyond who owe a debt to him. This incredible musician is one of the most influential…

WE have ever seen.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Jyoty

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Asafe Ghalib

Jyoty

__________

THIS incredible D.J…

is currently on a North American tour. Someone who I would love to see and witness one of her sets, I am highlighting her, because I feel like she is one of the best and most inspiring D.J.s in the world. Although I cannot source any interviews from this year, there are some from last year. However, to start out, I am heading back to 2024. NYLON spoke with Jyoty (Jyoty Singh) and her incredible career. They note how “Her friends call her “Little Miss I Played It First” for a reason”. Sets that are so distinct and original, she stands out from her peers. There are sections of the interview I want to drop in:

“If you had an “about me” section on your website, what would it say?

It’s so funny because there is a bio in my press kit, [and] every time I see it, I get so cringey. “She’s built up on a following around the world because of her...” I get it, but no. I would say my “about me” is just, I am a big music fan and a big music consumer. And through the trajectory of what the universe wanted, I have now become a bit of a chaotic human algorithm of putting listeners in touch with artists. That’s the best way I could put it.

You grew up in the Netherlands. What were the club, music, and nightlife scenes there like?

It was amazing. I started clubbing when I was 15, I think. [I was] in a city that is a main stop for many touring artists. We have a lot of smaller venues, and that’s how I got into clubbing. I started going to more hip-hop, rap, dancehall, R&B parties. Around 18, I fell into electronic music through U.K. garage, then fell into two-step and dubstep, and next thing you know, I was going to techno raves.

Does it still feel fun for you to find new stuff?

Every day when I find an actual new banger, [I] get a rush. My friends call me “Little Miss I Played It First.” It’s a rush seeing a crowd react to a song they’ve never heard before, and you know they’ve never heard it before because either it was sent to you or [you] found it on SoundCloud, and it only had 200 or 300 plays.

I’m glad you mentioned TikTok. What are your thoughts about DJing and how it lives on the platform?

I will very honestly say that you can blow up on TikTok, and we’re seeing that with DJs. I went viral on TikTok before I even had a TikTok account; someone posted a clip of my Boiler Room [set], and it went viral. And it’s great until it’s no longer great. Everyone films their sets now. Everyone’s playing drop after drop after drop. The groove is slowly disappearing amongst the TikTok DJs. But I think pre-going-viral, it’s a great way for DJs to experiment, to play, and to get their sound out”.

Let’s move to NOTION and their interview from last August. Speaking with the sensation Jyoty, they sat how “Whether she’s behind the decks or putting together an outfit, Jyoty is all about keeping you guessing. Never playing by the rules, we chat about producing her own music, opening doors for the next generation and finding her own sense of style”. One of the most extensive interviews with Jyoty, last year was a huge one for her:

“Jyoty herself is approaching a decade behind the decks: a milestone she half-jokingly considers the minimum requirement before she can actually call herself a DJ. But don’t let the modesty fool you. Over the last few years, she’s been everywhere, from setting stages alight with genre-hopping sets to launching Homegrown – her own club night where she books the acts, promotes the party, and shuts it down on the decks.

And yet, when we connect on a late afternoon video call, what hits hardest isn’t her resume, it’s her humility. She leans into the screen with the kind of warmth that cuts through WiFi lag. “I think it’s an older generation thing,” she says, musing on the art of DJ etiquette. “My whole heritage is radio. I’m part of a generation that, as a party-goer, you adapt. If the DJ after you plays slower, you meet them at the end of your set.”

But if you’re trying to predict where Jyoty’s set will end, good luck. Her sonic journeys are anything but linear. One moment it’s an Afrobeat-laced dancehall groove, the next it’s 140 BPM mayhem; R&B slides in; grime crashes through. Then, out of nowhere, a Punjabi radio belter flips the switch.

For Jyoty that eclecticism isn’t strategic, it’s instinctual. “I don’t play sounds leading with intentions,” she says. “It’s organic.” Born and raised in west Amsterdam to Punjabi Indian parents, Jyoty’s musical universe was never small. She grew up hustling, waiting tables at her dad’s restaurant at 11, blowing up her mum’s phone bill with MTV request lines before school, sneaking into clubs as a teenager with military precision, and working at a sneaker store, where a parallel love for streetwear was born.

Later came London: university – a master’s degree in political science and philosophy – then office jobs and executive assistant roles. But everything changed when she found herself at Rinse FM. She pitched her own show, landed a Thursday afternoon slot, and started building a cult following that would soon spill offline. In 2019, the internet caught fire over a chaotic, electric Boiler Room carnival special set and Jyoty became a household name, for a set she’s still unsure about. “I can’t even listen back to it,” she laughs, half-embarrassed. “Technically, I didn’t know how to DJ at that time. It sounded so bad. No one expected it to blow up like it did and suddenly I was having to explain to the world, ‘Hey, that’s not even my real sound.’”

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Rorison

What remains consistent – regardless of the city or the crowd – is that Jyoty plays music with roots. Her sets aren’t meticulously scripted; instead, she selects tracks based on instinct, mood, and cultural resonance. There’s a reverence in the way she DJs, a deep respect for the sounds and scenes that raised her, always paying homage to the source. That same energy fuels her mission to lift others up. She’s constantly plugging rising talent on her socials, booking them at Homegrown, and now teaming up with us, eBay and All Points East to hand the aux to the next wave. One lucky DJ will share a bill with Chase & Status, Nia Archives and Jyoty herself alongside many more notable names, a chance that could change everything.

However, if you thought Jyoty was settling into her spot at the top, think again. As she gears up to turn 35 this month, she’s charging headfirst into a new frontier: production. After sitting in sessions as an executive producer, she had a revelation: ‘Why direct from the sidelines when I could produce myself?’ So she called up her best friend back in Amsterdam and began learning from scratch, a process she describes as transformative: “It’s made me appreciate music in a totally different way. I’m doing it for the love of it, rather than anything else,” she says.

The result is two self-produced EPs set to release later this summer. One’s a sweaty late-night ode to club culture, the other a more intimate exploration of her love for R&B. She’s candid about the uncertainty that comes with releasing something so personal, but she also recognises the creative growth it brings. “I’m not sure how I feel about it yet, but all my friends who have been making music longer than me say that you don’t really improve until you’ve actually released your work. That’s when you learn the most.”

You’ve picked up gems and influences from cities across the world, but what’s your personal connection to secondhand fashion? How have past jobs, travels, or even growing up shaped your love for pre-loved style?

If you ask any stylists I work with, they would all tell you about my love for particular vintage designer items. I collect a lot of Prada, Tom Ford, Gucci, as well as items from Moschino, [Roberto] Cavalli and Versace all usually from the nineties to early noughties. If you go into my wardrobe, you’ll see that I own more pre-loved items than anything else. Over the years, I’ve been building up my collection of vintage items from around the world. Now, I’d much rather go shopping in a vintage store than a high-street store.

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Rorison

Of course, authenticity has always been at the core of your artistry. Why is authenticity so central to your journey, and why does it matter now more than ever?

Everyone I look up to who may be described as being “authentic” is just doing what feels natural to them. They’re doing their own thing, changing as the tides change with them and not being swayed in every direction. I think people find me authentic because I never know what I’m doing and I let people know that. I’m figuring out things as I go. I never have the answers and I never pretend to have them. I’m constantly looking back at myself thinking ‘What the fuck was I doing?’ and I share that with people. In my music sometimes there is no deeper story and that is what’s authentic. I’m not romanticising what I do and I’m vocal about that. I have a lot of peers in the industry who are very reserved and let their work speak for themselves as the proof is in the pudding. I find that really authentic.

Your unpredictable sets are what you’re known for, but there’s always something unmistakably you in the mix. What’s the thread that ties every Jyoty set together, no matter where you’re playing?

Over the last few years, I haven’t prepped a single set. I make a folder based on new tracks that have come out in the city that I’m performing in, but that’s it. I don’t prep material as sonically I’ve changed so much over the years. Take my first Boiler Room set in 2019, I was only two years into DJing. Technically, I didn’t know how to DJ at that time. It sounded so bad. No one expected it to blow up like it did and suddenly I was having to explain to the world, ‘Hey, that’s not even my real sound.’

I’ve built an audience that knows my sets are always full of surprises. You never quite know what to expect, and if you want to keep up, you’ll have to follow along to hear the sounds I’m currently into. That said, I always tailor my sets to fit the time and place I’m performing. If I’m on at 3pm at a festival, I’m going to look at the DJs directly before and after me and fit perfectly in the middle. But if you see me in the same city at 10pm that day, I’m going to sound completely different.

Not many DJs would take the time to blend in so thoughtfully, what makes that important to you?

I think it’s a lot of an older thing. My whole heritage is radio. I’m part of a generation that, as a party-goer, you adapt. If the DJ after you plays slower, you meet them at the end of your set. There is always a little courtesy. I only do that because it happened to me when I was younger. But often I go on after a newer DJ who plays super hard. I don’t care if they play super hard. You do you, I’ll just reset the room. It’s not a make or break for me, but it makes me feel more comfortable when I keep it in mind for the next act.

You’ve come such a long way, and it sounds like you’re still just getting started in some ways. What’s keeping you inspired right now, and where do you hope the road takes you next?

I have no clue what next year looks like or the short-term future. But what I do know is that I still love being a DJ. Personally I have to hit the 10-year mark before I decide it’s not for me. I can’t tell you what kind of DJ I am as I’m still figuring that out stylistically. I see myself furthering my work as a producer over the next few years and hopefully returning to my Rinse FM show. I know that I’m not going to be erased from my DJ roots if I keep on creating, advancing and consuming within the scene. As long as I’m on the dancefloor I’m going to be contributing something of value behind the decks”.

In another incredible and deep interview, DJ Mag spent some time with a remarkable D.J., artist and producer. A force of wonder who has been unstoppable over the past few years, her uncategorisable sound and energy-filled sets has made her such a celebrated D.J. Jyoty spoke with DJ Mag about “diversifying dancefloors, the difficulties of internet fame, and her mission to change the accepted narrative of how to be a successful artist in 2025”:

“She’s also been going through the daunting task of putting her producer hat on. She’ll be releasing a double EP towards the end of September, a total of 10 tracks that she’s developing as we speak. It’s not just music for the dancefloor, she says, rather an outline of the styles that have shaped her thus far: five “soulful” tracks, all downtempo and lovey-dovey, matched with another five “club tunes”, all higher BPM, with heavy percussion, featuring hand-picked vocalists, and even some of her own vocals.

The release will not be completely unfamiliar; she’s dropped snippets in her radio shows on Rinse FM and NYC’s the Lot, as well as earlier versions during her club sets. And she isn’t new to the studio by any means, sitting in on sessions, and writing and producing with some of the world’s biggest names (though she wouldn’t dare put them in print).

She’s spent time honing her craft: piano lessons (she is nearing Grade 3), vocal lessons for the snippets of her singing that grace her tracks, and using Logic. “I was actually more interested in the songs that most people wouldn’t play in their DJ sets,” she shares. “I’ve been working on other people’s music for a while now: writing, co-producing, executive producing. Then I started moving more into the direction of music that feels closer to home.

“There are these ways people construct songs, and they all kind of live in different worlds after they get put out. Suddenly you go into the framework of all the songs you used to listen to as a kid, like all the R&B and soul song structures — these toolboxes that people use to approach making them. Like, ‘Oh wait, there’s a pre-chorus — how do I think of a pre-chorus?’ And then, ‘This is where a bridge goes’. I wanted to learn how to make a song in that way; that really took my interest.”

It’s this kind of pure artistic intention that balances out the star bookings and insatiable audience demand. For example, her time in NYC saw her perform all night at Bushwick’s Nowadays — one of her most enjoyable sets to date, she says. Though she’s been through countless venues even prior to her start in music, the tiny 350-cap club remains one of her favourites to spin in.

She’s the type of person to take note of the “feng shui” of the club, she says: where the bar sits in relation to the dancefloor, if the walkways make sense. Her love for Nowadays is in the little things: the club’s impeccable soundsystem, peak-intimacy size, no filming policy — a rarity in our clip-obsessed times — and its community of music-lover staff and attendees, who appreciate the peculiarities of creating a good listening space.

The journey to becoming that person has been a long one. Jyoty’s parents emigrated from Punjab to Amsterdam in the '80s, raising her in Bos en Lommer, in the west of the city. The word she continually uses to describe her upbringing is “diverse”. It was a majority Arab neighbourhood populated by Morroccans and Turks, “very working class, immigrant-heavy. I remember the first school class I was in, there was one white kid in the school picture,” she laughs. “That’s the neighbourhood that I came from.” This in turn bled into her musical upbringing. She’d take in Moroccan and Surinamese music attending the weddings of her neighbours, soak in the Netherlands’ trademark bubbling genre traversing the streets of her area, as well as the Caribbean and West African music popular with the local Black community.

Most of Jyoty’s future dreams don’t revolve around winning more accolades. She has goals of course: she’s keen to get involved in music supervision, scoring for film and TV, and of course, continuing her journey producing and working on her craft (she has a third EP ready to go, she says). But her main aim is still to recalibrate those opinions that attempt to pin artists and DJs like her down. Much of this is in changing the idea of what it means, feels or looks like to be a DJ — that you don’t have to be the youngest in the room, go viral everyday, be a white man, or release music (unless you want to, of course).

“I just want to keep showing people that you don’t have to subscribe to all these new made-up rules!” she says. “‘Oh, you have to release music to grow as a DJ’. Why? I’ve played with Ben UFO 20 times in the last month, and neither of us have released music. “Whatever I do, I just want to keep proving to people that you can choose to inhabit a lane within music, as long as you accept the consequences. I accepted that if I’m not going to keep posting clips that are going to be viral, [newer people will only discover me] in person and not so much online. That’s fine, and I’m happy with that. I think where things go wrong is where you want something, and you don’t want to also accept the consequences of those decisions. But I think it’s really important to just protect your sanity in this industry. And it’s working. I’m super happy in this moment, and I couldn’t have said that two years ago”.

I am going to end with ELLE Singapore. They interviewed Jyoty about her Asian tour and creative process. The final interview I am bringing in is fantastic. ELLE Singapore highlighted an incredible D.J. who revealed her “pre-show rituals and what she's looking forward to when she returns to Singapore”:

“Radio presenter and all-round cool girl, Jyoty Singh had zero intentions of becoming a DJ—and yet, she's one of the hottest names in music right now. It all started eight years ago when she responded to requests to mix at live shows after building a solid fanbase through her show on Rinse FM. One thing led to another, and then she found herself on the decks. Her first show may have fell flat, but that didn't stop her. Fuelled by this new-found passion, Singh decided to equip herself with the skills and knowledge required to succeed in this field—and she did. Enter JYOTY, the stage name Singh now goes by, a TikTok-viral Boiler Room phenomenon and internationally celebrated DJ whose genre-bending sets break new ground in electronic music and global club culture.

The 35-year-old Dutch-Indian, who grew up in West Amsterdam in the 90s with an appreciation for music of all type, has gone on to perform at renowned nightlife hubs such as Good Room in New York, Music Box in Lisbon, and Razzmatazz in Barcelona. As she jets across the globe, performing her genre-defying sets, she also makes it a point to give back to the community. For instance, she hosted a DJ workshop for women in Calcutta with the British Council and Wild City, an Indian music company, and a six-week course for young British Asian women aspiring to break into the industry.

What’s your creative process like?

Leaving everything to the very last minute, freaking out, having a mini meltdown, not sleeping, flinging it together in panic, handing it in, and never looking at it again. Unfortunately, that’s been the process since forever. I’ve accepted that that’s just how I work, and it’ll never change.

What’s been your biggest ‘pinch me’ moment so far?

Every single week, it’s something new. Whether spinning in a country, meeting a specific individual, a DM, a magazine article, a cover, an invitation, a crowd... the list goes on. This month, it's probably realising that I’ve finally made some songs that I enjoy listening to, and that at almost 35 years old, I still have the freedom to pick up new skills and work on them as part of my job. Unreal.

Your 2025 Asia Tour is bringing you back to Singapore. What are you looking forward to seeing or doing when you arrive on our shores?

Enjoying some chicken rice and fresh juice, please and thank you!

How do you want people to feel after they leave one of your sets?

Like they got whatever it was they needed from that night. For some, that could be the wildest night of their life, while for others, it's just relaxing in a back corner, discovering new sounds and bopping their head. Maybe it was to make an ex jealous, perhaps to escape stress from work, to scream and smile, or to shed a tear and wake up not remembering anything. Whatever you need, I've got you!”.

I shall wrap things up there. I do think that we will get more music and incredible output from Jyoty. She is touring North America right now. I would be interested catching a set if she is playing in the U.K. anytime soon. The buzz around her sets and her sound makes her an understandable modern-day great. A D.J. queen I was eager to spotlight, go and show love and support…

FOR the wonderous Jyoty.

__________

Follow Jyoty

PHOTO CREDIT: Sable Studio

Official:

https://jyoty.co.uk/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/jyoty

Twitter:

https://x.com/becausejyoty

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/BecauseJyoty/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5yniF5litJGW61RAUeO3Mw?si=NX37wZ-JT9iy3wxQLyPDcw

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/c/JyotySingh

FEATURE: Spotlight: Any Young Mechanic

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Any Young Mechanic

__________

EVEN though there are not…

many interviews online with the great Any Young Mechanic, I did want to spotlight them here. However, as they recently played the NME Stage at The Great Escape, they were highlighted. A band that you need to know about. In this NME feature, we get to know more about this incredible Australian band:

“Conceived in Adelaide’s intimate DIY scene, the group’s barnstorming, life-affirming folk demands to be seen live. The acoustic guitar, banjo and violin are their killer weapons, cut from the same cloth as Sports Team’s sarcastic pub-rock or “Black Country, New Road playing early Fleet Foxes songs”, in the words of drummer Jay Eliot Mee. The band world of south London that spawned BC, NR leaves a telling influence on the five-piece, who emphasise immediacy and imperfection more than committing to any particular sound.

‘There’s A New Place On The Market’ transforms a haunted house into a folk fairytale, while the playful high-tempo of ‘My House Divides’ is a certified bouncer, as meandering vocalist Sam Wilson babbles about pinot grigio and dog groomers. Both songs are taken from June’s incoming debut album ‘The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot’, a title that sums up the vivid lyrical anecdotes scattered throughout. Now, they sail into Brighton on the back of latest single ‘Captain and Compass’, a hearty folk anthem readymade for the seaside.

“We are always trying to make music that confronts the world of today, and for us, that means emphasising liveness and the human quality of our music,” adds Mee. That’s a message we can get on board with and one you can receive straight from the horse’s mouth at the NME Stage”.

You need to follow Any Young Mechanic. This article provides a little more depth about this tremendous quintet. I am new to their work, so I am sort of playing catch up. After playing in the U.K., thewy have caught the eye of many who were unaware of them previously. I do hope that they come and play here more in the future:

“The band consists of Sam Wilson (vocals), Jachin Mee (drums, backing vocals), Thea Martin (violin and multi-instrumentalist), Allan McBean (double bass) and Luka Kilgariff-Johnson (guitar, banjo). They met while studying at the Elder Conservatorium in Adelaide, where they honed their musicianship and developed a shared curiosity for exploring sound beyond traditional boundaries. Influenced by Adelaide’s close-knit DIY scene as well as the new wave of British alternative music, Any Young Mechanic do not simply replicate folk traditions — they reinterpret them for the present day.

Their debut album, “The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot”, was recorded in an almost documentary fashion, with the band playing together live in the studio, without edits or heavy production interventions. The result is a record marked by organic cohesion and immediacy, while the songs retain breadth, dynamic range and strong narrative depth. It is contemporary folk that feels both fresh and timeless”.

On 5th June, The Modern Show Is Ruining the Foot is out. I would urge everyone to check out the album. You can tell that Any Young Mechanic are going to be around for a very long time. Their songwriting so fresh and affecting. How you listen to their songs and you can instantly tell it is them. Lines and moments that stay with you for hours.

Bringing raw and imperfect human moments back to the Folk scene, Atwood Magazine talked with Any Young Mechanic in April. I do hope that everyone connects with this exciting band. One that I would like to see play live soon. There are a couple of other U.K. dates coming from the band. They play The Shacklewell Arma on 31st May before playing at the Elephant’s Head on 2nd June. Their upcoming album is going to be extraordinary: “Frontman Sam Wilson describes the record as an attempt to move beyond folk’s more predictable tendencies. “We are trying to make folk music for now,” he says. “Turning it on its head in a new, sometimes uncanny way, because we don't want to just do the old thing again”:

“This push and pull – between openness and obstruction, intimacy and distance – sits at the heart of “There’s a New Place on the Market.” The refrain circles back with a pleading insistence: “What have you got to hide / I only want to know you well,” a line that reads as both personal and political, aimed as much at another person as it is at the systems that shape the world around them. And yet, for all its lyrical weight, the band never lose sight of movement – the song “staggers onwards,” as they describe it, carried by a steady pulse that keeps it from collapsing under its own gravity. It’s this balance – live musicianship, emotional clarity, and a willingness to let imperfections breathe – that makes the track feel so fully alive, capturing the essence of a band that thrives in the space between control and release.

In candid conversation, vocalist and guitarist Sam Wilson admits that it’s been three long years since he first wrote this song, as well as much of the band’s record. “I know that I’d been listening to a lot of Pavement around the time of writing, and that it’s very hard to live in Adelaide without thinking about the con of the real estate market in some way,” he reflects.

The same raw immediacy, the same fascination with space, identity, and modern dislocation runs through the band’s growing catalog, each song adding new contours to the world they’re building. “Snug Barber” arrived first in a burst of wiry, off-kilter energy, its jagged imagery and uncanny phrasing (“Your bin bag is filled with razors / Rusted, snapped or blunt”) introducing a band unafraid to embrace mess, humor, and emotional contradiction all at once. It’s playful on the surface, but there’s a deep tenderness tucked inside its chaos – a belief, repeated like a mantra, that even in disarray, “you’re cut out for love.”

That emotional thread stretches and shifts across the subsequent singles. The feverish “My House Divides” leans into a more urgent space as violins sear and soar throughout, its lyrics tracing intimacy through shared domestic imagery before fracturing into multiplicity – “When my house divides… yours multiplies” – a line that feels both surreal and softly crushing, hinting at how connection can splinter just as easily as it forms.

Meanwhile, desire, disillusionment, and absurdity collide head-on in the dreamy “Pretty Strange World”: “I want a chest packed with loot… I want more than you,” Sam Wilson sings, before pulling back to question the very systems feeding that hunger – “what you’re selling me seems much too cheap.” Across these songs, Any Young Mechanic hone their perspective with each step, expanding their palette while holding tight to the same core impulse: To examine the structures we live inside – homes, markets, relationships, expectations – and expose the fragile, human truths hiding underneath.

“We love to play live. We love to play in the room. We love to make mistakes and listen back and see how they punctuate our recordings,” Luka Kilgariff-Johnson asserts. “This record has no overdubs, no stitched takes, what you hear is what was played, flubs and all. I think the record encapsulates the spirit of our approach to making music as a collective, and is a pretty honest document of how we sound, whether that be live, in-studio or otherwise.”

Zooming out, The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot reads like a document of process as much as it does a debut – a record shaped by proximity, trust, and the friction that comes from five people learning how to move as one. These songs don’t chase perfection; they preserve it in motion, holding onto the cracks, the hesitations, the fleeting moments where instinct takes over and the music breathes on its own. Across its growing preview, the album reveals itself as a study in modern discomfort – how we live, what we inherit, and the quiet negotiations we make with the systems surrounding us – all filtered through a band intent on keeping the human element front and center.

That intention runs deeper than aesthetic. As Sam Wilson shares, “The album is important to me as an attempt to explore the ways in which I feel uncomfortable with aspects of modernity. I tried to explore that discomfort without the cliche of turning towards conservatism. How do you express your discomfort with technology as a progressive? We’re in an unusual time where a good chunk of technology represents harmful desires from a few powerful people. For a long time (especially in music), technological advancement and artistic progress were ubiquitous. Now I’m not so sure.”

Every note feels inhabited, every line delivered with the weight of five people listening to one another in real time, responding, adjusting, trusting the moment enough to let it unfold as it is. There’s a rare kind of closeness at the heart of these songs – a warmth that doesn’t smooth over the rough edges, but embraces them, letting the frayed threads show. That rawness isn’t incidental; it’s the point. It’s what gives their music its pulse.

In a landscape increasingly shaped by precision and polish, The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot stands as a reminder of what can happen when artists choose presence over perfection. These songs breathe. They stretch. They leave room for error, for instinct, for the fleeting magic that only exists when people are truly in sync with one another. And in doing so, Any Young Mechanic offer more than a debut – they offer a feeling: that music, at its core, is still a shared, human act.

That sense of presence – of five people meeting each moment as it comes – runs through every corner of Any Young Mechanic’s music, grounding even their most abstract ideas in something deeply felt and unmistakably human. It’s what makes their songs linger, not just as compositions, but as lived experiences captured in real time”.

This is a big moment for Any Young Mechanic. Their debut album is out on 5th June. I feel that The Modern Shoe Is Ruining the Foot will be among this year’s best debuts. A magnificent offering from a group that you have to listen to. The minute that you hear their phenomenal music, when you finishing hearing their songs, they will remain long…

IN your thoughts.

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Follow Any Young Mechanic

PHOTO CREDIT: Nash Blight

Official:

https://www.anyyoungmechanic.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/anyyoungmechanicband

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/p/Any-Young-Mechanic-61576232785195/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/49uksCFEefMvzh3YRMnZmf?si=LE1ek1w9TZOCXgFd5j4Bwg

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@anyyoungmechanic

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@anyyoungmechanic

FEATURE: Spotlight: Iona Luke

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Iona Luke

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THIS artist is someone…

PHOTO CREDIT: Daisy Dickinson

that you really need to hear. I have not featured Iona Luke yet, though she is a tremendous talent. Having recently played Brighton’s The Great Escape, Iona Luke is primed for great things. Her recent single, Existential, is extraordinary. I want to come to a few interviews with one of our brightest talents. I am going to come to a few interviews with her. In terms of her background, she studied English at Magdalene College. However, her path into music started way before now. Iona Luke started songwriting at thirteen as a member of the prestigious Capital Children’s Choir. This incredible musicianship is going to be a big name soon enough. Apologies if I bring in any interviews that repeat what comes before. I am starting out with Varsity and their chat with the incredible Iona Luke:

“Like many, COVID-19 and its subsequent lockdowns were transformative for Iona. Via an online cover posted with the Capital Children’s Choir, she was noticed by Lana Del Rey in her first ever TikTok. She honed her craft of songwriting during the pandemic, deciding to take a gap year and gig in London, before being met with either the choice of the Royal Northern College of Music or Cambridge University.

After listening to her two singles, ‘Seventeen’ and ‘Violence’, it seems that this praise is entirely warranted. With powerhouse vocals and unmatched musicality, Iona is unafraid to redefine herself and be led by her artistic impulses. “Genre in itself is a made-up thing,” she told me, expressing that the only effect it has is, if an artist releases music of two different genres, it can be algorithmically detrimental to pulling in new listeners. Asking Iona if I could interview her, I never knew I would be talking algorithms in the Arc Café, but this evidences her dedication to her craft.

In her songwriting, Iona manages to capture a memory or feeling which is perhaps unique to her but, such is her skill, makes it applicable to all listeners. “The best songwriting is simultaneously specific and universal,” she said, highlighting that the more times you listen to a song, the more interpretations can be made, even within the same words. Iona agreed that the best kind of songwriters are the ones that can condense a large and complex concept into a single line, stating that “a picture says a thousand words.”

This can especially be seen in her song ‘Violence,’ which I interpreted as a song about a toxic love. In fact, Iona did not write it as such, making it intentionally applicable to many situations. “Most of my songs are not love songs,” she said, which I appreciated, as there are far more stories to be told than simply those of romance. Instead, Iona focuses on evoking a specific feeling and letting the listener do the rest.

Admittedly I, in probably constituting most of her streams, have well and truly been doing the rest. Nevertheless, Iona is no stranger to impostor syndrome, comparing herself to those who are younger and doing what she does now. On a positive note, she highlighted that artists like Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan (among others) are changing the approach labels are taking towards emerging artists.

“Social media has been teaching me good lessons in not caring, especially in a bubble like Cambridge”

She remarks that, for a period of time, TikTok changed the game where if a creator had a viral moment, they would be signed, meaning they did not think about the long game. These artists, however, have been working on their craft for years, redefining both what it means to be successful and the timeline for this success. Iona’s perspective on these artists, and others that she is inspired by, has clearly influenced her approach for the better.

“Social media has been teaching me good lessons in not caring, especially in a bubble like Cambridge,” she said, commenting on how her confidence has improved with practice both in performance and songwriting. This has also been helpful in finding her place in the industry, where writing so many songs has, in itself, streamlined her sound. Slow and steady wins the race, with Iona joking: “I’m not in a rush to be successful.” Still, I’m manifesting that critical acclaim and masses of popularity come quickly so that I can scream “this is not what I wanted / this is not what I need” (from ‘Violence’s’ killer outro) at a live event”.

I do hope that a lot more mainstream or bigger publications spotlight Iona Luke. Even if these are relatively new days for her in terms of releasing music, you know that she has the talent to go very far. I will jump to RTÉ and their interesting conversation. I am especially looking forward to a debut album. It will be fascinating seeing what comes next for Iona Luke:

“23-year-old Iona studied English literature at Cambridge University, while simultaneously building her career as a songwriter, signing a publishing deal with the B Unique record label and performing across the UK.

"In a madly oversaturated music space, figuring out where you stand and what you have to say is scary stuff," she says.

"When I had to decide whether I'd be 'Iona' or 'Iona Luke,' I repeated my name in my head too many times and had the mini existential collapse we all get when a word suddenly looks a bit funny.

Tell us three things about yourself . . .

A pretty defining moment for me so far was when Lana Del Rey created a TikTok account during Covid and her first video was of her singing along with my cover of Bel Air. For the first time I felt like I might be able to be a musician successfully, in a capacity that was more than a pipe dream. I cried for an embarrassingly long time after seeing it, and didn't actually have TikTok at the time, so I guess the social media side of my music journey started there.

I’m not sure if anyone other than me (and a few hardcore Patti Smith fans) would find this interesting, but I wrote my university dissertation on Smith’s work. To give a whistle-stop tour of it, the essay challenged the outdated (often gendered) tendency to read her songwriting and poetry as autobiography, rather than allowing it to be art and treating it with the same critical attention afforded to the contemporary male artists such as Bob Dylan, Lou Reed or Jack Kerouac.

Who are your musical inspirations?

My musical inspiration comes from a massive number of different people. I’ve always loved my ladies; Stevie Nicks, Beth Gibbons, PJ Harvey, Lana Del Rey and Patti Smith, but there are also some 90s bands like Massive Attack and singers with slightly quieter energy, like Elliot Smith and Jeff Buckley, that I really admire. I’m also inspired by poets that feel inseparable from music to me, such as Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson and W.B. Yeats. There’s some art that inspires me a lot too, I love Dante Rossetti and Salvador Dalí.

What was the first gig you ever went to?

The first gig I went to was The White Stripes at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, my parents took me and it was amazing. Jack White smashed his guitar and I thought I saw God. To this day Icky Thump is the song I listen to when I’m walking somewhere and I’m nervous, it’s a perfect strut song.

What was the first record you ever bought?

The first vinyl I bought was Norman F***ing Rockwell! by Lana Del Rey. It’s an unbelievable album, controversially I think it’s her best, though that involves me in a big Lana debate I’m not sure I’m ready for”.

I am finishing up with Mystic Sons. Getting to know Iona Luke and her background is really interesting. In terms of artists she admires, I do hope she gets to share the stage with Patti Smith and Stevie Nicks one day! It does sound like music was an early part of her life. Rather than copy her idols and those she heard young, Iona Luke has carved out her own identity:

“What was the first instrument you fell in love with?

Piano. Specifically the dark, atmospheric piano in Romantic music. My favourite thing to do is sit on the tube with a book and listen to the Romantics. It’s a bit basic but Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata is one of the greatest things to ever grace my ears; proof of the fact that some things are popular because they’re just damn good.

What kind of music did you love when you were younger?

When I was really young (10 and under) I loved any music that featured huge female vocals. I was obsessed with Beyonce, Adele, Rihanna, Gaga. All of those singers were why I started singing, if you could call it that… probably more like screaming. But on the other hand, we’d listen to loads of 90s band music in the car, so when I got a bit older I got more into Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers and so on.

What was the first album you remember owning?

I think it was Rumours. To this day it’s one of my favourite albums of all time; another popular because it’s good situation.

What do you find is the most rewarding part about being a musician?

So far the most rewarding part is when people come up to me and say that one of my songs really meant something to them. A close friend of mine said that ‘Voices On The TV’ helped her through a bad time, and there’s nothing better than when something you’ve written helped them articulate a feeling that would have otherwise gotten a bit stuck. It’s like musical CPR.

And what is the most frustrating part?

Social media. It doesn’t come naturally to me at all, but you’ve got to suck it up and do it. I’ve been posting consistently for a while now and it’s so easy to get disenfranchised and numb to it, but I also understand that it’s how you connect to people in the modern world, so it is what it is. One day I’ll crack it, I’m sure, but for now people are going to have to watch me trying not to look grumpy and weird”.

Go and follow the magnificent Iona Luke. An artist that I have recently discovered, you can tell that she has many years ahead. Ensure that she is on your radar. I do feel we will be hearing a lot more about in years to come. This is an artist you cannot afford to overlook. Iona Luke is a…

WONDERFUL artist.

__________

Follow Iona Luke

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/iona.luke/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5eApf1e5vbXTKMjuqxXdUA?si=KqmjyOjeQ9eu7nv8R_PaYw

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@iona.luke

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD0cS_42P87SHrnOm3L6oDA

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Might We Soon See a New Amazon Prime Documentary?

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

Might We Soon See a New Amazon Prime Documentary?

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ONE must always be a bit sceptical…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush received the Editors Award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards at the London Palladium on 30th November, 2014/PHOTO CREDIT: Alan Davidson/Rex/Shutterstock

when it comes to rumours around Kate Bush. Especially regarding documentaries or T.V. projects. There were A.I.-generated articles and reports that Netflix were producing a Kate Bush documentary. There have been recent documentaries about her. I took part in one for French T.V. It was great fun. One of my ambitions is to feature in a big Kate Bush documentary. Even though there has been no official announcement, it does seem that a documentary is in the works. It will be for Amazon Prime. Yesterday (13th May), I saw a retweet from a Kate Bush fan site, FishPeople Kate Bush (@FishPeopleFC). They shared an Instagram post from producer Nicholas Bowen (it has since been deleted, though screenshots have been shared; this Facebook post suggesting it will be produced by Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s dad, producer/director Robin Bextor). This does not seem to be rumour or A.I. As this is coming from a real person, it is highly likely that we will get a properly huge Kate Bush documentary. There is not a release date or news of who will take part. I would expect it to be out late in the year, maybe towards Christmas, though that is pure guess. It does seem to be in the early stages. I wonder how many writers and journalists will take part. Not that I would ever be invited, though there are authors – such as Kate Bush biographer, Graeme Thomson -, and those outside of music that would make valuable contributors. Insights that few other can provide. The team at Kate Bush News giving their impressions and views on Kate Bush in the modern age. I suspect that the wheels might have started to turn after the success of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in 2022 after it was used in Stranger Things. Documentaries take a long time to come together. For Amazon Prime, you suspect that there are going to be a lot of people involved. Major artists. Again, I am not sure who, though I keep writing about the brilliant albums made by modern greats that you can connect to Kate Bush.

I do not know if ROSALÍA, Björk, FKA twigs or Charli xcx will take part. It is all speculation and TBC right now. Because it is for Amazon Prime, I think it will have a different feel to the 2014 BBC documentary. The Kate Bush Story: Running Up That Hill coincided with her residency in Hammersmith. Before the Dawn was this incredible moment where Bush announced she would be performing on a stage that she first played in 1979. I suspect that there will be a mixture of clips and interviews with people who have worked with Kate Bush or admire her work. Will her brothers, John and Paddy speak? Might we see Kate Bush herself on camera? That is one of the most frequent comments around the documentary. Bush has not been seen on camera since the 1990s. In terms of a T.V. appearance. She has not been photographed publicly in over a decade. There are reasons for that, besides the fact she has not released an album since 2011. I feel Bush would have given support to the documentary, though the likelihood of her featuring is slim. Perhaps some audio at the start. The chance of her being shown and talking to camera seems remote. Most documentary makers want the artist to be involved in some form when it comes to documentaries. I have pitched Kate Bush documentaries and, without fail, they want Bush involved before they do anything. So it interests me how involved Kate Bush will be. Whether there be a mix of filming styles. I keep thinking about The Beatles and Paul McCartney. How there has been a Wings documentary, Man on the Run, which is about The Beatles and how the love he shared with Linda became his bedrock and influenced a journey that would lead to the formation of Wings. A new Paul McCartney album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, is out on 29th May. This may be wishful thinking that an album will be announced around the time the documentary comes out.

For the longest time, I always assumed that any new Kate Bush documentaries would be smaller and from independent production companies. Given everything that happened after Stranger Things used her music, it is no shock that people would pitch a documentary. Kate Bush does say ‘yes’ to her music being used here and there. Though the thought of a documentary that has her in might have stopped everything in its tracks. Which makes me think that any contribution from her will be audio-only. Bush spoke with Emma Barnett for Today late in 2024. Stating she was keen to work on new music and had reached that point. Nice to hear Kate Bush speak and still have that enthusiasm and thanks for her fans. Though looking back at her career, is that something that she would want to do? In any case, an Amazon Prime Kate Bush documentary is hugely exciting. If it does happen. Though there is a post from someone involved, a dream is likely soon to become a reality. Whether out late this year or in 2027, fans will be incredibly intrigued by what form it will take. A multi-part series or a single documentary. I am looking ahead of 2028 and the fiftieth anniversary of Wuthering Heights (20th January) and The Kick Inside (17th February). Her debut single and album. At the moment, this is all speculation. A documentary looks very likely, though nobody knows when it will come, how long it will be and who will be involved. If Kate Bush herself plays any part. Though tis glimmer of light has whipped up excitement among fans. A Kate Bush documentary is not new, though one for Amazon Prime promises to be the biggest yet. Let’s hope there is an official announcement and details soon. How cool would it be to have a documentary announcement and an album one more or less at the same time?! Kate Bush is one of the most influential artists ever. A genius songwriter and producer, her legacy is enormous. She continues to inspire people across music and the arts. The least she deserves is a celebratory documentary. Announcements and fake posts have been made before and got our hopes up, yet this all seems like a genuine and very real thing. Kate Bush fans around the world will be holding their breaths…

WITH excitement!

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Babooshka/Her Husband (Babooshka)/Emma (Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from the single cover shoot for Babooshka in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Babooshka/Her Husband (Babooshka)/Emma (Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake)

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THERE are other characters…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: RB/Redferns

I have not mined from Kate Bush’s 1980 album, Never for Ever, though I need to put the album aside, as it has been discussed more than any other, so I will come back to it in time. Though I want to write about Babooshka/Her Husband, as this incredible single, Babooshka, turns forty-six on 27th June. I thought I would use the opportunity there to talk about the single but the characters. Technically, the titular character of Babooshka is someone who is…well, I shall let Kate Bush give background to the song. For that, it is to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia:

“I love the melody line of the bass guitar on this song. We got through a lot of boxes of broken crockery to get the right sound at the end – the canteen ladies were not impressed.

It was really a theme that has fascinated me for some time. It’s based on a theme that is often used in folk songs, which is where the wife of the husband begins to feel that perhaps he’s not faithful. And there’s no real strength in her feelings, it’s just more or less paranoia suspicions, and so she starts thinking that she’s going to test him, just to see if he’s faithful. So what she does is she gets herself a pseudonym, which happens to be Babooshka, and she sends him a letter. And he responds very well to the letter, because as he reads it, he recognises the wife that he had a couple of years ago, who was happy, in the letter. And so he likes it, and she decides to take it even further and get a meeting together to see how he reacts to this Babooshka lady instead of her. When he meets her, again because she is so similar to his wife, the one that he loves, he’s very attracted to her. Of course she is very annoyed and the break in the song is just throwing the restaurant at him…  (…) The whole idea of the song is really the futility and the stupidness of humans and how by our own thinking, spinning around in our own ideas we come up with completely paranoid facts. So in her situation she was in fact suspicious of a man who was doing nothing wrong, he loved her very much indeed. Through her own suspicions and evil thoughts she’s really ruining the relationship. (Countdown Australia, 1980)”.

I do want to discuss the themes around infidelity in Kate Bush’s music, or how she is more trusting of men perhaps. I mentioned this when writing about Ran Tan Waltz recently. That was a B-side that is about a new wife and mother who is out at night with other men, whilst the husband is with the child. The sympathy falling with the man. Here, another song where the woman has made an error of judgement or pushed too far. The title of Babooshka is interesting. A slight misspelling of the Russian word for grandmother, babushka, a Kate Bush tribute act/experience is called Baby Bushka - https://www.babybushka.com/ -, that I would suggest you check out. In a separate interview with BBC Radio 1 in October 1980, Bush said the choice of title was coincidental: “there was an opera called Babooshka. Apparently she was the lady that the three kings went to see because the star stopped over her house and they thought “Jesus is in there”.’ So they went in and he wasn’t. And they wouldn’t let her come with them to find the baby and she spent the rest of her life looking for him and she never found him. And also a friend of mine had a cat called Babooshka”.

When thinking about the characters and how they seem to be taken from literature. Kate Bush took a lot from literature, T.V. and film. In the case of Babooshka, it does seem like this was an old work of fiction of folk story. I am not sure how exactly she came out with the idea and whether there was text linked to it. Bush said she presumed the inspiration was from a fairy story she heard as a child, though apparently not. After writing the song, she heard Donald Swan singing about Babooshka, so she assumed someone must be named it. What I love about the characters and dynamics of the song is that we never really know why the wife went to the trouble of disguising herself. Recorded between January and June 1980, during the recording sessions of Never for Ever, Babooshka features John Giblin on bass and marks the significance of fretless bass sounds as instrumental ‘male’ partners through Bush's music in the early eighties. That is from Wikipedia, but I think it is interesting about the significance of instruments and particular sounds that denote masculinity and femininity. In her more piano-led albums before Never for Ever, perhaps the piano was this symbolism of femininity or beauty and sexuality. Even if Babooshka is a light track in some ways and not too heavy, I did not really think about the composition and how that acts as a character or has this emotional dynamic and facet. What is key from Babooshka is that Bush was developing as a writer and producer. Producing with Jon Kelly, this track includes a breaking glass sound at the end. Maybe symbolising the breaking of trust or anger, it seems quite traditional and common to write a song about mistrust and deceit. Whilst we may feel the man is cheating and his wife is right to cast herself as this mysterious figure, she got the situation wrong. We do not know much about Her Husband, other than how he seems to be faithful but has caused soma paranoia. Bush not mistrustful of women in relationships. She might have reacted to a lot of songs where men and partners were vilified and blamed, so she wrote a track where the wife was very much culpable. How the husband gets the sense he knows Babooshka and it reminds him of “his little lady”. Or, “Just like his wife before she freezed on him”. Even though the wife couldn’t have made a worse move by testing her husband’s faith, at the end of the song, the husband seems to say that he is all yours. Like he is succumbs to Babooshka.

Does this mean he does love his wife, or did he technically cheat and was attracted to someone who was not his wife? I will address the video and live performances. When thinking of the characters, it is almost this gothic and tragic relationship. One could compare it to Kate Bush’s debut single, Wuthering Heights (from 1978’s The Kick Inside). Dreams of Orgonon examined the dynamic of Babooshka in their fascinating piece:

“In part, the success of “Babooshka” can be explained by its conceptual kinship with “Wuthering Heights”. Like Bush’s first single, “Babooshka” is a work of literary reverie, relating the dysfunction of a relationship through images derived from a preexisting work (in Babooshka’s case, the folk song “Sovay”). Both songs boast jealous women protagonists whose pathologies lead to a dramatic break in their romantic relationships. Yet while the two songs share DNA, they differ significantly in their songwriting and realization. “Wuthering Heights” is much poppier than “Babooshka.” It’s a deeply strange song, but it’s still a quintessential power ballad ending on a guitar solo. The instrumentation of “Babooshka” mixes a piano, a Yamaha CS-80 synth, and Paddy Bush’s balalaika. There are elements of pop in the song, such as its jazzy melody, but “Babooshka” telegraphs its weirdness from the get-go.

“Wuthering Heights” was a reunion of lovers. “Babooshka” relates the slow burn of a dysfunctional relationship, culminating in a glam psychotic break. The song’s title character acts as if Bush intended to finally write the Catherine of Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: a petty, jealous hooligan ruins her relationship with her partner in a frantic bout of possessiveness.  Her plan, of course, is barmy — Babooshka tests her husband’s loyalty by catfishing him through “scented letters” (not a great plan — what happens if Babooshka’s husband finds these letters on a desk while the lady of the house makes herself some Earl Grey? Somebody make a short film about this). Babooshka uses these letters to arrange a tête-à-tête between her husband and her assumed personality — “just like/his wife/but how she was before the years flew by.” The song is unclear on whether Babooshka is recognized by her husband, merely suggesting he gives into her whims (he’s absolutely a sub). Babooshka’s self-poisoning narcissism breaks their relationship, creating a process of martial recursion in which the fear of a relationship’s ending itself ends that relationship.

But what of the relationship’s nature? The details of the emotional split between the couple is expressed vaguely. “Babooshka” is predicated on its protagonist’s desire to “test her husband,” and only supplies the occasional detail on the couple’s relationship. When the husband reads the catfish letters (someone please write a biography of me and title it The Catfish Letters), he observes that she resembles his wife “before the tears/and how she was before the years flew by.” Evidently their marriage was happy at one point, before some cataclysm ruptured it and damned them to a joyless union. Before Babooshka turned to suspicion and jealousy, she had the “capacity to give him all he needs” (we could dedicate an entire piece to the fact that the husband obviously has a mommy kink, but let’s try to keep our readership here). Her scheme to win him over is an expression of desire to return to the joy of their early married years, an act of futile nostalgia. The fantasy she enacts is not simply toxic; it’s regressive and pitiful”.

Whilst Bush was not specifically inspired by a story or show, Dreams of Orgonon also theorise that a traditional English folk song might have influenced the story: Sovay, the Female Highwayman. The song (which Bush could have heard from A.L. Lloyd or her social circle of musicians) as they say, tells of a maiden who “dressed herself in man’s array,” pretends to be a highwayman, and holds her lover at gunpoint, demanding his treasures. The man gives Sovay his pocket watch but refuses to part with his precious engagement ring. Having seen her fiancé’s loyalty in practice, Sovay departs from him”. The video for Babooshka was an extraordinary step forward in terms of confidence and concept. The first single from Never for Ever, Breathing, was quite epic and filmic. However, Bush was with other people in the video and what makes Babooshka so eye-catching and memorable is that she is solo and transforms into this warrior princess in the chorus. In the vide, we see Bush beside a double bass (contrabass). That represents her husband. Bush, wearing a black bodysuit and a veil in her role as the embittered wife, is magnetic. She changed  into this extraordinary ‘Russian’ costume as her alter-ego, Babooshka. An illustration by Chris Achilleos was the basis for the costume. I think it is her boldest and perhaps best video that point. Those who felt Bush was this child-like artist and someone quite immature or naïve created this incredible thrilling and sexy video. One where she was very seductive and charged.

One interesting subject related to the promotion of Babooshka is the live performances. Largely mimed, how to bring the visuals of Babooshka to various sets and stages around the world. Performing on several European T.V. shows, her outing on the Dr. Hook television special (Bush appeared on a BBC special, hosted by American Rock band, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show on 20th March, 1980). On her the right side, Bush “resembles a staid Victorian lady in mourning dress; on the left side a glittering, liberated young woman in a silvery jumpsuit, with bright lightning-streaks painted down the left side of her face. Her figure is lit so that only the “repressed” side of her costume is visible during the verses of the song, and mainly the “free” side during the choruses”. The Kate Bush Encycliopedia helping out once more. Her stagecraft and how she could reinterpret her own songs and change the visuals between performances was exceptional. Bush’s videos are remarkable and innovative. For T.V. shows where she well could phone it in and do something basic, she put so much thought into her performances and adding something new. A psychological edge or something that made you think. I keep thinking about Her Husband/Babooshka and that awkward situation. The wife maybe influenced by Sovay, the Female Highwayman. A really fascinating potential connection to that source. Kate Bush exploring relationships in different ways. Rather than simple love songs or ones where there is a messy break-up, she was perhaps less personal and found greater intrigue and interest in something fictional, literary or fantastical. By doing so, she did not lose relatability. Instead, nuance and layers to a brilliant song like Babooshka. Its ill-fated wife who is this Babooshka and fails to make her husband cheat. Her bad plan backfires.

Flipping to the second side of this feature, and let’s go back an album. I started by writing about the second single from Bush’s third studio album. Released in November 1978, Lionheart is her underrated second studio album. This character passed me by, as I must confess I have not listened to this Kate Bush song as much as others. Whilst Babooshka leads Never for Ever and was a single that reached five in the U.K., Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake was the penultimate song on the first side of Lionheart, and is a song that did not get a lot of appreciation or attention. Sandwiched between Wow and Oh England My Lionheart, was the sequencing right for the album? I will get to characters in a very underappreciated song, though thinking about the tone and feel of that run of three songs, Wow, Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake, and there are quite a few twists and turns. Maybe Kashka from Baghdad could come from track eight and be moved further up. I do feel that sequencing, if not completely right, can affect the whole album and how you appreciate certain songs. Even if Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake is highlighted as throwaway, this idea of Kate Bush doing a Patti Smith song is intriguing.

It makes me think about Kate Bush and Rock. Patti Smith released her extraordinary and hugely influential debut album, Horses, in 1975. No doubt, a seventeen-year-old Kate Bush would have heard that album and been struck by it. Though it may not sound exactly what Patti Smith would do, Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake is a rare occasion of Kate Bush going into more Rock and Post-Punk territory. Many associate her with piano Pop and this idea she was quite airy-fairy and slight. Maybe like The Beatles, Bush perhaps better or more synonymous with Pop than Rock. However, there were a few tracks through her discography where there was this Rock grit and punch. When Lionheart was released in November 1978, Punk was taking hold in the U.K. 1978 saw a move away from direct and raw noise to a more expansive and nuanced Punk sound. Art and Post-Punk coming in. Key albums from the year were Ray Spex’s Germfree Adolescents, Buzzcocks’ Another Music in a Different Kitchen, Wire’s Chairs Missing, and The Clash’s Give 'Em Enough Rope. It is commendable that Kate Bush wanted to add her voice in a small way. Or just write a song in the mould of an artist she admired. Think about Lionheart, and most of the songs are gentler and piano-led. She would provide some rare and ecstatic tracks on Never for Ever and The Dreaming. On Lionheart, Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake is a bit of a standout. Because it is a lot faster and gutsier. Coffee Homeground and Fullhouse are eccentric and have their own energy. Though nothing on Lionheart sits right alongside Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake.

I feel this song was written around the time Patti Smith’s Horses was released. I wrote a feature Kate Bush and songs inspired by other artists. Kite from The Kick Inside was inspired by Bob Marley. I do love how Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake was Bush’s attempt to write something in the mould of Patti Smith. Bush performed Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake on the Leo Sayer Show on 17th November, 1978 and on the 1979 Christmas special. The song was also included in the setlist of The Tour of Life. I am not sure who Emma is. Bush uses clever lyrics of the road and vehicles to articulate a breakdown or break-up. The ‘Heartbrake’ part of the title. “Emma’s been run out on/She’s breaking down/In so many places/Stuck in low gear/Because of her fears”. I love how Kate N Paddy (her brother) Bush harmonise. He is on slide guitar. I am curious who Bush had in mind when writing the song. Emma may have been a name she plucked out of thin air. “She’s only herself to blame/Well, take care of yourself/And remember Georgie/But she’s so O.D.’d on weeping/She can hardly see”. I could have included Georgie. Who is that?! Kate Bush rarely had named characters in her songs. Most of this series is of people without names. Here, we have two characters. The ill-fated heroine, Emma, who is spinning out of control. I am going to bring in a couple of features about the song. I want to come again to Dreams of Orgonon. Even though they do not especially like the song, they do make some interesting observations. Very little outside of this written about a track that I feel is much more interesting than people give it credit for. In terms of tonal shifts, there is much more of this than on The Kick Inside. How, “Lionheart is mostly leftovers, scraps of The Kick Inside and the Phoenix demos reheated in a French studio. Yet for all that gets made of its leftovers status Lionheart showcases a drastic tonal shift from The Kick Inside”.

It is interesting thinking about that Patti Smith tie-in. Perhaps Kate Bush felt like she had to give a music-related connection. Shout out someone who was very cool and edgy at a time when Bush was not considered as such. Giving gravitas or modern music relevance. Dreams of Orgonon write how a brilliant and hugely powerful piece of literature is more similar to Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake than you might hear on Horses, say:

“Smith’s Beat-influenced, raucous NYC-grounded style is about as far from Bush’s sophisticated weirdness as London’s punk scene. No, the Patti Smith influence on this song isn’t primarily aesthetic. It’s primarily a structural influence. A number of Patti Smith songs, including “Gloria,” “Free Money,” and “Because the Night,” center their intros around a piano, bring in a standard set of rock instruments, and erupt with expressive noise in the chorus. This is a structure “Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake” apes, albeit with more randomness and less meticulously constructed tension than something like “Because the Night.” Lyrically, Bush and Smith share a sense of propulsion and escalating, which in Bush’s case consists of tearing down a motorway and in Smith’s consists of everything from heists to lusting after strangers. Yet Bush eschews the transgressive qualities of albums like Horses and Easter, and probably for the best (Bush has yet to release an album track with a racial slur in its title). There’s a melodramatic innocence to “Heartbrake,” anchored as it is in its protagonist’s frantic mourning of Georgie. Bush’s homage to Smith is little more than borrowing a stencil which she traces her own work around. This is of course the kind of work that uses patently ridiculous phrases like “but she’s so O. D. ’d on weeping.”

In lieu of an immediate musical analogue for “Heartbrake,” let’s compare this song to a more famous piece of media centered around a person’s internal state shattering on a motorway: J. G. Ballard’s controversial novel Crash. Ballard is legendary for his interrogations of modernity: his masterpiece The Atrocity Exhibition features a piece called “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan” which literally landed him in court. He frequently positions large social structures, such as high rises, the mass media, and motorways, as analogous to the human body and symptomatic of deep-rooted entropy. This is… not terribly far from where Bush lands, at times. Sure, Bush overlooks the whole “nightmare of modernity” thing (indeed, “Heartbrake” is one of the few Bush songs to unambiguously take place in the late 20th century), but physical experience is crucial to the narrative of her music. Tuning into one’s own body to find spiritual liberation is one of the recurrent ideas in Bush’s discography so far. Whereas The Kick Inside took this freedom and operated it with unbridled optimism, Lionheart is the sobering moment in which Bush has to figure out what to do when the initial high of becoming an adult subsides. Sometimes growing up entails crashing a car. But if you’re going to do it, you might as well be romantic about it”.

I am not sure whether Kate Bush remember the song or holds in particular high esteem now. A song that was not originally intended to go on an album and was grabbed from the archives to ensure she could put out a second studio album six months after her first – insane pressure and expectation from EMI! -, Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake is a curio. Something that, whilst not spectacular, is odd and goofy. It is Rock-themed and Bush said it was her version of a Patti Smith song. Making this track quite interesting. A lot to unpick. I keep wondering about Emma. A school friend from when Bush attended St Joseph's Convent Grammar School in Abbey Wood, South East London. That is a Catholic girls' school. Bush attended the school until 1976. The opening lines read like this: “Emma’s come down/She’s stopped the light/Shining out of her eyes”.  In terms of Emmas who were the titles of songs released around the time Bush wrote Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake were Hot Chocolate’s 1974 Emma, and Little River Band’s 1975 Emma. Even so, this is more personal to Bush, though she never revealed who the character is. In terms of positive takes on the songs, when Harry Doherty spoke to Kate Bush for a November 1978 edition of Melody Maker he did say this:

“A few months ago, in the paper, Kate said how one of her musical ambitions was to write a real rousing rock'n'roll song and how difficult she found that task. James and the Cold Gun was her effort on The Kick Inside, and with Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake she has tackled the art of writing a roasting rocker on her own terms. Heartbrake (another piece of emotional therapy) might not be considered a rocker in the traditional sense of racing from start to finish but it's still one of the most vicious pieces of rock I've stumbled across in some time. The chorus is slow, pedestrianly slow. The pace is deceiving. It slides into the chorus. Bush moves into a jog. Then the second part of the chorus. It's complete havoc, and when it comes to repeating that second part in the run-up to the end, Kate wrenches from her slight frame a screaming line of unbelievably consummate rock'n'roll power that astounded me. A rather unnerving turn to Kate's music, I think”.

I will leave things there. As Babooshka turns forty-six on 27th June, I wanted to write about Babooshka/Her Husband. The wife who dresses as this other woman to try and test her husband’s fidelity. Going back a couple of years to Lionheart and the under-discussed Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake. Who the ‘Emma’ is that is bereft and Bush warns not to skid off the road. There is no record of Kate Bush having a close friend named Emma, so it does make me curious where she got the name, and who she had in mind when writing the song. A trio of fascinating characters from the incredible work of…

THE unique Kate Bush.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Angine de Poitrine

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

ALL PHOTOS: Samuel Snow

Angine de Poitrine

__________

YOU have probably discovered…

this duo before. However, for anyone unfamiliar, I am spotlighting Angine de Poitrine. They are composed of two anonymous musicians performing under pseudonyms as guitarist Khn de Poitrine and drummer Klek de Poitrine. Formed in Saguenay, Quebec, in 2019, they recently played dates in the U.K. They are back here later in the year. Though I am not a great fan of artists who remain anonymous or mysterious – SAULT did for a while, until they performed live and the cat was out of the bag! -, you cannot that the music of Angine de Poitrine is fantastic. I will end with a review of their new album, Vol.II. There are a couple of new interviews that I want to come to. CULT MTL interviewed Angine de Poitrine ahead of the release of their album. It must be quite a strange experience interviewing artists who keep their identities secret:

“Through a cloud of indoor cigarette smoke, I see something resembling a human being. This is Khn de Poitrine, the guitarist who wields his custom-made double-neck microtonal guitar and bass (polka-dotted, of course), and commands a legion of loop and effects pedals. Next, Klek, the in-the-pocket drummer, also decked out in polka dots on stage, appears only as an omniscient voice. And whatever god the Poitrine duo worship, they speak! French and English.

“This project is a culmination of a lot of years of inside jokes,” Khn says between cigarette drags. “The names were our alter egos in a 10-minute free jazz project, where I was just fooling around on saxophone and (Klek) was on drums.”

“Just to be clear, you won’t be showing or displaying our (human) names? We are Klek and Khn for life,” Klek laughs. As a music journalist, I oblige — partly out of respect for their art, partly out of some primal fear of what exposure might bring. I picture a Cronenbergian nightmare: Khn and Klek replacing my childhood sleep paralysis demons, haunting my dreams with infinite spirals of microtonal rock while they beam golden triangles into my skull. Why triangles?

“It’s the best shape,” Klek fires back, defending the polygon. During live shows, the duo throws up pyramid shapes to the crowd, and the crowd throws them back. “We just really fucking love triangles. They are beautiful, and the strongest shape,” Khn says, without an ounce of hyperbole.

Angine de Poitrine hails from the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region, and the duo has been playing music together since they were 14-years-old. That’s around 20 or so years, but again, they are intergalactic beings, so time is irrelevant. The costumes started as a prank. “At first, the idea for the costumes was to play more shows and play a bit of an Andy Kaufman-esque joke on the crowd and say, ‘Hey, can we start a band without anybody knowing who we are?’ And who is it behind the masks?” Klek says.

But the masks and personas of Khn and Klek have now become safety armour for both members. “There’s a comfort to feeling, ‘Oh, I’m this on stage,’ but after that, I’m a normal person,” Klek says. “We can avoid the, ‘Oh, this is the drummer’ talks, where everyone swarms you after a show when I just want to drink my water.”

Before releasing their first single, “Sherpa,” in 2024, the duo’s exploration of microtonal rock was born from musical curiosity. One day, Klek brought home a custom-made microtonal guitar for Khn to mess around with.

“I took two guitars, and I took the frets from one board, which was kind of rusty and fucked up anyway, and I put them on a second fret board,” Klek says. So what did this do? Standard Western music runs 12 tones in a chromatic scale. Add extra frets and you crack open a wider interval system — quarter tones, semitones — producing the fractal, frictional quality found in Japanese and Indian music. That friction became the foundation for Angine de Poitrine’s progressive rock-psych-freakish jazz wormhole.

In the beginning, Khn was playing with a microtonal guitar, looping it, and switching between guitar and bass while Klek laid down the beats. But they started toying with the idea of having a double-neck guitar made.

“We thought it would look fucking sick, and for 15 seconds, we were like, ‘Oh, that’s a funny joke.’ But it became clear that it was a good idea,” Klek says. After speaking to different luthiers, one who quoted Khn $12,000 per fret board (which they quickly declined), the guitar was made by a “professional friend” of Angine de Poitrine.

“The whole idea of the band was to assume a bit of a satirical approach to rock music in general,” Khn says. “We wanted an exaggeration, so the double-neck guitar was the perfect choice to kind of make fun of guitar heroes.”

As you can probably sum up, the twisting microtonal rock may seem like it comes from a super serious and pretentious place, but it’s actually quite the opposite. Both Khn and Klek are virtuosos of their craft, but much like their costumes and the excess of the double-neck guitar, parts of the music are a light, sardonic poke at rock music.

“We will have short musical statements in the songs that are actually just jokes, like, this is the boomer lick, and just shout (distortedly) ‘HAIL SANTANA!’ into the microphones,” Khn laughs. “Obviously, we love Santana. It’s a love statement, but also a caricature, because you’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself and say, ‘What we do is ridiculous”.

The second and final interview I want to highlight is from The Guardian. They have a growing fan base here in the U.K., and I can only imagine how exciting it was for fans here to see them on the stage. I don’t think that there is anyone quite like Angine de Poitrine at the moment. Even if they might not have the ear of all major radio stations here, I feel that those that get what they are releasing and truly appreciate their music makes up for that. The duo deserve as much attention as possible:

“In just a few months, Angine de Poitrine’s lore has entered the annals of rock iconography alongside the likes of Kiss, the Residents and Daft Punk. In February, US radio station KEXP published a video of the anonymous duo performing at a French festival: 27 minutes of ludicrously tight, swerving, looping grooves played by two figures who look like some ungodly union of Jar Jar Binks and Dada pioneer Hugo Ball. There was undoubtedly a novelty factor, but novelty alone can’t fuel you to 13.7m YouTube views. Those are pop-star numbers for genuinely freaky music, a prog-club sound that takes its wayward undertow from Khn’s microtonal musicianship – playing the notes between the notes, a mode historically found in eastern music – and Klek’s sewing-machine needle drumming.

But they’re nonplussed by the hype: even the luthier who made Khn’s microtonal double-necked guitar has become a figure of obsession; no wonder the creator of their new masks wants to remain unknown. “It’s only music. I’m not saving people’s lives,” Klek continues. “I’m just playing drums. One comment on KEXP said: ‘Now there’s a reason to live.’ I was like: calm down, man. Go kiss your mother or something – that’s a reason to live.”

Rabid fans have worked out who they are, but the fun of Angine is that they’re mysterious and inventive. The sleuthing, says Klek, makes him feel like when he asked for an Xbox for Christmas as a kid. “I really badly wanted to know if I had it, so I undo the tapes on my wrappings and take a look. It was like: oh yeah, I had it. Then I closed it back up and for a week I was like: why did I do that? Where’s the surprise now? There is a thing that is interesting in not knowing. And you find out who we are and you’re like … oh. We’re not Lady Gaga. We’re not Elton John. We’re two random dudes.”

The incorporated Saguenay area had a great DIY arts scene. Khn was obsessed with a “mathy, rocky, bluesy, bit wonky rock’n’roll” band called Deux Pouilles en Cavale, whose drum kit was partially made of trash. They loved le parc, another hard-firing instrumental band. The region was surrounded by logging and aluminium factories: did those industrial pistons infiltrate the sound? “People in Saguenay are down for intense, loud music,” says Khn. “If you want to stand out, you have to blend all those influences together.” He cites prog metal band Voivod, until now the area’s biggest musical export. “They bring influences from punk rock, from prog, from a lot of different subgenres. Maybe people here don’t have those barriers.”

Klek and Khn kept playing together, alongside their mutual pal, but didn’t form a band until their early 20s. “For a while, we didn’t take it seriously,” says Klek. “It was just like playing with Legos.”

“Well,” says Khn, “maybe that’s true for you. I was 12 when I picked up a guitar and I instantly became very serious about it. I always had the intention to make a band.” He played with plenty of other serious musicians, but it never compared to noodling in the basement with Klek and their mate. Klek’s resistance drove Khn to distraction. “It was frustrating for me when the most interesting stuff I was doing was with two guys who had no ambition whatsoever.”

Klek couldn’t see himself as a musician. “I didn’t have idols or people to follow in their path,” he says. He was more into woodwork. In time, he realised what a vast part of his life music occupied. “I did a lot of jobs, but never did driving trucks or planting trees as much as playing music.”

Klek and Khn are lifelong jammers. Most Angine songs start that way. “We improvise and make a lot of crap, then you have a little spark,” says Khn. “A lot of the songs on the second album, I found one riff that’s got something to it, then you build from that.”

Building up these loops, says Klek, “there’s a feeling of anxiousness or something that comes with the repetitions, the frictions with the microtones. We’re always playing with that feeling, and tension and release.” Using a loop pedal live keeps them in line, says Khn. “If I start from this idea, I have to find a coherent way to move away from it.” Otherwise, he says, they have a “tendency to make songs that go from A to Z without coming back to A or B”.

Angine are open about being inspired by King Gizzard’s 2017 album Flying Microtonal Banana. Microtonal virtuosos have been going viral a lot recently: Maddie Ashman, Bryan Deister. The appeal, Klek thinks, is that “it sounds new for people”, though he finds it weird given that this musical system predates the 12-semitone western scale. He can’t say whether listeners are finding it a reassuring counter to AI-generated culture. “Since we are ‘popular’ in a certain way – it’s strange for me to say that – we don’t spend much time on the internet because we have a tight schedule. And sometimes people are … how can I say … angry about Angine. So we’re like: let’s not go on Facebook. People can say what they want.” Khn grins”.

I will finish with a review from Pitchfork. They wrote about Vol. II from a duo who “takes the throne as the world’s weirdest party band”. Where they come back to the U.K. and play dates here in October, they will be performing to packed-out venues:

“Their sudden, overwhelming success seems like something of a fluke since none of their obvious touchpoints are remotely fashionable. There’s definitely a little King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard in their hypnotic churn and microtonal melodies, but beyond that, you’re swerving into serious dorkery: Think the ill-angled prog jabberwocky of ’70s French zeuhl bands like Magma or Art Zoyd; the demented herky-jerk of ’80s outsiders like Renaldo and the Loaf or Zoogz Rift; the heady grooves of Primus, Discipline-era King Crimson, or early Battles; the costumed performance noise of ’00s loft-punx like Forcefield, or the similarly two-toned Yip-Yip; maybe even the spate of Turkish psych-rock reissues that started emerging around 20 years ago. The band rides for Arto Lindsay and gamelan records but also Gentle Giant’s hyper-intricate prog, and John Scofield’s Bonnaroo-funk outing Überjam.

The first three tracks on Vol. II provide proper studio versions of their four-song KEXP set (the honking, space-choogle “Sherpa” opened Vol. I). All three are stellar examples of the band’s polyrhythm games. Angine is not Dillinger Escape Plan or Naked City leaping wildly between time signatures—a loop pedal serves as the third member of the band, so every song is generally locked into a pulse. Instead, Angine de Poitrine are more like Meshuggah or Dawn of Midi, establishing a meter and then creating rhythmic illusions using creative bursts of syncopation. Opener “Fabienk” is a simple 7/8. What makes Angine de Poitrine special is how they wiggle and writhe within that structure, filling the grid with weird rhythmic curlicues, ill-timed accents, and unlikely hooklets. Khn’s riffs span large gulfs of time so they lose their familiar shape, punctuating the air in strange polygons. “Sarniezz” is a basic 6/8, it only sounds weird because it takes Khn four bars until he repeats his Frith-ian melody and Klek alternates between swung time and traditional 4/4 caveman pound. When they lean back and sledgehammer that random second sixteenth note subdivision, it’s like synchronized swimming. The pair claim they have been playing together for 20 years, and their telekinetic bond is apparent in these twisted arrangements.

Surely, this type of granular analysis is thrilling to Zappa apologists and people who watch Drumeo videos, but ultimately Angine de Poitrine’s best balancing act is the ability to consistently dance this mess around. Vol. II is body music, dancefloor music, pogo music, moshpit music, noodle-dance music. It just happens to sound like Lightning Bolt trapped inside Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. All but one of the mesmerizing puzzles on Vol. II strut across the six-minute mark, and the songs never lose steam because they contain so many variations and plot twists. As avowed fans of house and acid techno, they not only understand hypnosis but also pacing: The climax is often Klek’s drums doing a frantic surge into straight meter, which is not just a balm for the brain-boggled but a fairly obvious cue to go apeshit. In “Yor Zarad” they cut the time in half, turning a nervy Wire spasm into the world’s happiest Helmet song.

Using a custom-made guitar to craft melodies from the notes in between the notes of the Western scale, Khn is an incredibly versatile musician. Even on the decidedly uncomplicated 4/4 bounce of “UTZP,” he still thrills because he morphs himself from Balkan brass rave-up to Snakefinger-style dizziness to multi-layered Glenn Branca guitar orchestra to total hair-metal shredding. Critic Craig Marks astutely brought up Dutch wacko-prog fluke “Hocus Pocus” by Focus, but I would point to Gary Hoey’s wheedle-metal cover that was a 1993 staple on Headbangers Ball. They’ve managed to take some of the unsexiest music in history and give it the type of groove that renders it undeniable.

Skeptics can paint Angine de Poitrine as gimmicky OK Go stunt rock, but there’s no denying the melodies and chops behind their dotted duds. At their best, they’re a beacon that North America is once again ready for art-fucky noise rock bands, a rising tide that will hopefully lift excellent, margin-dwelling weirdo-gnash outfits like Los Angeles’ Guck, Oakland’s Gumby's Junk, New York’s Chaser, Portland’s Rhododendron, and Las Vegas’ Spring Breeding. Angine de Poitrine have the muscle, the melody, and the magic to be the world’s weirdest party band; Vol. II is a powerful argument that we should all start seeing spots”.

Do make sure you experience the phenomenal music of Angine de Poitrine. Even though they have been playing and recording for a while, this year is one where they are gaining widespread acclaim and attention. I am relatively new to their music, so I wanted to collate some interviews and a reviews, so that you can get an idea of who they are – in a musical sense, rather than break that anonymity -, and why their music is so admired. They are so distinct and accomplished, but there is also this real sense of freedom and fun. If you buy that they are the world’s weirdest party band, then make sure that you do…

NOT miss the party.

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Follow Angine de Poitrine

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/anginedepoitrine/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@anginedepoitrineofficiel

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6REY5w2ZRmSOSbibakqnQ

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/13NmOYYfvONNZ9mn2qn8P2?si=mqtIiGlsTF-UN3ZRSTyu_g

FEATURE: Spotlight: Tara Kumar

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Tara Kumar

__________

I will come to…

PHOTO CREDIT: Eljay

a couple of more recent interviews with the wonderful D.J and broadcaster, Tara Kumar. I want to quickly bring in an interview from 2024. This is a D.J. who has played across some massive festivals and stages around the world. Hotpress caught up with Tara Kumar ahead of her playing the Smirnoff Stage at Electric Picnic 2024:

“She has played at massive festivals and exclusive private parties around the world – but the lush fields of Stradbally Hall remain the backdrop to some of Tara Kumar’s fondest memories.

“What I relish about EP is that you get to see all these people you love that you might not get to see all the time, whether that be musicians or friends,” she says. “One of my favourite moments was seeing Björk in 2013 – I remember going, ‘Oh, my God, this is crazy’. She had a special, purpose-built instrument on the stage, which was used on the album she was touring. It was outrageous, over the top, and everything that is amazing about Björk.

“I’ve played a couple of times myself. The crowd at Electric Picnic is always full of good vibes, good energy. Everyone is there to have a good time and enjoy this shared experience.”

That’ll be even more keenly felt in the up-close-and-personal setting of the Smirnoff Stage.

“At a festival, I tend to go bigger than I would for one of my usual shows,” she says. “You have to read the crowd a little bit more because there’s so many distractions! It means a lot for someone to choose to listen to you, and spend that time with you, when they could be at another gig or watching someone else. That’s why it’s really important to give your all and bring people into your world.”

Of Irish-Indian-Malaysian descent, and currently based in London, Tara was raised in Australia. She categorically embodies Smirnoff’s emphasis on platforming a diverse crop of performers. Musically, she has been inspired by a broad range of sounds since she was a child.

“It’s a bit of a blessing and a curse,” she laughs. “Growing up in Australia listening to Triple J radio was a really big part of falling in love with music. At the same time, I grew up in a pub surrounded by live trad. I started playing the flute when I was nine years old, so I’ve got that classical element too. I’ve also worked in a CD shop and an instrument shop. It can be hard to distil all those influences in my DJ sets.”

From Kumar’s perspective, increasing access for musicians and DJs is vital, enabling artists to broaden their sonic horizons. It’s a feature that makes the Smirnoff Stage ultra appealing.

“You always want to have an open door,” she says. “I think you should continuously grow your network and friend circle, because getting inspiration from different people is really important. It’s crucial to cross-pollinate. The music scene, like anything, can be very cliquey and it can be intimidating to rock up to a gig or event on your own. I really value when people are kind to me, so I try to pass that on.

“Better inclusivity and diversity is slowly and surely growing in Ireland as well. We’re seeing a lot more people from different types of backgrounds coming through. But it’s a big project. The work never stops”.

This incredible talent who has presented on major radio stations and brings this sense of togetherness and community to her D.J. sets. Whether she is on the radio or doing a set, there is this desire for everyone to feel included and heard. Four Four Mag interviewed Tara Kumar about her ethos of uniting people and “why the best club nights should always feel a little bit like home”. I like spotlighting artists, but when it comes to D.J.s and broadcasters, they perhaps do not get the attention they deserve. Tara Kumar is someone that everyone should know about:

“There’s something distinctly communal about the world Tara Kumar creates. The Australia-born, Dublin-raised, now London-based DJ and broadcaster has built a reputation for blending big tunes with big heart, and maybe a pint of Guinness on the side.

From RTÉ 2FM to BBC Radio 1, and from bush doofs to packed pub takeovers, Kumar’s journey has been shaped by community, curiosity and a deep love of a proper banger (no such thing as a guilty pleasure here). We caught up with her to chat about radio, Kumar Klub, and why the best nights out feel a bit like home.

You’ve lived around the world, from Australia to Dublin and now London. How have these different scenes influenced your musical taste and approach to DJ sets?

In my teens in Australia, I was going to parties in the bush with soundsystems in the back of utes, hanging out underage in my parents’ pub around music every night. Then, when I hit the big ol’ age of 18, I was going to the local club that was attached to the casino called The Juicy Rump, dancing to Rihanna – Only Girl in the World every weekend, haha. But that definitely shaped my love of pop music at the time. Triple J, the radio station, shaped my love of dance music. Then, when I moved to Dublin, I was exposed to even more sounds and my tastes grew and expanded, from going to The Workman’s, POD, Hangar and Izakaya.

I have a really wide, varied taste in music, and my DJ sets definitely reflect that. I don’t believe in guilty pleasures, a banger is a banger, and I’ll play it if I want to. 

Kumar Klub has really bloomed into a brilliant community spot. We’d love to hear about where the idea came from and what the space means to you, both as a DJ and as the person putting these nights together.

Thank you! To hear it being known as a community spot means a lot, because that’s exactly what I set out to do. I grew up in my parents’ Irish pub and Indian restaurant, so that space was my community. That background, I think, is the reason I love to meet new people and learn about their stories and life adventures. And that is where Kumar Klub comes from; it’s inspired by the blend of music and food in my parents’ business. They had live music every night where I used to play, and my Amma was cooking up stews and curries every night of the week. I wanted to bring my background into something that can slot into different locations and different vibes, a club, a pub, a restaurant.

Kumar Klub can fit into so many different spaces. Some nights it’s a party in a pub where I’m throwing out onion bhajis, with pints in hand, or it’s a sit-down dinner with DJs soundtracking the night, or it’s a charity bingo night. My dream is for it to have my own permanent place one day… DJ, broadcaster….publican? A girl can dream.

You’ve been part of the BBC Radio 1 world. What did that moment represent for you personally in your journey as a DJ?

Aw, it still feels crazy to walk into the studio and pull up the fader on the mic. I’m waiting for security to tackle me to the ground for sneaking in or something! BUT to back myself a bit more than I did in that last sentence, I love radio and music, and I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am now, from my years in RTE 2FM and to now in BBC Radio 1, these are spaces I could only dream of getting a chance in and I don’t take it for granted.  Getting to play music and help people discover and fall in love with artists is the dream”.

London on the Inside spent time with Tara Kumar last month. Her Kumar Klub is where Ireland meets India. Kumar growing up in an Irish-Indian pub. I am really looking forward to seeing where Tara Kumar heads this summer. In terms of her D.J. work and the Kumar Klub. I would love to hear and read more interviews with Tara Kumar, as she is fascinating. Head to her website to get playlists of awesome new music and fresh Irish sounds. It does seem though there is a lot more to come through the remainder of the year:

“When it comes to straddling different cultures, DJ, broadcaster and musician Tara Kumar knows the feeling only too well. Being born to a dad from Belfast and an Indian-Malaysian mother, who also owned the local Irish bar-Indian restaurant in Alice Springs in the Aussie outback, is “the perfect recipe for an identity crisis”. It’s also kept life exciting. Growing up in an Irish-Indian pub was “the best of both worlds, two cultures colliding, from Irish stew and Guinness to vindaloo and mango lassi,” she says.

That unique cultural mix is something that Tara is exploring more as she makes waves in London. She had been studying music and playing in bands, and was nearly signed to Sony in Australia as a teen, but she eventually left Alice Springs for Dublin, where she scored a slot on radio station RTÉ 2FM. After a three-year residency hosting the station’s flagship nightly New Music show, and six years in total at the station, she moved over to London, where she’s had regular hosting gigs on BBC Radio 1’s Future Sounds and Future Artists, DJed at the likes of the GQ Men of the Year and the Universal Records BRITs Afterparty, and collaborated with brands like Ganni, Levi’s, and eBay.

Fashion has always been a big part of her expression and is one of the key ways Tara represents both sides of her heritage. She’s created a distinctive aesthetic that blends vintage clothing – “I’ve always romanticised the stories behind pre-loved clothes, who wore them before me, and what kind of life they lived” – with traditional Indian elements, like saris, jhumkas and pottus, and streetwear, particularly Irish brands Pellador, Emporium, and Storefront. “My go-to outfit would be an Adidas tracksuit, the biggest pair of Indian earrings I can find, and a pottu to finish the look.”

Tara was always destined for a career centred around music. As well as playing the flute, saxophone and guitar, she grew up surrounded by music, “Irish trad from my dad, my Amma’s favourite Bollywood soundtracks, and Tamil classical music playing on my Thatha’s record player.” Though she loves sharing music, she admits that radio can be quite a solitary job, “when you’re live on air, it’s just you and a producer, you don’t see the people you’re speaking to. That’s why I started hosting in person nights, so I could connect with people face-to-face.”

Kumar Klub is Tara’s way of combining her mixed heritage with her love of both music and food, and creating community at the same time. And yes, there’s merch because you didn’t think she would leave fashion out, did you?

What started as “any excuse to throw a party” has evolved into some pretty epic gatherings, including a South Asian horror movie night featuring Indian-inspired cinema food; an Adidas supper club at Irish-Indian spot Shankey’s; a St Patrick’s Day party at Foundation FM with live trad and Tayto chaat; a collab with Guinness in Cork last year where she took over a back room at Coughlan’s Bar, where they handed out over 100 onion bhajis to the crowd; and a 12-hour St Paddy’s Day party this year at The Fox in Haggerston.

And there’s plenty more to come in 2026, with more parties planned in both Ireland and the UK, sit-down events in the calendar, and a new charity project in the works too. She’s already held a fundraiser in aid of Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, a charity very close to her heart, and she’s recently been mentoring at the Dharavi Dream Project, a creative sanctuary for under-resourced youths in India, so we’re keen to see what else she turns her hand to”.

It has been wonderful discovering more about Tara Kumar. Follow her on social media so that you can see where she is playing and what’s in the diary. She did sit in for Sian Eleri on Radio 1’s Future Artists recently, and I hope that she does get more slots and time on BBC Radio 1 and other stations. This incredible inspiring and positive force in music, from her D.J. work broadcasting and her fundraising and charity work, this is someone that we should be very proud of. Ensure that the brilliant Tara Kumar does not…

PASS you by.

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Follow Tara Kumar

Official:

https://www.tarakumar.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/tara_kumar/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@tara_kumarr

Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/tarakumar

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Eli & Fur

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

Eli & Fur

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I wanted to…

PHOTO CREDIT: SJ Spreng

spent some time with Eli & Fur, as they are in the middle of a tour. In June, on 21st, they play in New York. Six days later, they play in Bournemouth. Quite different in terms of feel and scenery, they head back to the U.S. in July. You can check their dates here. Eli & Fur are a D.J. and Electronic producer duo comprising Eliza Noble and Jennifer Skillman. They are based in London. Even though their most recent album was Dreamscapes of 2024, they have conduced some interviews fairly recently and I am a fan of what they do. An incredible duo that everyone should know about. I am going to start by heading back to some older interviews. Starting out with GRAMMY and their 20211 interview with the duo. Found in the Wild is their debut album. GRAMMY note how, “With clubs closed and all plans out the window, they finally reached their destination by revisiting their roots”:

“To better understand British duo Eli & Fur's debut album, Found In The Wild, it might help to watch Into the Wild. The film adaptation of Jon Krakauer's 1996 non-fiction book tells the story of Christopher McCandless, a then-recent college graduate who rejected modern society by adventuring solo across North America into the Alaskan wilderness, supposedly in search of enlightenment. Before his death in approximately August 1992, McCandless sought shelter from the snowy elements in an abandoned bus, documenting his life through self-portraits and journaling.

Into the Wild, Eliza Noble, a.k.a. Eli, tells GRAMMY.com over Zoom, is one of her favorite movies. (She also loves its Eddie Vedder-composed soundtrack.) "I definitely relate to that, wanting to escape," she muses. At the moment, she and partner Jennifer Skillman, a.k.a. Fur, are holed up in their own creative refuge on the other side of the world, in Sussex, South East London, in a giant wooden shed turned studio which to them feels more like a sauna on one of the hottest days in recent memory. The studio, non-weatherproof as it may be, has served as its own frontier, a lawless land where genres, deadlines and plans don't exist, and where creativity has free rein. It's no Alaska, but perhaps it's helped Eli & Fur answer some questions of their own: Who are we? Where do we fit?

They've pondered over that last one, especially, for nearly all the nine years that Eli & Fur the project have existed. Before then, they were "proper cheese pop" songwriters and vocalists, as Fur calls it, who after spending countless nights in the club evolved into DJs and producers of their own, culminating in their 2013 debut, "You're So High." Since then, the duo's profile has increased with releases on dance labels including Defected, Spinnin' Deep, Anjunadeep and their own NYX Music. Still, as they shared in a statement, doubters thought their combination of pop-structured vocals and club tracks wouldn't work.

Split into a dual showcase—Found represents their songwriting roots, while In the Wild shows off their club side—Found In The Wild is the musical whole of Eli & Fur, proving that both can co-exist to beautiful, emotional results. With all tracks either created or finished during lockdown, a dark, moody energy surges throughout its rolling melodies, emphasized by lyrics that reflect the sadness ("Come Back Around"), uncertainty ("Broken Parts") and existentialism ("Are We Even Human") of having everything you know and love turned upside down. By stepping back and trusting their instincts, Eli & Fur were able to recenter themselves and move forward. As Eli sums it up: "You have to get lost to be found."

How has being home for the last 16 months affected your relationship with music?

Fur: When Coronavirus happened I came back from L.A. to be with my family, and I've literally been in this shed for the last year making music everyday. It's been incredible because I haven't had this [much] time before to fully be creative and not have all these crazy deadlines and touring. We've also been making music that we wouldn't usually because of what's been going on in the world. Being able to come in here and make different genres with no planned outcome or release or whatever—just purely create—I love that.

Eli: That's so true. When you're at home and you know you're going to DJ on the weekends, you often have it in your mind that you're going to test this track out. You're thinking from that club perspective, because that's where you're spending a lot of your time. At the beginning of the pandemic we were in separate places and we had to make music remotely, so we'd sent stuff back and forth and—

Fur: It was a new way of working for us.

Eli: Yeah, it was a crazy experience… Even though we're dying to get back to touring now, the silver lining in this has been being able to get ahead of ourselves.

Did you experience any existential anxiety? The idea of, "I'm a DJ/producer, but who am I while none of that's happening?"

Eli: We both struggled through the whole thing. It's been difficult, especially as our income comes from touring, but it was scary because for the first three months, it felt like a real loss of identity. What am I without this? It was weird. When everything gets stripped away from you and you don't know when you're going to work again, you essentially don't have a job and no idea of what the future holds… That was really stressful, but it's been amazing that the two of us have supported each other. I have no idea what I would've done had I been on my own.

Fur: I don't think I could do it.

You've been told that meshing your songwriting and club-minded sides wouldn't work, but in the last few years especially, vocal melodic tracks have been thriving in the dance music space. What do you think connects with audiences?

Eli: The emotion on the dancefloor. You can have rolling, amazing tracks that are great to dance to, but the ones that you remember, in our opinion, are the ones that make you stop and listen to lyrics that you relate to… It's certainly a style that not everybody loves, but as you said, it's growing.

Anjunadeep is a perfect example. They're a great label to be on because when you go to an Anjunadeep show or listen to an Anjunadeep artist you're going to get these emotive, beautiful, interesting layered pieces of music which have a lot of meaning. I think that's what people are connecting with.

When was a time that the club most felt like being in the wild?

Eli: My favorite moments are in a dark, more intimate space where the crowd is just right there, vibing with you, and you completely lose yourself. I think a track that really represents that is "Light Up Your Eyes" because… it really communicates that moment. Those moments are really inspiring, when you're all on the same wavelength. The best part about going out is losing yourself and escaping and being somewhere dark where you're not staring at someone in a bright light. It's shadowy and mysterious; you can be whoever you want to be. No one has to know who you are.

Whenever we go out, we're usually going out to DJ. Our concept of a night out is playing music and seeing people's reactions. It's incredible to look at different faces in the crowd and kind of think about who they are, where they come from, what's going on in their minds—

Fur: You're not even having a conversation; it's just a feeling”.

Before bringing things more up to date, let’s head back to 2024 and Fifteen Questions. Speaking with Eli & Fur around the release of Dreamscapes, I am going to end with a recent interview, where Eliza Noble and Jennifer Skillman reflected on the Dreamscapes Remixes album from last year. This year, they have released singles One That You Love, and Strange. I wonder if another album will arrive soon:

“Entering/creating new worlds through music has always exerted a strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?

Fur: I definitely am more listening to the melody than the lyrics, whereas I think Eli is the opposite, she focuses on words more, it's like melodic movement versus poetry. When those things complement each other, it is pure magic and we always strive for that together.

It’s funny how different people latch onto different parts sonically. When we create music, we really do get lost in it. It’s almost like a form of meditation, like time stops.

Sometimes we’ll get so wrapped up in the music, hours will go by and we won’t even notice.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

Fur: We both listened to quite different music growing up. I listened to more 80s synthpop. I definitely think we both go back to music we were listening to around those ages, we both love being able to listen back to old songs and remember exactly how we were feeling the first time we heard it.

Eli: I was a lot more interested in live elements of music, singer songwriter stuff, folk bands, some more emo alternative teenage angst stuff, But it was always rooted in emotion. All that music still has a huge effect on me.

From the earliest sketches to the finished piece, tell me about the creative process for your album, please.

Fur: It all depends on the song, some songs happen quicker than others, some sit on the shelf for months. Sometimes it’s hard to create the initial magic that happened in the very beginning. We try not to stray too far away from the original ideas we fall in love with. Saying “it’s finished” has always been the hardest part for me, thankfully Eli is brilliant at that.

All the ideas from our new album Dreamscapes started very authentically in moments of inspiration, maybe a hotel room, or sat down with a guitar. Then we took all our favourite ideas into the studio to finish them with a vision for the album sonically.

Do you feel that your music or your work as an artist needs to have a societal purpose or a responsibility to anyone but yourself?

Fur: This is a very interesting question. If you are lucky enough to make music that is totally true to yourself AND it connects on a scale that gives you a career out of it, then that's amazing. But at the point where it doesn't then that's more of a hobby or an outlet for only yourself, which is also great if that's all you are striving for.

For us, we want to be creative but also have a career in music. This sometimes means compromising in small ways. There is something really magical about the listener being able to apply their story and feelings to the music you make so that it can tell a hundred different stories to different listeners.

For that reason we do always consider the listeners when choosing which songs we want to put out in the world, we like to write about our own experiences to the point where people connect.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more mundane; tasks?

Fur: Music is more subconscious. So it’s therapeutic in a way that you can lose yourself, let out emotions that perhaps you can’t put into words. It’s a lot more stream of consciousness.
When you sit down to write something you never know what’s going to come from it. That not knowing as well as expressing emotion you may not have been aware of is very freeing and not like anything else”.

Before getting to a new Beatportal chat, in 2024, they spoke with Eli & Fir about a track that started it all for them. They also talked about their new sample pack, Dusk to Dawn. It was their first sample pack, so it was an exciting time for them. If you are not following Eli & Fur, then make sure that you connect with them and check out their music:

“You’re So High (10 Years On)

Eli: So “You’re So High” was a really organic moment for us. At the time, we’d been DJing for a couple of years and we’d started to make our own tracks. I think at the time we were listening to a lot of old Maceo Plex like Under the Sheets, then we were kind of digging back into that old Chicago House sound. The more emotional stuff like Larry Heard The Sun Can’t Compare.

Fur: “Mystery of Love.”

Eli: “Yeah yeah yeah, all that kind of stuff. Those beautiful kind of gritty but emotional tracks are what we were playing in our DJ sets. But at the same time, we were also working at a production pop-house, writing pop-y tracks as our day job.”

“So that really seeped into what we were doing in terms of vocal hooks and using vocals that you can’t get out of your head. I think You’re So High is a perfect example of those two worlds.”

Fur: “It’s like a hybrid or the day job and what we were doing in the evenings, as we tried to figure out our sounds.”

Eli: “And that stayed with us over the last 10 years. When we wrote that song, the chords came first and we had You’re So High as a lyric.”

Fur: “We have these lyric pages where we write all the lyrics, which we still try and do now. I think it’s a great way of writing as you’ll just come up with the lyrics and not have to fill in gibberish with words. But You’re So High was the first thing that came out of Eli’s mouth, and it just stuck.”

Eli: “It stuck, then we had the chords and the vocal. When we started to build things up around it we really kind of dipped into that inspiration of what we were listening to at the time. We wanted it to not be too complicated but lean towards the music we really loved at the time. When you listen to the drums on that they’re really poppy, like when the snare comes in.”

Fur: “It’s a polished sound.”

Eli: “It’s not super gritty, but when the bassline comes in you can hear that inspiration. You can hear what we were inspired by. The older kind of darker, more emotional techno and that kind of thing that was really getting us excited.”

“I think that’s definitely what we try and do: merge those two worlds together. That hooky vocal along with that gritty emotional stuff is why we do what we do and what inspires us.”

“The track really came together in a very organic way, and it took what, a day to make it? And we didn’t touch it after that.”

Fur: We finished it really quickly and didn’t overthink it.

Eli: “We continue to use those ways of making music. We start with the chords and a vocal and we build everything up around that. That’s what we did with You’re So High, one of the first tracks we ever made. It’s nice that it’s helped define how we make things going forward.”

Eli & Fur Producer Tips

In order to retain the magic and the vibe from your best ideas, Eli strongly advocates for finding the focal point of a track and leaving it intact. Fur agrees, and recommends being ruthless and chucking everything else out the window if it doesn’t lend itself to your core idea.

In the same vein, Fur speaks of the importance of keeping it simple. Not only in the production itself, but in the tools used. It’s far too easy to load dozens of plugins into your DAW, when actually, having too many tools in front of you can stunt your creative process. Instead, she recommends using a few choice plugins and sticking to them”.

Last year, in a reflective essay, “Eli & Fur revisit the emotional core of their album 'Dreamscapes' through a powerful series of remixes — exploring connection, creative trust, and the magic of transformation on the dance floor and beyond”. I have taken some selections from it:

“When we first released Dreamscapes, it felt like a deep exhale. The album was shaped in the quiet margins of life, those solitary wanderings between shows, early morning flights, the long stretches on the road where time feels suspended. That space became the heart of the record, and meant a huge deal to us. It's been cathartic and special like it always is putting out a body of work you believe in.

The music was always asking for a second life. A new shape. We love opening the door to other imaginations and seeing where other artists take each track. We’ve always been protective of our songs; they come from such personal places, but there is something thrilling about handing them over to artists we admire, and letting go of control.

Sinca was the first to come back with her take on "Insomnia." We played it first at Audio In San Francisco and it was just so gritty and sounded incredible in that room. We fell in love with this remix then and there – Sinca really is one to watch, she’s absolutely killing it and we love everything she’s doing. We often have our best memory of certain tracks when all the elements come together – it’s a beautiful moment as a DJ when you have the right track, at the right place, in the right time.

Monkey Safari brought their own unique energy too. We have been fans of theirs since we started making music, and we honestly couldn’t believe they picked "Oceanside," the slowest and furthest away from the dance floor on the whole album. We have such a deep connection to this track and it felt so special that they chose it because we knew how beautifully they craft a remix. It's a perfect summer moment now with such a groove, we can imagine this one being played during a golden-hour set somewhere coastal, waves rolling in, the crowd swaying gently in time.

What ties all these remixes together is that each one feels like a continuation of the journey. Dreamscapes was built on that feeling of being alone in a crowd, or together in silence. These new interpretations don’t erase that, they expand it. They give the songs new scenery to wander through, new atmospheres to explore. They honour the original sentiment while offering a totally new lens”.

With new singles and dates in the diary, I do think that the remarkable Eli & Fur are going to go from strength to strength. They are already so acclaimed and respected, yet there are some corners that do not know about them. It would be great to get a new interview for this year from the L.A.-based Eliza Noble and Jennifer Skillman. I really love Eli & Fur so, if they are playing London in the future, I might see if I can catch them. Go and spend some time with this…

WONDERFUL duo.

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Follow Eli & Fur

Official:

https://www.eliandfur.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/eliandfur/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/eliandfur

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/eliandfur

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5CkVLGKUJkIc1pmSk10QP4?si=uenfB8d8R6iQXfhuJPhVDQ

FEATURE: Spotlight: Maria Hanlon

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Voices Radio

Maria Hanlon

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I am always keen…

to spotlight and discuss brilliant female D.J.s and broadcasters. It is an industry and side of music that is still male-dominated, or at least set up for men. There are some incredible women who are changing that, though the industry itself is not doing enough to balance things and counteract the sexism that exists. I wanted to shine a light on the brilliant Maria Hanlon. I want to get to some interviews with Hanlon. However, there is some brief biography that I want to lead off with: “Maria Hanlon is a London-based DJ & Presenter. Since moving back to London in 2021 Maria has been busy playing across the capital showcasing her signature sound, weaving together the best in Soulful House, Deep House & Garage. Despite only picking up DJing a few years ago, Maria has been making serious waves on the circuit - last summer saw her return to the infamous Pagoda at Secret Garden Party, Queens Yard Summer Party, Ibiza and make her Snowbombing and Cross The Tracks debut. Maria also hosts The Voices Breakfast Show on Voices Radio, one of London’s most exciting radio stations”. Before getting to chats around her broadcasting and presenting work, it is also worth noting Maria Hanlon is a radio producer. This 2025 feature is about The Voices Breakfast Show on Voices Radio and someone who also helps produce at BBC Introducing in London:

“WHAT DOES A RADIO PRODUCER DO?

A radio producer is usually responsible for the overall content and production of a radio show.

Roles and responsibilities may include:

• Live studio production

• Booking guests

• Choosing music

• Compliance

• Editing audio

• Generating ideas and researching content

DIFFERENT TYPES OF RADIO PRODUCTION

The producer’s role will differ on each show. For example when I produced at Voices Radio (community radio) my main role was to welcome the presenter and guests, get them set up on the mic & equipment and monitor the levels throughout the show. Then I’d upload the show to Mixcloud and Soundcloud after and reply to emails along with other admin tasks.

However, at BBC Introducing in London (local radio) I work alongside the presenter, Jess Iszatt and we do most of the prep before the show including editing interviews, listening to and complying music, music logging and making assets for social media and BBC Sounds.

HOW TO GET INTO PRODUCTION

There are many different ways to get into production, many producers start their radio journey at student radio, hospital radio or community radio.

The best way to gain experience is to learn in a live studio environment. I’d suggest reaching out to see if you could do a shadow shift at a few different stations.

Although you probably have a favourite show or station, gaining experience on a range of shows can be very beneficial so you can see how different producers and presenters work.

Note: Read the excellent recap of UD’s #IT2024 session with Ahmed Hussian, Head of BBC Asian Network in conversation with journalist, Yemi Abiade HERE.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD RADIO PRODUCER?

Working in a live radio environment can sometimes have its challenges, producers need to work well under pressure and remain calm and collected. A good radio producer will also be a creative thinker and come up with new ideas and make them happen. As a producer you’ll need to be technically skilled so you can make sure the equipment is working properly. You’ll also need to have great attention to detail when editing or listening to live audio. Finally, producers will need to be a team player and create a good vibe in the studio and support the presenter so they feel relaxed on air.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Producing live radio is so exciting and it’s a really rewarding job seeing all your hard work come together live on air. I hope my guide encouraged you to start your radio production journey! Check out a few useful links below to get the ball rolling”.

I am also dropping in text from Mixcloud and their conversation with Maria Hanlon. You can check out Voices Radio here.  This is someone who champions creative communities. I am really excited by a wonderful broadcaster, producer and D.J. I do think that Hanlon will present on a station like BBC Radio 1 or BBC Radio 6 Music at some point in her career. That said, it feels like she has a great home at Voices Radio. I am including interviews that focus on her broadcasting. However, as a D.J., Maria Hanlon is someone who blends Soulful House, Deep House, Broken Beat and Garage:

“Maria Hanlon has a journey into radio is rooted in a lifelong love of music, shaped by her father’s carefully curated CD collection and later expanded through Brighton’s buzzing nightlife. From early encounters with Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin to being blown away by Caribou in a basement club, music has always been a constant thread in her life.

What was it about radio that really enticed you?

There are so many things I love about radio. One being the time you get with your interview guest and the opportunity to ask them questions that you might not usually be able to. I’ve been lucky enough to interview some of my musical heroes such as Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, Louie Vega, Charlie Dark and Jamz Supernova which were real pinch-me moments. Another aspect of radio that I adore is the community. I have made so many friends at Voices Radio and know there’s always people to ask for advice, hang out with or go to see DJ. As someone who’s not from London, Voices feels like family here in The Big Smoke. And of course, at the heart of it all is the music. Digging deep, discovering new sounds and sharing selections. There’s nothing better.

How did your journey lead to you getting your radio show over at Voices Radio?

A friend sent me a Facebook ad from Voices Radio, which had just launched and was looking for new hosts. I reached out to Toby, one of the co-founders, and he offered me a trial show that same week. I prepped as much as I could, hopped on a train to London and ended up hosting one of the very first Voices shows. Though I didn’t realise it at the time! Thankfully, it went really well and Toby invited me to join the station with a regular slot.

Not long after, I decided to move to London. I picked up different part-time jobs so I could fully commit to my Voices show and throw myself into the city’s incredible music scene. During my time there, I also learned how to DJ, which soon led to bookings alongside my regular radio shows.

What would you say was the turning point for you in your radio career?

One of the biggest turning points for me was hosting the very first breakfast show on Voices Radio. I felt incredibly grateful that the team trusted me to launch their early-morning programming. It felt like a milestone not only for Voices but also for my own radio career. There’s something uniquely special about breakfast radio. My goal has always been to kick off the weekend, sharing soulful sounds and making listeners smile each time they tune in.

What are your top tips for presenting and putting together a radio show?

The most valuable lesson I’ve learned is to simply be yourself, as obvious as it sounds. It’s natural to admire certain presenters or DJs, but your greatest strength is that there’s only one you. Authenticity and passion are what resonate – both on and off air. When it comes to putting a show together, preparation is key. I like to have plenty of music lined up, detailed notes on each track, thoughtful questions for my guest, and jingles ready to go. That way, when the show begins, I can relax, enjoy the moment and let everything flow without the stress of worrying about what to play or ask next.

Looking forward a little, what do you think the future of radio looks like?

I think the future of radio is looking incredibly exciting. While being on air is unmatched, so many community stations in London now host events, fundraisers, panels and workshops that people can get involved in. Voices is a perfect example. It can be a stepping stone into hosting your first show and gaining studio experience. A space to share your record collection just for fun, or, like in my case, the foundation for building a career.

As the radio landscape evolves, I don’t think anything can replace being live on air. Radio thrives on human connection, storytelling, interviews, shared experiences and carefully curated shows. It’s irreplaceable and more important than ever.

What lessons have you taken about yourself through your radio show?

My radio show has shown me just how passionate I am about championing the music I love. Whether that’s spotlighting emerging talent, celebrating timeless classics or curating sets that capture a mood. It’s also made me realize how much I enjoy interviewing people and hearing their stories. I’m so grateful I decided to try radio during lockdown, because it’s become the thing I love most”.

I am going to end with another interview. The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance spent some time with Maria Hanlon last year. If you have not heard Hanlon’s radio work or seen her as a D.J., then I would suggest that you check her out. A crucial tastemaker and wonderful producer, she is one of our most important voices and talents:

“As a DJ, producer and tastemaker, Maria Hanlon plays an integral role at BBC Introducing in London, helping support the next generation of talent in getting their music heard by a wider audience.

Alongside presenter Jess Iszatt, Maria is an essential cog in the platform's machinery as well as holding down a show on the King's Cross-based community radio station, Voices Radio.

She's a regular at gigs and always looking for new sounds and artists to champion. After providing ICMP students with online feedback via our Careers and Industry Hub, we caught up with Maria to hear her essential tips on navigating the music industry, exploring the do's and don'ts of freelancing, how to make the most of the BBC Introducing platform and more…

Want to get into community radio? Immerse yourself in the station's world

With a community station like Voices Radio, it's good to join the network and get really involved - listen to the shows, attend socials and get a feel for the sound of the station. Each day features different genres of music - for example, Wednesday is r'n'b, garage, grime and hip hop, Thursdays are more indie focused. If you want to apply for a show, dig deep into the station's programming and work out where you might fit in its schedule.

Use the BBC Introducing platform to upload the music you think represents you best

If you're looking to make your mark and find a bigger audience with BBC Introducing, the first thing to do is to upload your music. For those that don't know, the Uploader is essentially a giant inbox where the team listens to the music that gets uploaded. Add your music there and make sure it is something that represents you best. We get sent hundreds of tracks each week so try to upload the music you think authentically represents you.

Don't agonise over perfecting your music - do share what you're proud of

It's always hard to know when to release your music as there's always another tweak or edit you can make.

I think the best way to know when a track is ready is when you feel proud of it and you feel it authentically represents you. Make music that you love rather than trying to tap into a trending genre or style.

There's only so much you can tweak so try to release when you feel confident in a piece of music. Of course, working this out depends on each individual artist and can initially be tricky to find out.

Network in person and follow up by email

In person meetings for new artists looking to meet tastemakers can be an effective way of making an impression. It's really beneficial when meeting people and putting faces to names.

If you are networking with BBC Introducing, then make sure your music has been uploaded to the BBC Introducing Uploader and your profile is updated. Then, if you'd like to send an email, keep it brief with the key information.

Gigging artists should try and get warm up slots

There are so many brilliant music venues in the capital. I'm in North London and the Jazz Cafe and Koko are two of my favourites. There's Paper Dress Vintage, Oslo Hackney, Folklore, Ninety One Living Room, The Old Blue Last, The Shacklewell Arms alongside so many others in East London that are all brilliant.

For new acts you're spoilt for choice and securing support slots is a really good way to play to a bigger audience and hopefully gain some new fans. At the start, gigging as much as possible is a really great way of meeting other artists and fans as well as gaining confidence and experience performing”.

I shall wrap it up there. I have a lot of respect for Maria Hanlon. Not only one of our best D.J.s and broadcasters, she is so inspiring when it comes to her advice and guidance. How to get into radio and production. A simply incredible talent and a staple of Voices Radio, go and follow, connect with and listen to Maria Hanlon. In years to come, I feel that she will play huge international gigs and work across some massive radio stations. It would be just reward for her…

IMMENSE talent.

___________

Follow Maria Hanlon

PHOTO CREDIT: Benedict Priddy

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/mariahanlon/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@mariaanitahanlon

Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/maria-hanlon

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: A Classic Summer Blend

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Polina Tankilevitch/Pexels

A Classic Summer Blend

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THIS is a mixtape…

PHOTO CREDIT: KoolShooters/Pexels

that contains some classic summer songs. Or ones that summon visions of the season. In the Northern Hemisphere, the start of summer is Sunday, 21st June. Meteorological summer, used for climate tracking, begins on 1st June. Although the weather has not always been great this spring, there is hope that summer will be pleasant enough. A bit warm but not constantly hot. To summon some summer vibes, I have compiled a mixtape of amazing songs that will put you in the mood. A summer-ready mix that is guaranteed to put you in a better mood. If you need a bit of sunshine and heat, then I hope that the songs below help with that. As summer is almost here, I felt it is a good time to put together…

PHOTO CREDIT: Vika Glitter/Pexels

A classic summer cocktail.

FEATURE: An Essential Kate Bush Collaborator: Looking Ahead to the Eightieth Birthday of the Legendary Photographer, Gered Mankowitz

FEATURE:

 

 

An Essential Kate Bush Collaborator

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/ALL PHOTOS: Gered Mankowitz

Looking Ahead to the Eightieth Birthday of the Legendary Photographer, Gered Mankowitz

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I am a little premature…

in writing this, but I am looking to the eightieth birthday of one of Kate Bush’s most important early collaborators. Even though her brother, John Carder Bush, was the first person to photographer – and he did so through most of her career and right up to her most recent album, 50 Words for Snow -, perhaps the most notable and important photographer outside of the family who captured Kate Bush is Gered Mankowitz. Born in London on 3rd August, 1946, I wanted to mark the upcoming eightieth birthday of someone responsible for some of the most beautiful and astonishing photos of Kate Bush. Mankowitz has photographed huge artists like Jimi Hendrix, Free, Traffic, The Yardbirds, The Small Faces, Soft Machine, Slade, Suzi Quatro, Sweet, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Eurythmics, ABC, and Duran Duran. There were notable photographers who have worked with Kate Bush through her career. Ones who shot her once or not often such as Trevor Leighton, Anton Corbijn, Steve Rapport, Clive Arrowsmith, and Kevin Cummins. Although the brilliant Guido Harari had a longer working relationship with Kate Bush (1982-1993), Gered Mankowitz was charged with photographing Kate Bush between 1978 and 1979. From her debut album, The Kick Inside, through to her second album, Lionheart (1978) and the following year, he shot the cover for Lionheart and some wonderful promotional images that are so powerful. I have said how it would be great to have a photography exhibition where we see an array of photographs of Kate Bush through the years. In the 1978-1979 section, displaying those incredible Gered Mankowitz photographs. In terms of my favourite, perhaps the one I have included as the main image. The ‘Hollywood’ shot of 1979. I wrote a feature about that shot.

WOW! Kate Bush is now sold out, but it would be great if there was a new book from Gered Mankowitz. One that compiles his Kate Bush photographs. I will come to some interviews with him where he discussed working alongside Kate Bush. However, we get some background asnd chronology about his time shooting Kate Bush:

“Gered Mankowitz recalls: “The final few weeks of 1977 were very busy for me, with album covers for Bing Crosby, Cliff Richard, Shakin’ Stevens and the Rubettes amongst others. So when EMI asked me over to their Manchester Square offices in central London to discuss a new artist, I was actually a bit pushed to find the time. How glad I am that I did manage to free up my schedule, because at that meeting, they played me ‘Wuthering Heights’ and showed me the video they had produced of a then unknown singer called Kate Bush performing the song. Kate was not at this initial meeting, but from listening to the playback of the song and watching the video, I realised that she was an extraordinary artist and potentially a wonderful subject.”

January 1978 – The first session

“In those days I was working out of a studio in Great Windmill Street in the heart of London’s Soho.  For this first session with Kate I had decided to use a wonderful piece of distressed canvas as a background; it had once been used as the floor of a boxing ring in the gym below us, and its coarse texture seemed a perfect contrast to Kate’s youthful beauty.

I purchased some leotards, tights, leg-warmers and scarves, and placed them in our rather inadequate dressing room, which was actually a curtained-off corner in the studio. When Kate arrived, she disappeared behind the curtain with the make-up artists and stylist.

Kate emerged in the pink leotard.

She looked beautiful, and I knew that we were going to have a fantastic session. She settled in front of my Hasselblad camera without a care in the world. Kate did not have much experience of working with a professional photographer, and I felt that it was important to try and guide her through the process. She had a natural instinct and seemed to understand immediately how much the camera loved her.

After shooting several test Polaroids, I was happy with the lighting, and Kate was delighted with the look. We shot throughout the afternoon, with Kate in both the pink outfit and a green version. After about twenty rolls of film, the first shoot was over and I felt certain that we had achieved the objective and produced the portrait that would launch her.”

March 1978 – The second session

My second session with Kate was on 21 March 1978. By this time, both the ‘Wuthering Heights’ single and The Kick Inside album had been established as huge hits. Some countries did not want to use the original Kick Inside cover image, and one of my jobs for this second session was to come up with some alternative options for use on covers outside the UK. One of these turned out to be the classic ‘wooden box’ image which became the American cover for the album, and there were at least four different cover images in total. I always loved the ‘wooden box’ series because it was such a complete contrast to the original pink leotard shoot and showed a more playful side of Kate’s character. We had the box made by my set-builder so that it was completely square and would fill the shape of the album sleeve perfectly.

The other reason for the second session was to create a stock of several different portraits that showed different aspects of Kate’s theatrical persona. I remember this as a long and pretty tiring session, and we shot more than six different set-ups and over forty rolls of film. When I look back at this shoot, and see again the variations that we covered in one day – including the entire ‘Wuthering Heights’ video sequence in the Cathy dress, minus the smoke (which EMI had asked for because they could not take stills from the video itself) I am not surprised that it was such a shattering experience.

August 1978 – the third session

The next session in August 1978 was specifically for the Lionheart album cover.

We constructed the attic room in my Great Windmill Street studio. I found the Lion headpiece in a fancy dress shop near Olympia, but the costume was made to measure, and fitted Kate perfectly. I did not want the attic to be filled with the usual sort of junk you find in old attics, because I felt that it needed to be quite sparse in order to keep as much focus on Kate as possible. The same box from the earlier Kick Inside session came into play again, as well as a couple of little props and a great deal of spray-on theatrical cobweb. I had designed the set so as to have a large window through which to light the shot, and apart from a few reflectors, that was it.

I had agreed with EMI that the sleeve would be presented as a gatefold with both sides designed, as much as possible, as “front” covers. The inside spread would carry the lyrics and would include the title track hand-written by Kate. For the reverse “front” cover, I shot a series of very dynamic portraits with a dark background and a powerful orangey red back-light which I have always referred to as the ‘redhead’ series.

My fourth and final session with Kate was in February 1979. By this time, she was clearly established as one of Britain’s brightest stars. The outfit that Kate wore was made specifically for the shoot in a wonderful vivid red jersey material.  It was designed to be blown against her body by a powerful wind machine as she made a range of shapes to the camera. Kate responded to the concept with her usual zeal and enthusiasm and we shot a series of exciting and fabulous photographs, several of which remain some of my most favourite from this important period in my career.

The remainder of this final session was spent shooting an extensive range of full length animated, action dance portraits including a surreal series with Kate climbing out of a chrome drum, which was used on several EP sleeves including a rare Brazilian release. In fact this chrome drum was an old Kodak dryer drum which we had been using as the base for the studio coffee table”.

I think Gered Mankowitz is enormously important in terms of how Kate Bush was captured in that first year or two of her professional career. Shooting so many different sides to her, he very much photographed and portrayed her a dancer, which she very much was. Not trying to turn her into a traditional or fake Pop artist, we see this very personal and natural side. Of course, there are some shots like the ‘Hollywood’ one and the cover of Lionheart, though I do think that he created that blend of the most fantastical and the pure, unfiltered Kate Bush. Guido Harari did too. Kate Bush not wanting to be portrayed as something she was not. Or felt uncomfortable with. She clearly had a lot of trust in Gered Mankowitz and you can see she was relaxed around him, as the photos he took between 1978-1979 convey that. Speaking with Big Issue in August 2014 – when she took her residency, Before the Dawn, to Hammersmith – Mankowitz talked about working with Kate Bush:

“I was brought in to create the launch image for Wuthering Heights and I think what makes Kate brilliant is her unique talent, her extraordinary energy, her vision – everything she does has a tremendous vision.

I remember her to be somebody who worked very hard. She was very young, 19, when it came out and she was wonderful to work with. Very energetic, very frenetic, quite difficult to tie down sometimes, to get her to focus on making an idea work, she wasn’t very experienced in having her photograph taken at that time, which was part of the challenge. But her individuality shone through.

I don’t think I had to draw it out of her, it was there, it was bubbling out of her. When I first went to the record company to discuss the session she wasn’t there but they played the video of Wuthering Heights that they’d made. It was quite obvious that she was a unique and special talent, not just because the music was so extraordinary but because of her individual look, her beauty and movement and style.

She had a really special quality, which stood out instantly on record and visually. I knew that I had to be at the top of my game to produce an image that was going to complement and support this extraordinary talent, and that’s what I tried to do. I always try to break these things down so that they are as simple as possible.

I had to be at the top of my game to produce an image that was going to complement and support this extraordinary talent

I only had a very loose connection with the record company. They already had a cover for the album The Kick Inside, but they didn’t have an image of Kate, it was quite obscure and it wasn’t as up-front of Kate as they wanted it to be. But I sense that they weren’t quite sure where they were going with her.

What they seemed very certain of was here was a unique and special talent and that they had somebody who was pure gold, but they were being led by her and I think that they weren’t sure who they were getting.

I wouldn’t want to suggest that she was in control of our session, but she was very much in control of the way she looked when she stepped out of the dressing room and I saw her for the first time ready for the camera I was blown away and knew it was going to be something special.

We did the very famous leotard pictures. I chose the leotards to make visual link with dance, that was the point of choosing and selecting them, I wanted to keep it extremely simple, I hope that in the portrait there would be a visual connection with dance which was clearly very important to her.

During the same session we reproduced the image of Wuthering Heights that she’d recorded for the video because everybody wanted stills of that but in those days they just couldn’t take them from the film. She did the whole dance for me. [Big Issue: “Wow!” Gered: “Wow indeed!”]. The only thing I didn’t have was the dry ice she had in the video, but it was spectacular.

We did four big photo sessions together between January 1978 and March or April 1979 and dance was always very high up on the list and a lot of the pictures we did are her moving, her different leotards, leaping, spinning, dancing and expressing herself like that and that was so important and trying to capture that in a very graphic way.

She could just look at the camera you would melt. You sense that she was really special and felt Wuthering Heights was going to be a big hit and I know that EMI was going to really get behind it. What nobody knew was how huge she would be and how important.

I had worked with a lot of people who had become incredibly successful for one reason or another – The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, who had that same charisma and presence as Kate, as did Annie Lennox and Suzi Quattro. What you recognise is talent and charisma but that doesn’t necessarily turn into longevity.

We know you’re going to move from one single, one album to the next and hope that the artist and everything in their support structure around them is going to remain intact and supportive, and that the artist will build a fan base that is solid enough to support them.

The one thing that was very clear was here was a very individual and unique special artist. There’s always terrible pressure on people especially if your first record is a huge hit. I don’t think that any of her records have been as big as Wuthering Heights but she’s big enough, talented enough and clever enough not to be overwhelmed by the success.

She would appear to be completely in control of her career, and she’s managed to maintain her privacy. When she makes an appearance [in public] she’s thought about it, and considered it, and the response to it is always huge.

The one picture that in a way is inescapable is the pink leotard Wuthering Heights picture. It’s one of those pictures that become iconic and represents so much, and that doesn’t happen very often. It has a life of its own and it has energy. I think it’s a beautiful portrait of a very beautiful young woman.

The Big Issue: There has been discussion over the years whether her sexuality was being exploited – depending how it’s cropped, it’s quite graphic…

Gered: It didn’t occur to me at that time that [the nipples visible in the full-length shot] would be a problem. I know that it was pretty edgy for the late ’70s but it wasn’t sort of discussed or thought about a great deal. That was how she looked and I wasn’t going to say to her “I think you should cover up”.

She looked absolutely gorgeous. I’m looking at a cropped version of it now and it still has all the power that it did then. Her breasts might have been titillating to a few young boys but her beauty and her serenity, her stillness are what really make this a special photograph.

She certainly knew what she was doing, that’s how she came out of the dressing room, looking like that, and there was no attempt by anybody to make her look like that. That’s what she looked like and I don’t think it’s exploitative at all. I think it’s very, very beautiful.

I’m the photographer and I took that picture, and I don’t see how I could have exploited Kate Bush. She was in control of it.

But she used her sexuality throughout her performance – look at the Babooshka video or any of the records and promotional videos and stills, certainly in those first three or four years of her career she was a very sexual person and I think that came across in the way she moved, looked and the way she sang.

For me that makes any discussion or debate about whether the picture was ‘exploitative’ redundant. She wasn’t like Miley Cyrus trying to draw attention to herself through her sexuality. She’s a very strong woman and as a strong woman you know that she’s aware of everything that’s around her and I completely reject any possibility that the pictures were exploitative, it reflects her beauty and her power and serenity, and her comfortableness with it.

The Big Issue: It’s such a direct portrait, you feel like you know her, her face looks so open but she’s not giving anything away, it gives you chills still to look at it now.

Gered: It often is the case that in the beginning when an artist makes a really profound impact it’s often their first moments that are sort of welded into the public consciousness and that’s one of the most gratifying things. Going back to my favourite image, I’m incredibly proud and thrilled to have been associated with Kate Bush at this early stage. It’s fantastic to hear you say that [above] about it”.

Even though he shot some amazing black-and-white photos of Kate Bush – including promotional shots for Wuthering Heights -, it is interesting what he says in this 2025 interview. How he says A.I. is a nightmare for photography. However, it is when he mentioned Kate Bush looks better in colour than black-and-white. I never considered this: “Other artists simply demand colour. “Kate Bush, for instance… her image demanded colour, because of her hair, her skin, her lips. Colour was how she should be seen.” Perhaps most revealing is Mankowitz’s perspective on what makes for meaningful photographic encounters. Despite the prestige it might bring, he admits his “stomach would sink” at the prospect of photographing modern megastars like Taylor Swift – not due to any artistic reservation, but because of the barriers to genuine connection. “Photography is a very intimate thing for me,” Mankowitz explains .“A portrait of somebody is a very intimate thing. It’s really them and me and the camera”. It would be really cool is, on 3rd August, there was a new interview with Gered Mankowitz for the Kate Bush Fan Podcast. He was with them in 2023. I think his photos of Kate Bush in 1978 and 1979 are some of the best and most captivating. The looks and poses. What he drew from Kate Bush. Some truly remarkable and unforgettable shots. Her in the pink leotard and the expression on her face! Few others could elicit that. That is why I wanted to wish many happy returns to…

A genius photographer.

FEATURE: Spice Girls’ Wannabe at Thirty: One of the Most Important, Powerful and Memorable Debut Singles in Pop Histor

FEATURE:

 

 

Spice Girls’ Wannabe at Thirty

IN THIS PHOTO: Spice Girls clockwise, from front: Emma Bunton ('Baby Spice'), Victoria Beckham ('Posh Spice'), Melanie Chisholm ('Sporty Spice'), Geri Halliwell ('Ginger Spice') and Melanie Brown ('Scary Spice') photographed in Paris in September 1996/PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Roney/Getty Images

One of the Most Important, Powerful and Memorable Debut Singles in Pop History

__________

THIS anniversary feature…

does not have a single theme or point of focus. Instead, I wanted to discuss the sheer brilliance of Spice Girls’ debut single, Wannabe, and how it is so empowering and influential. Although the single was released in the U.K. on 8th July, 1996 in the U.K., it was released on 26th June in Japan. I am taking that June date as its thirtieth, as that is when the song was first released. There is this split between those who say it is this empowering feminist anthem, and people who think its messages are weak and that Girl Power was manufactured, hollow and gimmicky. I do think that Wannabe was a groundbreaking debut for a 1990s Pop act. In terms of what was around in 1996 and the songs released that brilliant summer, there was still a lot of male-dominated guitar music. The hangover of Britpop, the scene was still male-driven. Artists like Underworld, Beck, Manic Street Preachers, The Prodigy and Oasis at the forefront and releasing a lot of the most popular music of the year. The music press very geared still towards male artists and bands. Although there was not a huge backlash against Spice Girls, you could feel mockery and sexism in a lot of the press. This misogyny that felt their brand of feminism was hollow and rubbish. Many reviewers felt Wannabe was contrived and bubble-gum. However, Wannabe’s messages of emphasising female friendships over men was hugely inspiring and spoke to a generation of girls and women. They could have launched with a song that was standard boy-meets-girl. However, they debuted an infectious and incredible track that was very much about independence and empowerment. The legacy of which you can hear today and so many incredible women dominating and defining Pop. I do want to come to the BBC and their feature which marked twenty-five years of Spice Girls and Wannabe. Published on 8th July, 2021, we get some insight into a single that, in the years since 1996, is seen as one of the most important of the decade:

“It came out of nowhere. It changed the course of pop music. It was Wannabe - the scrappily brilliant debut single by The Spice Girls.

The record label had been worried. Wannabe was too weird, too anarchic. They hated the video. BBC Radio 1 was refusing to play it. Breakfast show DJ Chris Evans told the band to go back to kids' TV.

But the girls knew better. "It's not negotiable as far as we're concerned," they insisted. "Wannabe is our first single."

And "if they decided they wanted to do something, then that's what was going to happen," Wannabe's co-writer Richard "Biff" Stannard told the BBC.

History proved them right.

Released 25 years ago, on 8 July 1996, Wannabe spent seven weeks at number one in the UK and four in the US. In the process, it made five unknown girls - Victoria Caroline Adams, Melanie Janine Brown, Emma Lee Bunton, Melanie Jayne Chisholm and Geraldine Estelle Halliwell - global superstars”.

The original demo for Wannabe is being released to mark the song's 25th anniversary - and its very different experience to the final version, full of record scratches, clunky 1990s synths and a bizarre breakbeat outro.

The song was something of a Frankenstein's monster, co-writer Matt Rowe told David Sinclair for his 2004 Spice Girls biography.

"They made all these different bits up," Rowe said. "Not thinking in terms of chorus, bridge or what was going to go where - just coming up with all these sections of chanting and rapping and singing. And then we just sewed it together. Kind of a cut-and-paste method."

Virgin, noting the popularity of girl bands like Eternal and TLC, were keen to give the song an R&B makeover and sent it to US producer Dave Way to be remixed. The result, according to Halliwell, "was bloody awful".

Eventually, Mark "Spike" Stent - a producer who had worked with Massive Attack and Madonna - was called in to knock the song into shape.

"The problem was that the vocal balance hadn't been quite sussed," he told Sound On Sound magazine in 1999, external. "It's a very quirky pop record, and there's not a lot going on with it, and my work was all about getting the vocals to sound right. It was quite tough to do, even though it only took six hours."

Girl Power came in for a lot of stick - mostly from critics who weren't girls and didn't need any more power, music writer Tom Ewing observed, external.

Geri was the one who pushed the concept, and even developed a "power oath" to be recited when events demanded: "I, being of sound mind and new Wonderbra do solemnly promise to cheer and dance and zig-a-zig-ah. Ariba! Girl Power!"

But even if the parameters were a little hazy, the idea was potent. The Spice Girls stood for freedom, self-belief and disobedience - and they inspired generations to stick up for themselves.

In 2017, Geri reflected on the legacy of Girl Power in a BBC interview: "Twenty years ago, if you said the word feminism, you thought of those bra-burning, marching protestors. It was quite tough and harsh.

"For me, Girl Power was a much more punchy way of saying it. But actually, Girl Power embodies much more than a gender. It's about everybody. Everybody deserves the same treatment, whatever race you are, gender you are, age you are.

"It was just saying that in a very digestible way”.

If you don’t think that Wannabe is a genuinely deep feminist anthem like Beyoncé's Run the World (Girls), Aretha Franklin’s Respect, or Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman, then you can appreciate that the group – Geri Halliwell, Victoria Adams, Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton and Melanie Chisholm – were trying to inspire and empower girls and young women. In a landscape that was very much set up for male artists and there was huge misogyny, this was such an important and bold song. This 2019 article discussed the secret feminist history of Spice Girls’ Wannabe:

“The chorus reads like a direct address to the male gaze: “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.” Like many female pop stars before them — and certainly all of them since — the Spice Girls’ biggest marketing tool was their sexuality. They didn’t apologise for it. In fact, Bunton scoffed at the idea that their fashion choices were for anyone but themselves when she told an interviewer in 1997, “Just because you've got a short skirt on and a pair of tits, you can still say what you want to say. We're still very strong.” They wore the short skirts, tight dresses, low-cut tops, and high heels, all customised to their personas — with leopard-print, pink pigtails, track suits, ultra platforms, and painted-on sheath dresses serving as extensions of their identities. And they did not apologise for them. Their larger message was more important: You can look at us, in fact, look at us! But we are more interested in our relationships with each other than with men. The concept of girl power was born with the writing of “Wannabe,” but the actual power — the activism, in fact — came from how the women fought for the song — and for themselves — every step of the way.

“Wannabe” is the biggest-selling single by a female group in the world, ever. But it almost didn’t make it to the radio. Everyone but the Spice Girls themselves seemed to hate the song. Their manager, Simon Fuller, sent it to a team of American producers, and it came back laced with hip-hop beats and an R & B vibe that Halliwell described as “bloody awful.” The members of the group staged a protest until it was remixed to their liking. When it came time for Virgin Records to choose the first single, execs wanted “Say You’ll Be There,” a sappy love-pop ballad that appeased the label’s mission of catering to a mainstream audience — and sending a flirty message to, presumably, men who would want to “be there” for (or with) the Spice Girls. Stannard, who co-wrote "Wannabe," lambasted its weirdness and agreed that it was too risky to use as a first single: “It’s quite anarchic,” Stannard said at the time. “There are a lot of critics who consider it a punk record because it’s quite wild, and the way it was recorded and written was like a punk song. It was in no way a contrived, crafted pop masterpiece that we sat down and specified.”

Fuller agreed, and pushed the Girls to acquiesce. Halliwell, speaking for the group as she often did — including the time she demanded each of them receive individual management contracts before signing with a label — told the men: “It's not negotiable as far as we're concerned. 'Wannabe' is our first single.”

Standing up to a powerful label and deeply vested managers hasn't always pan out for pop stars. Correction: It’s not a thing pop stars even did at the time. Ginger and the Girls made it clear that they were in control. The only risk was if the industry walked away; they’d be fine. One can imagine Kelly Clarkson channelling Halliwell when she fought the illustrious Clive Davis to the point of near-career suicide because she refused to be “bullied” into releasing another American Idol-like record instead of one that reflected her artistic vision.

“Wannabe” was not beloved by critics. And, in fact, it’s safe to say no one even knows what the song is really about. Its jumbled lyrics are a mix of in-jokes, made-up words (“zig-a-zig-ah”) and micro bios of each character spliced into the bridge. But it didn’t matter. “Wannabe” soared to the top of the charts in the U.K. and remained the No. 1 single for seven weeks. By March 1997, “Wannabe” had topped the charts in 37 countries. It didn’t matter if it was gibberish; the spirit of “Wannabe” resonated with the world and it remains one of the most recognisable pop songs of the last 50 years.

When five insta-friends huddled together 23 years ago to write a song about hanging out together, they didn’t have an agenda beyond expressing themselves in that moment. The song itself is not a feminist anthem. But the ways in which the Spice Girls demanded respect and took — didn’t ask for, but seized — control of their careers and the image they presented of girls to girls is a legacy worth celebrating. “Girl power” lives on, and as feminism is mainstreamed into our lives via Beyoncé, Shonda Rhimes, and even President Obama, the meaning of that once-vapid term grows ever more powerful”.

Published in 2016 to mark twenty years of Spice Girls’ Wannabe, Billboard highlighted how this historic debut single revitalised mainstream feminism. As they write, “In the early 1990s, few pop cultural figures embraced the term "feminist”. Wannabe warrants a lot of new appreciation and discussion thirty years after its release. Its messages and meaning perhaps as vital and urgent now as it was in 1996:

“In the early 1990s, the women’s movement seemed dead to the mainstream, as documented in Susan Faludi’s Backlash. Few pop cultural figures embraced the term “feminist.” The underground punk movement known as “Riot Grrrl” scared anyone outside of it (which was part of its point), while Alanis Morissette’s breakthrough single “You Oughta Know” scared everyone else even more.

Then, in the middle of the decade, the Spice Girls took all of that fear and made feminism — popularized as Girl Power — fun. Suddenly, regular girls far outside Women’s Studies classrooms had at least an inkling of what would be known in wonky circles as Third Wave Feminism — led by Generation Xers pushing for sexual freedom and respect for traditionally “girly” pursuits like makeup and fashion, among many other issues.

Preaching Girl Power to worldwide masses in the 1990s was no small thing. It was a commercialized message, to be sure, but alas, so is any message that permeates American consumer culture. Sure, the message came in the empty vessel of the most derivative of pop music, but no one ever said feminists have to be great artists. In fact, their accessibility was their superpower. As we celebrate the 20-year anniversary of their first single “Wannabe” this year, we can see how far women in pop music have come, to the point where the pop world is dominated not just by women, but by women who publicly identify as feminists, such as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. Girl Power, indeed.

From the very beginning with “Wannabe,” the Spice Girls were the original Sex and the City crew, with all the conflicting ideas about feminism and femininity that entails. Their clear identities allowed girls to choose a favorite with whom to identify: Were you a Scary, Sporty, Posh, Ginger, or Baby? These nicknames, of course, were the very definition of problematic: Scary went to the sole woman of color, while Posh, Ginger, and Baby were obvious stereotypes of femininity. At least Sporty was an option, right?

On the other hand, they demonstrated real, noncompetitive female friendship. “If you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends,” they sang. “Make it last forever; friendship never ends.” Message-wise, this is leagues better than their spiritual descendants, the Pussycat Dolls, singing “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?” a decade later.

The refrain of “Wannabe” could be a war cry of liberation from good-girl syndrome: “I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want.” (A great 2011 feminist guide to sex by Jaclyn Friedman swiped this wholesale for its title: What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety.) The Girls even embraced the word “feminism” at a time when it was risky to do so. In their 1998 movie Spice World, Ginger gets rid of a guy who’s hitting on her by dropping the F-bomb, laughing as he runs away. Not only was feminism cool in Spice World, but guys who didn’t get it weren’t worth your time.

They also embraced their sexuality in songs such as “2 Become 1.” In Spice World, girls could want sex and want to look sexy — a major tenet of Third Wave Feminism. Baby Spice said it best in an interview: “Just because you’ve got a short skirt on and a pair of tits, you can still say what you want to say. We’re still very strong.”

These messages were going mega-global, thanks to the success of “Wannabe.” The song hit No. 1 in 37 countries, and led to the Girls eventually selling more than 80 million records worldwide. Affection for the Spice Girls hasn’t waned. They delighted fans with a reunion at the London 2012 Olympics. Recently, three of the Spice Girls — Geri Halliwell (Ginger), Emma Bunton (Baby), and Mel B (Scary) — announced they’d be reuniting as GEM (without international fashion icon/former Posh Spice Victoria Beckham or Sporty Spice Mel C., who’s said she’s still undecided about joining in).

It’s unlikely that they’ll be able to push pop feminism forward in 2016. Girl Power has evolved far beyond what the Spice Girls did in 1996, moving from the cheerleader chants of “Wannabe” to Beyoncé sampling a feminist speech by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and featuring poetry by Warsan Shire in her videos. But the Spice Girls’ legacy is real, as shown by the Global Gals campaign’s recent use of “Wannabe” to express an explicit feminist message. The group’s delightful, multicultural video has women dancing and lip-synching along to the classic song while explaining that what women really, really want is quality education, an end to child marriage, and equal pay. “Girl Power has come a long way,” says a message at the end. “Let’s take it further”.

I am going to end with The Times and their 2008 article. They proclaimed Wannabe as the best song of 1996. In a truly massive years where so many wonderful songs were released, it is not a stretch to say that Spice Girls’ Wannabe is the queen of them all:

“A No 1 hit in 31 countries, Wannabe is the bestselling single ever by a female group and propelled Sporty, Scary, Posh, Ginger and Baby Spice to a level of chart-conquering domination that, even now, seems extraordinary. Such statistics can make it easy to forget quite how ropey the five-piece seemed to many music fans, who saw the title of the band’s debut single not as an expression of female empowerment, but as an accurate description of five slightly desperate hoofers recruited from an ad in The Stage. The genius of the Spice Girls – or, rather, the team behind them – was to bulldoze their way through such perceptions with the aid of both precision-bomb marketing and, of course, Wannabe. The former still leaves a bad taste in the mouth: the true legacy of Girl Power is, arguably, a preteen clothing industry selling crop tops and other minimal garments to young girls, not a generation of independent, take-no-nonsense women. But the song remains the same two minutes and 53 seconds of pop perfection that it ever was.

Co-written by Richard Stannard, Matt Rowe and the band, Wannabe opens with immediately undislodgable piano notes, which act as stepping stones to the chorus. Over these, Mel Brown and Geri Halliwell holler the song’s key message of assertiveness: “Yo, I’ll tell you whatI want, what I really, really want.”

What they really, really wanted turned out to be to “zigazig ah”, a phrase open to all manner of interpretation. But its air of devil-may-care zaniness was of a piece with the song’s other message (reinforced by the storming-the-citadels video): we’re taking charge of our own destinies and having a riot at the same time, and so can you. The fact that the band were being manufactured and marketed by a male-dominated industry was an irony that only increased when Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell’s equally cynical political packaging muscled in on the action with Cool Britannia the following year.

Musically, the song is amazingly deft, melding Motown with rap and never losing sight of the need to stay focused on getting its message across (no wonder new Labour got on board). Its success made the Spice Girls a global phenomenon of multiple sponsorship deals and spawned an unforgettably dire movie, Geri’s departure, Posh’s football wedding and, last year, the inevitable reunion. Much of what they sang, said and did now seems ridiculous. On Wannabe, however, the Spice Girls ruled the roost”.

I do think that Wannabe gets unjust stick and criticising. In 2012, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett wrote for The Guardian, where said how Spice Girls’ messages of female solidarity, whilst it may seem manufactured or light in some respects, it was a gateway and accessible route for their fanbase. Girls and teens in 1996 were hardly going to be reading feminist texts: “Female columnists have not been kind to the group in retrospect; Caitlin Moran basically blamed "Girl Power" for the loss of interest in feminism, while Grace Dent went further by saying that "any student in 2012 who regurgitates this Spice Girls-helped-feminism baloney in a dissertation should have the whole thing shredded and be made to wear a dunce cone in graduation pics". Well, hand me the dunce cap Grace, because I must respectfully disagree. Were it not for their kitschy pop antics, I might not be the massive feminist I am today”. Wannabe changed the face of the mid-’90s Pop scene and it is an iconic Girl Power anthem. Thirty years later, it is this instantly lovable, recognisable and captivating single. Released in 26th June, 1996 in Japan and 8th July, 1996 in the U.K., Spice Girls released one of the greatest debut singles ever. It would not be long until…

THEY would dominate the globe.

FEATURE: White Heat: Madonna’s True Blue at Forty: From Pop Queen to a Global Icon

FEATURE:

 

 

White Heat: Madonna’s True Blue at Forty

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: Herb Ritts

From Pop Queen to a Global Icon

__________

I am starting out…

with this article from Rhino, who noted how Madonna ruled the music world in the summer of 1986. True Blue was released on 30th June, 1986. It turns forty very soon, so I wanted to publish another anniversary feature. In this one, I want to chart her rise from this revered artist to a global superstar. Her third studio album was her biggest leap to date in terms of her confidence, songwriting and look. Some of the most memorable and enduring images of Madonna shot in 1986. Although I love those taken in 1983 in NYC by Richard Corman. It is that transition in terms of her fame and accomplishments. It was not only Madonna’s music and touring that made her this global icon. Her film work, whilst not always brilliant, got her that exposure and visibility. True Blue was a definite peak. One where she was undoubtably the biggest Pop artist on the planet:

“Madonna was already a superstar after the success of her second album, Like a Virgin (1984). With third studio effort, True Blue, released June 30, 1986, she became a mega-star, elevating to one of the biggest and most popular artists in the world.

With the new album came a new Madonna, sporting a fresh, revitalized image: "After a while, I got sick of wearing tons of jewelry," the singer told New York Times that year. "I wanted to clean myself off. I see my new look as very innocent and feminine and unadorned. It makes me feel good. Growing up, I admired the kind of beautiful glamorous woman - from Bridget Bardot to Grace Kelly - who doesn't seem to be around much anymore. I think it's time for that kind of glamour to come back."

True Blue was the album that found Madonna stretching beyond the dance floor towards more adult-oriented genres and sounds. The first shot from the record arrived in the form of emotional movie theme "Live to Tell," which hit radio airwaves in March 1986. The surprising ballad was an instant hit, soaring to #1 on the Hot 100 over the week of July 7, 1986. The song was also Madge's first #1 over on Billboard's Adult Contemporary charts.

Madonna kept the chart-topping party going with second single, the controversial "Papa Don't Preach." Released in June '96 with a wildly popular music video, the track was another smash, climbing to the #1 spot on the Hot 100 for the week of August 16, 1986. It held the spot for two weeks in a row.

The fun and retro title track was served up as single #3 from True Blue, released in mid-September. The kicky tune was another radio and MTV hit, peaking at #3 on the Hot 100 for the week of November 15, 1986. The #1 song in America at the time: Boston's "Amanda."

With "True Blue" still rocking the charts, Madonna released "Open Your Heart" as the fourth single from the LP. The horn-blasted and upbeat track danced all the way to #1 on the Hot 100 over the week of February 7, 1987.

Four top 5 singles apparently wasn't enough, so Madonna went in for a fifth hit with "La Isla Bonita," released in February '87, and peaking at #4 for the week of May 2, 1987. The #1 song in the country that week: Cutting Crew's "(I Just) Died in Your Arms."

True Blue was a blockbuster LP, cruising to #1 on the Billboard 200 for the week of August 16, 1986. It held the top spot for a month, finally bested by the Top Gun soundtrack on September 19, 1986. When the smoke cleared, True Blue was the best-selling album in the entire world for the year 1986.

"The girls that dressed like me all got the joke - it was their parents who didn't. You didn't see those girls going off and doing awful things because they bought my records," Madonna insisted. "What I've learned from all the controversy is that you can't expect everyone to get your sense of humor. But I've also learned that people eventually do catch on to what they didn't get at first. It's a nice surprise in the end when they, go, 'Hey, well, you know... I like that”.

1984’s Like a Virgin did a lot to see her as this modern-day great who was an original and innovative Pop artist. However, True Blue was a more sophisticated and rounded work. I think it ages better than her first two albums, and Madonna’s voice has strengthened. In terms of the photography and images of her, this is an amazing woman in her late-twenties who was about to conquer the world. If you want to pinpoint the moment Madonna became a global sensation and was at the forefront of modern music, you could argue it happened with the release of True Blue. Standout singles such as La Isla Bonita and Papa Don’t Preach still seem fresh today. In terms of the diversity of sound and genes on the album, it is a big reason why it was so popular. A worldwide chart-topper, True Blue has never gained all the respect it deserves. Compared to an album such as Like a Prayer (1989), True Blue does not have as much written about it. However, it was a fascinating period in her career. Before moving on, I want to sourceWikipedia and part of their Legacy section on True Blue:

“In a similar note, Sal Cinquemani said that with True Blue, Madonna joined the ranks of Jackson and Prince and made the transition from "pop tart to consummate artist". According to Lucy O'Brien, "with its sophisticated sheen, [True Blue] took Madonna firmly out of the dance-diva category into a global pop market". Jack White from the Official Charts Company wrote: "True Blue, her third album, saw Madonna shoot into the realms of superstardom that her previous album Like A Virgin had cemented". To Matthew Rettenmund, author of Encyclopedia Madonnica, it was the first "solid proof" of her artistic and musical talents. Patrick Leonard himself explained: "The music got more serious, so I think she got taken more seriously [...] [Madonna] took some chances that I don't know most people would have. There were things [in True Blue] that weren't normal in pop music at the time".

Slant Magazine considered True Blue one of the best albums from the 1980s; Jonathan Keefe wrote that it marked the point where, "it became readily apparent that Madonna was more than just a flash-in-the-pan pop star. It's when she began manipulating her image —and her audience— with a real sense of clarity and purpose". Piatkowski wrote that it "set the stage for the exponential ascent of Madonna's brilliance", that began with 1989's Like a Prayer and reached its peak on 1998's Ray of Light. From music portal Albumism, Justin Chadwick concluded that, "[True Blue] solidified [Madonna's] blonde ambition, cemented her worldwide superstardom, and, once and for all, extinguished any remaining doubts about her potential career longevity”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: Herb Ritts

I do want to source Interview Magazine, and a conversation between Madonna biographer Mary Gabriel and Mel Ottenberg, and their thoughts and impressions on Madonna’s True Blue era. It was an album where Madonna has more control regarding which producers and collaborators to work with. By all accounts, 1986 was a very happy and contended one for her:

“OTTENBERG: I still remember when True Blue came out, she had this whole new look and the Madonna wannabe look was instantly obsolete.

GABRIEL: It’s funny because for her first album, the Madonna look was short hair, kind of “tough street kid.” Then, for her Like a Virgin album, she was saucy and sexy, but still tough, still very New York.

OTTENBERG: I feel like she loved the experience of doing Like a Virgin, but then she became more muscular in her powers with True Blue.

GABRIEL: True Blue was really the first Madonna album because that was the first one she did with Steve Bray and Pat Leonard. It was basically just three kids playing. The first one was with Reggie Lucas, he was a well-known producer. Second one, Nile Rodgers, mega-well known producer. The third one, Madonna could dictate her terms by that point and she said, “I’ll just do it with Pat Bray and Steve Leonard.”

OTTENBERG: It is by far the best Madonna album.

GABRIEL: It’s so up and so wonderful. There’s the kind of person that says, “You don’t need to know what’s happening in the artist’s life. You should only look at the product.” But I don’t believe that. I think you need to know what’s happening in the artist’s life because if you look at True Blue, she had just married Sean Penn.

OTTENBERG: Unbelievable.

GABRIEL: She is completely in love. Her life has come together in a way she could have never dreamed of. It’s a pure statement of joy. And yet, it happened at a moment when her world was falling apart because people she loved were dying of AIDS. Think about “Open Your Heart.” What does that video mean? It’s confusing. There’s that end shot with her running off with a little boy into the sunset and you find out that Martin Burgoyne, her best friend who she used to dress like that with, is dying. I mean, it changes everything. Or when she does the video “Cherish” with Herb Ritts, who’s just found out he’s HIV positive. Or when she does Like a Prayer, her marriage is falling apart. It’s this beautiful construction she’s made. Then you get to Blond Ambition— and I wonder if you agree with this. I quote Valerie Steele who said it was the moment when fashion and pop music were joined forever.

OTTENBERG: Madonna changed my life. I mean it in a really profound way. And going to the Blond Ambition World Tour and seeing the fashion, and seeing also how organized it was. Before I was at Interview, I was Rihanna’s stylist for seven years, and I was always like, “I would never put Madonna once on the mood board.” Because Madonna is god and I’m not going to copy god. But I’m going to always have that dedication to, “Could we do something different? We should remix it.” And all of those things come from Madonna moments”.

I wrote about Madonna’s 1986 for a feature last December. It is worth finishing off with Chronicles Beauty Queen, and their words about Madonna’s influence and dominance in 1986. Such an exciting and huge year she was very much ruling Pop but also she was appearing on the big screen. Her marriage to Sean Penn gaining a lot of press attention. Even though they divorced, and it was a short-lived marriage, you can hear her happiness and love for him in True Blue’s title track:

"By 1986, Madonna had already reshaped the landscape of pop music, fashion, and female empowerment. After dominating the charts with Like a Virgin (1984) and True Blue (released June 30, 1986), she had evolved from a New York City club sensation into a full-fledged global icon. The True Blue album, recorded in Los Angeles and produced alongside Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray, featured hits like “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Live to Tell,” and “Open Your Heart”—all of which topped Billboard Hot 100 and sparked both admiration and controversy. The album’s release marked a turning point where Madonna transitioned from playful rebel to powerful storyteller, addressing themes of teenage pregnancy, Catholic guilt, and emotional vulnerability. It became the best-selling album of 1986 globally, and her image—platinum blonde hair, bold brows, lace gloves—was seen everywhere from Tokyo to Toronto.

"Madonna's influence in 1986 was not limited to music. She starred in Shanghai Surprise alongside her then-husband Sean Penn, and though the film struggled, it kept her constantly in the headlines. In fashion, she collaborated with designers like Jean-Paul Gaultier and Maripol, popularizing street style looks from downtown Manhattan—mesh tops, crucifix jewelry, layered skirts—that became iconic across youth cultures in London, Paris, and São Paulo. Her fan base expanded rapidly among LGBTQ+ communities, who saw her as a fearless voice in an era marked by rising conservatism and the AIDS crisis. Her appearance at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, dressed in a powder-blue corset and singing “Papa Don’t Preach,” was a visual statement of rebellion and glamour that rippled through pop culture.

"Madonna Louise Ciccone, born in Bay City, Michigan, and raised in Detroit, had arrived in New York City in 1978 with just $35 in her pocket. By 1986, she was a self-made multimillionaire, shaping the sounds, conversations, and aesthetics of a generation. She once said, 'I'm tough, I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want.' That grit was on full display in 1986, a year that solidified her as the undisputed Queen of Pop—not just for her music, but for her relentless reinvention, cultural impact, and fearless domination of both stage and screen”.

On 30th June, we celebrate forty years of True Blue. As I said previously, Madonna releases a new album, Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II, on 3rd July. It will be a busy week or recalling memories of her 1986 album and then welcoming in this new one. Madonna’s aesthetic, sound and music from 1896 has influenced artists like Christina Aguilera, Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga, Spice Girls, Britney Spears, and Katy Perry. Containing some of her best songs and it set a record by becoming the first album to reach number one in twenty-eight  countries, and it spent a record thirty-four consecutive weeks at the top of the European Top 100 Albums chart. It was the best-selling album of 1986 and the best-selling album of the 1980s by a female artist, where it sold twenty-five millions copies. Also, all five singles released from the album (Live to Tell, Papa Don't Preach, True Blue, Open Your Heart, and La Isla Bonita) reached the top five on the Billboard Hot 100, with three hitting number one. Such a monumental album from an artist who ascended to another level in 1986, it is a thrill to mark forty years of…

THE supreme True Blue.

FEATURE: I Put This Moment…Here: The Importance of Track Sequencing on Kate Bush Albums

FEATURE:

 

 

I Put This Moment…Here

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed for NME on 13th October, 1982 in London/PHOTO CREDIT: Anton Corbijn/Contour by Getty Images 

The Importance of Track Sequencing on Kate Bush Albums

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THIS is something not talked about…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 1985’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), the lead single from her fifth studio album, Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

as much when we look at artists and their albums. We recognise the brilliance and endurance of the albums, though how often do we consider why that is? In terms of the track sequencing, I feel this is a very important reason why so many classic albums resonate and remain. Something as simple as getting the tracks in the wrong order affects the listening experience. It is such a crucial thing. When it comes to Kate Bush, this is an artist that definitely recognises how key it is to get the flow and order just so. The line at the top of this feature is from Hounds of Love’s Jig of Life. That song appears on the album’s second side, The Ninth Wave. As that was a concept suite, it was perhaps more intuitive and easier to get the track order right. The story had to run chronologically and there was a more obvious order. Even so, getting that first side right was a taller order. Because of its propulsive introduction and energy, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was an obvious first song. However, where do you go from there? Could Mother Stands for Comfort realistically follow? It is a colder and more skeletal track, so perhaps it would jar against the fuller and warmer opener. Though, if it finishes the first side, then it would perhaps create a downer or sap some momentum. Even so, you have to follow that song, so which one takes that honour? One reason why Hounds of Love is so brilliant is because that first side is perfectly balanced. Tracks two to five inclusive have Hounds of Love, The Big Sky and Mother Stands for Comfort leading to Cloudbusting. Some might argue ending that first side with The Big Sky. It has a rain/water theme, so it would then lead to the first track of The Ninth Wave, And Dream of Sheep. A suite that is about a woman being lost at sea after going overboard a ship. Though Cloudbusting is a brilliant end to that first side. The optimism of making it rain. A cloudbusting device that creates rain and bursts the clouds, there is something uplifting and hopeful. Clash that against the tyranny and fear of the ocean. That emotional and psychological clash. Also, in terms of quality of the songs, I feel there is a nice balance that means you get that blend. Even though Mother Stands for Comfort comes right after The Big Sky, it is not too extreme.

Kate Bush’s intuition as a producer. I don’t think there is a conceptual arc to the first side. It makes it harder to order the tracks. For the most parts, her studio albums are sublime regarding the sequencing. Aerial too. Its second disc, A Sky of Honey, is conceptual. More tracks on A Sky of Honey than The Ninth Wave (nine to seven), perhaps more difficult getting the order right, though, again, it had this chronology and sense of movement. A summer’s day going from the rising light and morning, and going through to the following morning. The Ninth Wave perhaps starting from evening and then taking us through to the following morning. Maybe The Red Shoes (1993) and Lionheart (1978) are the albums that stick out regarding the track order. Perhaps reasons why they are less regarded than other Kate Bush is because the songs are perhaps not in the right place. In the case of Lionheart, I feel it is a case of rejigging the final third. Kashka from Baghdad, Coffee Homeground and Hammer Horror are the final three songs. I always feel that the second five tracks of Lionheart should be In the Warm Room, Coffee Homeground, Hammer Horror, Fullhouse and finishing from Kashka from Baghdad, rather than Fullhosue, In the Warm Room, Kashka from Baghdad, Coffee Homeground and Hammer Horror. An odd choice for the final track. The Red Shoes is very top and middle heavy. The final third, too, is a bit of a mess. I feel the title track should be in there and end with Moments of Pleasure. As it is, the four-piece of Constellation of the Heart, Big Stripey Lie, Why Should I Love You? and You’re the One seem a bit mixed and anticlimactic. Those two are the only albums where I feel it was not quite 100%. I mention this subject as I was re-reading Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. In a chapter about 1982’a The Dreaming (Kate Bush’s fourth studio album), there are some interesting takeaways. Paul Hardiman, who was credited as recording engineer at Advision and Odyssey Studios, all mixes at Advision Studios and actually provided the Eeyore brays on the final track, Get Out of My House, said how hugely important it was sequencing sides A and B. Thomson notes how “The Dreaming starts with a brisk brio but slows to something close to a lament, the closing clatter of Get Out of My House notwithstanding”. He follows that by saying “The trio of songs at the centre of Side B formed the album’s deep emotional heart”. Tracks seven though to ten are Night of the Swallow, All the Love, Houdini and Get Out of My House. Brilliant sequencing when it came to emotional and sonic balance and this sense of resonance.

A case of the track sequencing being discussed in great detail. I have to wonder whether there is an album that has the best sequencing. You could argue that it is The Dreaming. At ten tracks, is it easier to get the sequencing right compared to a longer one such as Aerial or The Kick Inside? If I had to choose, it would be between The Dreaming and Never Ever (1980). At eleven tracks, I feel that everything is in its right place. A perfect opening two tracks of Babooshka and Delius (Song of Summer). The breaking glass sound that ends Babooshka leading into the second tracks. How The Wedding List is the middle track and is perfectly sandwiched by Egypt and Violin. Two tracks highlighted as weaker numbers, The Wedding List seen as one of the best. The final three tracks of Night Scented Stock, Army Dreamers and Breathing. Those final two tracks are more political and emotional, but sonically they are quite far apart. Army Dreamers more of a waltz and lighter musically. Breathing more Prog-like and heavier. Touches of Pink Floyd can be heard. Night Scented Stock was a rare occasion of Kate Bush creating this interlude. So many albums have interludes and skits. A way of breaking up tracks and adding more conversation, story and variation, Night Scented Stock has no lyrics and is this beautiful piece that layers Bush’s vocals and arrives after The Infant Kiss. Perhaps one of the darker or heavier songs in many ways, there is a bit of levity and light before we get to Army Dreamers. Some wonderful sequencing and consideration to the flow and emotional arc. No song but Babooshka could open the album. No song but Breathing could end it. Getting all the other tracks in place was probably quite demanding and there might have been some shifts and changes. We do not talk about album sequencing when we discuss classics. How that is a vital ingredient. I have never heard anyone discuss it when it comes to Kate Bush. Was she thinking of this when writing the songs and knew where she would place them? Or was it a case of her and the engineers talking and going through that process?

Going back to the title of this feature and that line from Jig of Life. Perhaps not completely instinctual how to arrange Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave. Unlike Aerial’s A Sky of Honey, which is about the course of a summer’s day and organising tracks in accordance with light levels and specific timeframes, there is no distinct time period on The Ninth Wave. How long the woman is caught at sea, even if we assume it is less than a day. The middle track on the suite is Watching You Without Me, and that leads to Jig of Life, which then goes into Hello Earth. From a song where a family waits for their daughter/loved one and Bush’s heroine is like a ghost in the room, this song of courage and determination. A need to stay alive. Maybe so she can get back home, or at least stay alive. Then, the camera pans above the water as we see the sea from far into the sky. Is it a moment when the woman dies and her spirit ascends, or, like a film, a key scene where we see the true scale and expanse of the ocean and how distant and lost the woman is?! Jig of Life is so spirited and lively, getting even an inch in the wrong spot could have damaged The Ninth Wave and its masterful brilliance. The Dreaming’s sides A and B perfect. I feel more people need to understand the thought that goes into track sequencing. Even if I have raised this subject before, it is worth revisiting. A reason why The Dreaming especially is so influential now is because of its running order. Not to overexaggerate, but if a couple of the tracks were in different places, I genuinely don’t think the impact would be the same. Bush sees her albums as something to be heard as a whole, vital that all the tracks are considered as a single piece. For the brilliance of the sequencing, we should give to Kate Bush…

ALL the love.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Nirvana

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

IN THIS PHOTO: Nirvana (Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl) in New York on 11th January, 1992/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Lavine (via DAZED)

Nirvana

__________

IN September…

IN THIS PHOTO: Nirvana in 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Richard Weedon/Avalon - World Illustrated Inc

there are a couple of big anniversaries around Nirvana. Smells Like Teen Spirit turns thirty-five on 10th September. On 24th September, the album it is from, Nevermind, is thirty-five. I wanted to include Nirvana in this The Great American Songbook. Kurt Cobain one of the greatest songwriters of his generations. Songs that he left behind – Cobain died on 5th April, 1994 – are affecting people to this day. The legendary Seattle trio made an enormous impact in their relatively short career. Before ending with a twenty-song mixtape of their best work, I will start with biography from AllMusic:

“Nothing was ever quite the same after Nirvana. The band's second album, 1991's Nevermind, revolutionized popular music by bringing alternative rock above ground, introducing mainstream audiences to sounds and concepts that had previously existed only in shadowy record store corners and on low-frequency college radio airwaves. Nevermind's noisy, dissonant guitar rock, mumbled or howled surrealistic lyrics, and generally angsty punk attitudes were unlikely candidates for chart success, but the band undercut their grungy songs with enough pop melodicism to create a sound unlike anything average listeners had ever heard before, striking at the exact right moment to become an unprecedented success.

Since Nirvana were rooted in an indie aesthetic but loved pop music, they fought their stardom while courting it, becoming some of the most notorious anti-rock stars in history. They consciously attempted to shed their audience with 1993's abrasive, Steve Albini-produced third album In Utero, but vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Kurt Cobain's growing mental health and substance abuse issues led to his death by suicide in 1994. Though Nirvana's story was cut tragically short, their legacy stands as one of the most influential in rock & roll history.

Kurt Cobain (vocals, guitar) met Chris Novoselic (born Krist Novoselic) (bass) in 1985 in Aberdeen, Washington, a small logging town 100 miles away from Seattle. While Novoselic came from a relatively stable background, Cobain's childhood had been thrown into turmoil when his parents divorced when he was eight. Following the divorce, he lived at the homes of various relatives, developing a love for the Beatles and then heavy metal in the process. Eventually, American hardcore punk worked its way into dominating his listening habits and he met the Melvins, an Olympia-based underground heavy punk band. Cobain began playing in punk bands like Fecal Matter, often with the Melvins' bassist Dale Crover. Through the Melvins' leader, Buzz Osborne, Cobain met Novoselic, who also had an intense interest in punk, which meant that he, like Cobain, felt alienated from the macho, redneck population of Aberdeen. The duo decided to form a band called the Stiff Woodies, with Cobain on drums, Novoselic on bass, and a rotating cast of guitarists and vocalists. The group went through name changes as quickly as guitarists, before deciding that Cobain would play guitar and sing. Renamed Skid Row, the new trio featured drummer Aaron Burkhart, who left the band by the end of 1986 and was replaced by Chad Channing. By 1987, the band was called Nirvana.

Nirvana began playing parties in Olympia, gaining a cult following. Around 1987, the band made ten demos with producer Jack Endino, who played the recordings to Jonathan Poneman, one of the founders of the Seattle-based indie label Sub Pop. Poneman signed Nirvana, and in December of 1988, the band released its first single, a cover of Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz." Sub Pop orchestrated an effective marketing scheme, which painted the band as backwoods, logging-town hicks, which irritated Cobain and Novoselic. While "Love Buzz" was fairly well-received, the band's debut album, Bleach, was what got the ball rolling. Recorded for just over $600 and released in June 1989, Bleach slowly became a hit on college radio, due to the group's consistent touring. Though Jason Everman was credited as a second guitarist on the sleeve of Bleach, he didn't appear on the record; he only toured in support of the album before leaving the band at the end of the year to join Soundgarden and then Mindfunk. Bleach sold 35,000 copies and Nirvana became favorites of college radio, the British weekly music press, and Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, and Dinosaur Jr., which was enough to attract the attention of major labels.

In July 1990, Nirvana recorded "Sliver"/"Dive" with Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters on drums and producer Butch Vig. The band also made a six-song demo with Vig, which was shopped to major labels, who soon began competing to sign the group. In August, they hit the road with Sonic Youth's Goo tour (including Crover on drums). That September, Dave Grohl, formerly of the D.C.-based hardcore band Scream, became Nirvana's drummer and the band signed with DGC for $287,000. Nirvana recorded their second album with Vig, completing the record in June of 1991. Nevermind was released in September, supported by a quick American tour. While DGC was expecting a moderately successful release, in the neighborhood of 100,000 copies, Nevermind immediately became a smash hit, quickly selling out its initial shipment of 50,000 copies and creating a shortage across America. What helped the record become a success was "Smells Like Teen Spirit," a blistering four-chord rocker that was accompanied by a video that shot into heavy MTV rotation. By the beginning of 1992, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had climbed into the American Top Ten and Nevermind bumped Michael Jackson's much-touted comeback album Dangerous off the top of the album charts; it reached the British Top Ten shortly afterward. By February, the album had been certified triple platinum.

Nirvana's success took the music industry by surprise, Nirvana included. From the moment Nirvana were met with mainstream visibility, Cobain used his newfound fame to relentlessly push his favorite independent artists as if their music was more important than his own. This took the form of bringing Japanese alt-pop trio Shonen Knife on tour, covering lesser-known but formative artists like the Wipers, the Vaselines, and Meat Puppets, or wearing a homemade Daniel Johnston t-shirt during television appearances and high-profile concerts. Cobain's enthusiastic fandom introduced untold numbers of Nirvana fans to artists they most likely wouldn't have known to seek out on their own, and in the process, energized those artists' careers.

It soon became apparent that Nirvana wasn't quite sure how to handle its success. Around the time of Nevermind's release, Cobain appeared on MTV's Headbangers Ball in drag; the group mocked the tradition of miming on the BBC's Top of the Pops, with Novoselic constantly throwing his bass into the air and Cobain singing his live vocals in the style of Ian Curtis; and their traditional live destruction of instruments was immortalized on a Saturday Night Live performance that ended with Novoselic and Grohl sharing a kiss. By early 1992, questions began to arise about the band's stability. Cobain married Courtney Love, the leader of the indie rock/foxcore band Hole, in February of 1992, announcing that the couple was expecting a child. A few months later, Nirvana canceled several concerts and refused to mount a full-scale American tour during the summer. Cobain complained that he was suffering from chronic stomach troubles, which seemed to be confirmed when he was admitted to a Belfast hospital after a June concert. While he went through these problems, DGC released the odds-and-ends compilation Incesticide late in 1992; the album reached number 39 U.S. and number 14 U.K.

As Nirvana prepared to make their third album, they released "Oh, the Guilt" as a split single with the Jesus Lizard on Touch & Go Records. Choosing Steve Albini (Pixies, the Breeders, Big Black, the Jesus Lizard) as their producer, they recorded In Utero, in two weeks during. Februrary 1993. Later in the year, reports, including an article in Newsweek, circulated that DGC was unhappy with the forthcoming album, and making accusations that Nirvana deliberately made an uncommercial record. Both the band and the label denied such allegations. Deciding that Albini's production was too flat, Nirvana decided to remaster the album with R.E.M. producer Scott Litt, who also remixed the singles "Heart Shaped Box" and "All Apologies." In Utero was released in September of 1993 to positive reviews and strong initial sales, debuting at the top of the U.S. and U.K. charts. Nirvana supported it with an American tour, hiring former Germs member Pat Smear as an auxiliary guitarist. While the album and the tour were both successful, sales weren't quite as strong as expected, with several shows not selling out until the week of the concert. As a result, the group agreed to play MTV's acoustic Unplugged show at the end of the year, and sales of In Utero picked up after its December airing.

After wrapping up their U.S. tour on January 8, 1994 with a show at Center Arena in Seattle, Nirvana embarked on a European tour in February. Following a concert in Munich on February 29, Cobain stayed in Rome to vacation with Love. On March 4, she awakened to find that Cobain had attempted suicide. When he returned to Seattle, his mental illness grew worse. Love and Nirvana's management organized an intervention program that resulted in Cobain's admission to the Exodus Recovery Center in L.A. on March 30, but he left the clinic on April 1, returning to Seattle. His mother filed a missing persons report on April 4. On April 5, Cobain died by suicide at his Seattle home.After his death, Kurt Cobain was quickly anointed as a spokesman for Generation X, as well as a symbol of its tortured angst.

Novoselic and Grohl planned to release a double-disc live album at the end of 1994, but sorting through the tapes proved to be too painful, so MTV Unplugged in New York appeared in its place. The album debuted at the top of the British and American charts, as a home video comprised of live performances and interviews from the band's Nevermind era, titled Live! Tonight! Sold Out!, was issued at the same time (the project began prior to Cobain's passing and was completed by surviving bandmembers). In 1996, MTV Unplugged in New York's electric counterpart, From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, was released, debuting at the top of the U.S. charts. Following Cobain's death, Grohl formed the Foo Fighters, releasing their self-titled debut album in 1995, followed by The Colour and the Shape in 1997 and There Is Nothing Left to Lose in 1999. Novoselic formed the trio Sweet 75, releasing their debut in the spring of 1997, and also appeared along with former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra and former Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil on the 2000 live set Live from the Battle in Seattle under the name the No W.T.O. Combo.

By the late '90s, Novoselic began research for a proposed box set of previously unreleased songs from throughout Nirvana's career. The project was supposed to surface in the fall of 2001 (to coincide with the tenth anniversary release of Nevermind), but legal issues delayed its release. Finally, the Nirvana LLC partnership -- which included Grohl, Novoselic, and Love -- came to an agreement and the album-length compilation Nirvana was released in October of 2002. Although that release included only one unreleased song, the long-awaited box set, titled With the Lights Out, appeared in late 2004, including three discs of rare and unreleased material plus a live DVD that featured material filmed as early as 1988. The band's 1992 set at the Reading Festival was released in 2009 as Live at Reading. The same year, Sub Pop began a Nirvana studio album reissue campaign with Bleach; special 20th-anniversary editions of Nevermind and In Utero followed in 2011 and 2013, respectively. In 2014, Nirvana was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe. Cobain's place in the induction performance was taken by several vocalists, including Joan Jett and Kim Gordon”.

For anyone who is not that familiar with Nirvana, I hope that this mixtape provides some impetus to check out their catalogue. In spite of the fact that we tragically lost Kurt Cobain in 1994, what he and Nirvana left behind will remain forever. The music’s legacy will continue to spread and grow. Nirvana are one of the greatest bands…

WE will ever see.

FEATURE: I See the People Working: Kate Bush’s Sat in Your Lap at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

I See the People Working

Kate Bush’s Sat in Your Lap at Forty-Five

__________

THERE is no denying that…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1981/PHOTO CREDIT: Denis O’Regan

this single was a big turning point for Kate Bush. I have written another anniversary feature for this track. On 21st June, 1981, Sat in Your Lap was released. It was the first single from The Dreaming. This offering that arrived over a year before the album came out. It must have been strange for fans to get this single and then wait so long for an album. However, Sat in Your Lap definitely marked a real moment of growth and evolution. There is something I want to raise first. It is fascinating looking at all the different promotion Kate Bush did for her music. Today, there are a few T.V. shows, though most promotion is done online or radio. Back in 1981, when Kate Bush released Sat in Your Lap, T.V. was still a very powerful and important source of promotion. However, how do you market Kate Bush in terms of the shows she appears on? One of the great events around Sat in Your Lap is when Kate Bush appeared on Razzmatazz. This was a Pop show for children, and it was produced at Tyne Tees. This article recalls when Bush appeared on the shoe on 14th July, 1981. It was a brilliant and unusual experience:

“For the Sat In Your Lap promo spot, Kate was interviewed by Razzmatazz’s Lyn Spencer, and took questions from the young school age audience, even letting the miscreants try on props for the single’s video – and gave an early insight into her artistic prowess. Spencer recalls how “the male members of the crew were particularly excited at the prospect of Kate Bush appearing on the show – they had seen her racy stage costumes!”

“When I met Kate she was absolutely adorable, and quite shy. I decided to mic her up myself rather than have the sound department boys drooling over her, so I wasn’t Ms Popularity on that day as they were probably fighting for pole position. I remember the interview well, as we played in snippets of her very popular promotional videos, and she talked about the making of these, showed props from them and took questions from the young audience.”

“Smile, Kate, you’re on rancid camera.”

“It was such a great feature that the producers decided to extend the piece, which was originally scheduled to be edited to three minutes. The final piece ran for seven minutes, which is a large chunk of time for a show that fills a half-hour slot. However, Kate was very hot at the time and the feature was very well received. My lasting impression of her was that she was very sweet, charming, softly spoken, but obviously hugely talented as well as being a beautiful young lady.”

Kate told Razzmatazz: “The song really dictates what you have to do with it. Some songs are very simple and other songs become almost little epics where you have to section lots of little things together. It really is a lot of fun. For me it is like making a film. I think of it as something very special.” Bush then showed a storyboard for her Army Dreamers single from the previous year, and went on to say:

“That’s the wonderful thing about art, like music and dancing, everything you do can then become your work. If you’re cleaning up one night you might suddenly realise what a great routine it would make. It’s keeping your mind open to all these things. It’s really fun, life becomes work. Music and dance are meant to go together, they are very close arts. I went to see an incredible performance by someone called Lindsay Kemp, and I suddenly realised that this was what I was looking for, this movement combined with music”.

There is a great interview from 1981 that I want to come to. I wanted to lead with that article about Razzmatazz. The promotion around the single. It was quite an unusual one in terms of Pop music. Not necessarily that commercial or familiar to what children and teens were listening to in 1981. Quite a gamble going on this kid’s show and talking about a song that must have seemed quite complex and strange in terms of its inspirations. There were periods in Kate Bush’s career where she was burnt out and depressed. Working so hard on an album and then going into another one. That happened after Never for Ever came out. Whereas maybe piano was the inspiration and starting point for most of her songs before Sat in Your Lap, that then changed. This Dreams of Orgonon article that I soured for the other forty-fifth anniversary feature reveals why Sat in Your Lap was a turning point. Also, how Bush suffered this burn out and had this hard period after the 1980 album came out:

“The aftermath of Never for Ever was a period of burnout for Bush. Prone to depressive burnouts after the completion of projects, she found herself drifting into a nadir of fruitless ennui, which she deemed “the anti-climax after all the work.” Completing Never for Ever in May 1980, Bush, not for the last time, put significant space between herself and the public, taking a holiday after an exhausting several months of recording. By the time Never for Ever was released in September, Bush was only just recovering from her creative inertia. Her timing was auspicious, as Never for Ever not only became her first #1 LP in the UK but the country’s first ever #1 studio album by a female solo artist ever. Never for Ever’s success was accompanied by heaps of promotion by Bush, including the usual run of performing songs on talk shows as well as signing albums for hundreds of fans at a time. Now she had more creative agency than she had previously, touting Never for Ever as “the first [album] [she] could hand to people with a smile.” Kate Bush the prodigy who sang “Wuthering Heights” was already a distant memory, transforming into Kate Bush the great 1980s British songwriter.

Yet Bush’s listlessness and struggle to write songs persisted for some time. It’s not hard to see why — the stress of Never for Ever’s production and the attention of the British public would be enough to put a damper on anyone’s creative output. It took seeing other musicians at work to get her motivated again. In September, Bush and her boyfriend Del Palmer attended a Stevie Wonder concert at Wembley Arena. Wonder was in a period of creative renewal himself. Having recently turned out a rare Motown flop in the distinctively titled Journey Through “the Secret Life of Plants”, he’d rebuilt confidence with his delightful Hotter than July LP. The concert broke Bush out of her writer’s block — “inspired by the feeling of his music,” as she later wrote, Bush got back to work on her songs, and forged a path towards her next album.

Bush’s work to date was largely harmonic, built around what notes went together interestingly on the piano. Rhythm was secondary for her: it’s hard to think of a rhythmically powerful song on Bush’s first three albums. Her preparations for Kate Bush IV had thus far consisted of little bits of melody, but without a focal center. After the Wonder concert, she realized she needed to start her songwriting from the rhythm track upwards. At home, she programmed a rhythm into her Roland drum machine (according to my friend Marlo, the Roland on her demo from the period sounds like a CR-78, and woe to anyone who disagrees with Marlo on drum machines), and “worked in [a] piano riff to the hi-hat and snare.” A demo resulted: “Sat In Your Lap,” Kate Bush’s first solo production, was in its nascency.

“Sat In Your Lap” wasn’t always Bush’s first self-produced song. For a time, she entertained bringing in experienced producers, including long-standing David Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, going so far as to spend a day in the studio with him. The collaboration went nowhere, and Visconti has grossly remarked “all I can remember is the Bush bum.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bush decided to take on the producer role herself, with the intensive collaboration of a series of engineers. The first set of sessions for the album that would be The Dreaming were staged at Townhouse Studios in May 1981. Her collaborating engineer was Hugh Padgham, a producer for Phil Collins and XTC known for the “gated drum” sound that would define 80s pop (compress the drums, use a recording console’s “gate” to remove their reverb, resulting in a kind of sound vacuum. See Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”). Bush and Padgham’s time in Townhouse was productive yet short-lived. Padgham is rare among Bush collaborators in having negative feelings about working with her, grumbling about her tendency to overpack a mix and experiment rather than having a concrete, straightforward vision. After laying backing tracks for three songs, Padgham moved on, dissatisfied with his latest gig but having indelibly marked the sound of The Dreaming.

Bush’s ad-libs, piano riffs, and rhythm track came together quickly in the studio, quicker than any other song on The Dreaming. Having a drum-centric engineer like Padgham was incredibly useful for her, as the early recording of Bush’s rhythm track showed. “Sat In Your Lap” is heavily percussive, built around its drum sound and brass section (initially synthesized on a Yamaha CS-80). The partially syncopated drumbeat (“dum-DUM-dum-DUM”) is Preston Heyman’s most memorable to date, a fine translation of the demo. The frantic, almost pharyngeal rhythm track has a kick drum so guttural and suppressed (though not apparently gated) that it can easily be mistaken for one of Bush’s vocal onomatopoeias. The track’s sonic menagerie (Bush’s recurring motif of musical instruments as bodily extensions lives to a maniacal extent), a veritable ensemble of screams, tinny horns on the Fairlight CMI, swishing bamboo sticks (thanks to Paddy Bush and Preston Heyman) childlike whispers, “HO-HO-HO’s,” and bellows of “JUST when I think I’m king!”

What better to bring Bush out of a period of creative stagnation than a missive to psychological stagnation? Or even better, a tremendously loud, busy, and clamorous one. Amidst the song’s sheer volume is a narrative of inertia and stillness. Bush deploys a childlike whisper in the verses, a canny juxtaposition with the rhythm track’s masculine percussiveness, indicating juvenile trepidation as she watches adults go about their lives: “I see the people working/I see it working for them/and so I want to join them/but then I find it hurts me.” The verses are terse observations from an unmoving figure, grounded in a desire to catch up and have a powerful mind: “I see the people happy/so can it happen for me?,” “I want to be a lawyer/I want to be a scholar/but I really can’t be bothered,” “I want the answers quickly/but I don’t have no energy”.

katebushnews.com · Kate Bush Fan Podcast Episode 43 - Preston Heyman Interview Exclusive - Sat In Your Lap Special!

I do want to finish with an interview from 1981. The point of this piece, not only is to mark forty-five year of one of Kate Bush’s best and most important singles. Looking at the promotion around the single and some background. How she went from Never for Ever and the period after that and into the first single from an album that would also cause burn out. It is hard to read that Bush took so much out of herself. That promotion did that too. Going from one album and needing to rest and feeling overwhelmed or worn out. Then this happening with her very next one. I do want to include again this interview from Record Mirror of September 1981. A few months after Sat in Your Lap was released, it is clear that Sat in Your Lap and 1981 was a change. In terms of her sound and maybe how the press perceived her: “No longer the little girl, wide-eyed, fey and whimsical, so beloved of award-show presenters with her squeaky string of "amazings" and "fantastic”:

“It's been two years now since what Kate calls her "Tour of Life", a massive circus of a tour that won't, repeat won't take place again until next year at the earliest. Again, it's been six months since the last single and Sat In Your Lap, as much as anything she's done, is the start of a new era, another "cosmic cycle" that will see the release of a new album later this year.

And now that all those ideas in the past--a theatrical tour that was a combination of the innovative and the unexpected, an album last year that surpassed all that went before it--have become reality, she's a powerful personality. SHe makes points where she used to make only comments, argues from experience now as much as from excitement, pushes herself as an artist ("one of us", she says, referring to the type) much more than a surprised, precocious talent.

Yet she's still infectious [huh?], vulnerable at times, as open to ideas as ever. Richness and fame don't embarass her; slowness in honing her creativity probably does, just a little.

Her favourite expression on this meeting wasn't one of wonderment, astonishment (ah, the cliche!); rather a dismissive pout of "Pah!" -- almost French, knowledgeable, and nearly coquettish.

"Pah! Let them think that! Pah! That's wrong!" she seems to imply, ready to underline her ideas. Call it a change, call it maturity, call it confidence in her art, for it almost certainly is. Take money:

"I've changed. I don't pretend it's not there any more, which I used to do," she says. "I'm not worried about being rich, I just didn't think of taking advantage of it. Now I buy things that I can use, things that will help me, like synthesisers and drum machines.

"My life has never been into money, more into emotional desires; like being an incredible singer or an incredible dancer; and if I can buy something that can help me, I will now. But I wouldn't buy something that I couldn't live with, like a country house which I don't need. [Actually, about two years after giving this interview, Kate bought--a country house.] I'd rather buy a huge synthesiser that I could live with all day."

She emphasises and explains, thinks out the question, returns to her theme. The easy answers have gone over the years. Take her career...

Kate maintains that there hasn't really been a gap, even though she admits that Sat In Your Lap only surfaced after her longest break to date.

"My slowness at doing things surprises me," she says, "but i have been doing things continuously. It's a battle to keep up with all the things I want to do, and obviously things like dancing are going to suffer. I couldn't spend twelve hours a day in a studio like I'm doing at the moment, and dance, as well."

Again the emphasis on her way of working--the only way. The ups and downs are of her own making, they don't follow rules. And Kate only bows to her own pressures.

"The last album was the first one that I would actually hand over to people with a smile," she says, almost seeming to imply that it was the first one she was actually pleased with, "and that was followed by a greater period of non-creativity, when I just couldn't write properly at all.

"It happened before, when the tour was over, and then I felt I'd just given so much out that I was like a drained battery, very physically and tired and also a bit depressed.

"This time it was worse; a sort of terrible introverted depression. The anti-climax after all the work really set in in a bad way, and that can be very damaging to an artist. I could sit down at the piano and want to write, and nothing would happen. It was like complete introspection time.

"I suppose I had about two months out earlier this year...and that was a break I really needed. It gave me time to see friends, do things I hadn't been able to do for three years.

"It wasn't really as if I was missing out on normality," she laughs. "I'd rather hang on to madness than normality anyway, so it was more like recharging."

But something more came out of it than just a rest?

"Oh yes!" The smile returns. "I felt as if my writing needed some kind of shock, and I think I've found one for myself. The single is the start, and I'm trying to be brave about the rest of it. It's almost as if I'm going for commercial-type "hits" for the whole album.

[I have always been struck by this statement. It seems to me to indicate that Kate really doesn't have a very sound notion of what is "commercial"--which is all to the good, of course. For if she felt that The Dreaming had a commercial sound, then some listeners's criticism that she seemed to have developed a calculatedly commercial sound for the next album, Hounds of Love, loses credence, since her mental image of "commercial" sound is so different from the sound of Hounds of Love.]

"I want it to be experimental and quite cinematic, if that doesn't sound too arrogant. Never For Ever was slightly cinematic, so I'll just have to go all the way."

The shock that Kate refers to, eyes almost ablaze as she uses the word, came months ago...after she started to work with a rhythm machine while she was writing.

"I'm sure lots of things that I'm trying to do won't work," she says, "but I found that the main problem was the rhythm section. The piano, which is what I was used to writing with, is so far removed from the drums. So I tried writing with the rhythm rather than the tune."

Sat In Your Lap, naturally, is the first fruit of the new approach--original (in that it could only be Kate Bush) marriage of pounding drum sounds and two layers of voice. There is a theme, but it's the rhythm that hits you first, blasting right through to the synthesised end--a step that she knows is likely to continue the critical division.

"I was really frightened about the single for a while," she admits. "I mixed the song and played it to people, and there was complete silence afterwards, or else people would say they liked it to me and perhaps go away and say what they really thought.

"Of course it's really worrying, because there's an assumption that if you're one of us, an artist, you don't need feedback at all, when in fact you need it as much as ever, if not more. I really appreciate feedback, and I'm lucky that the people closest to me, my friends and family, are used to me and realise that I've got my own 'bowl of feedback' to rely on."

And that's more important than the public reaction, or do you worry?

"There will always be some who are irritated by me. I seem to irritate a lot of people," she smiles, "and in a way that's quite a good thing."

Nor will the change stop there. Drums, Kate enthuses, are as wide a concept as music itself, and she's determined to go further than "a lazy acceptance of a drum kit." Add that to the news that she'll be working with other musicians on the new album--"the best around"--and it seems likely that "Kate Bush 4" will be one of the big surprises of the year.

As a preview she plays me one track that's currently being worked on: a wild soaring collusion with Irish group Planxty entitled Night of the Swallow, which also features one of the Chieftains. Again the sound is unmistakable, but this time it's Kate Bush married to the heartbeat of traditional Irish folk.

Discussing the project brings Kate Bush into larger-than-life focus once more. The burning enthusiasm returns, along with the string of "amazings", "incredibles" and "fantastics". She'd been up all night in the studio the previous night in Dublin, and her reactions are genuine, real and hard to resist.

"I'm still really up from the experience," she says. "In fact, I'm still reeling from it. I asked them if they'd be interested, and the whole thing was so relaxed, it was wonderful. I badly want to work with them again. I'm so excited about the fusion.

"And I think that there's so much of the Irish in my mother that it all suddenly came back to me--it was fate rearing its head at just the right time!"

So that's two surprises already, and although Kate has been making demo tracks since March, and Abbey Road is now her second home, the rest will have to wait until summer completion...if all goes according to plan.

What about the book you're planning to write, though? Again, she sighs (a marginal sigh) and repeats her line: "There's so many things I want to do, and it's so hard to fit them all in..."

But yes, a book is on the cards, hopefully before the end of the year, and she says: "I'd like to write it myself. Without saying anything about the other books, which I don't want to, I feel almost pressured to speak, otherwise there's this huge misrepresented area.

"In one way it's ridiculous--I feel it's much too early to write a book, I've hardly done anything yet. But I really want people to be aware of reality--subjective reality, obviously”.

That notion that an autobiography would be released by Kate Bush. To be called Leaving My Tracks. This is worth highlighting, as I feel one reason why she would have wanted to do this was put the record straight. So many misconceptions around her, his would have provided some truth and clarity from Kate Bush. However, as we read, the project was scrapped in 1983: “For some time in the first half of the Eighties, Kate Bush considered writing an autobiography. She was asked to write a book probably as early as 1980. At first Kate decided not to write an autobiography, but in the course of about a year the idea morphed into a book about her experiences and views, like an exploration of her work. There may even have been a proof text. Publishers Sidgwick & Jackson actually produced a dustjacket for the book, entitled Leaving My Tracks (pictured here). According to library data, the book was to run 144 pages plus 8 pages of photographs. The official fanclub even announced a release date somewhere in the autumn of 1981. In late 1983, the project was shelved indefinitely. No autobiography has ever been published. It isn’t even known if Kate ever wrote one or more chapters for the book”. On 21st June, we mark forty-five years of Kate Bush’s Sat in Your Lap. I hope this feature provided an idea of the background and lead-up to Sat in Your Lap. How it did cause a bit of a rumble, as this was like nothing we had heard from Kate Bush. It signalled a new direction. Also, “Two versions of Sat In Your Lap were released: the single version and the album version. Kate Bush stated in an early interview that the single version was remixed slightly for inclusion on The Dreaming. The vocals were raised higher and the backing track altered to fit in better with the overall feel of the album”. I was keen to include that to end up. Also, that the single reached number eleven in the U.K. It was the most successful single from The Dreaming. It is a shame that the song was not performed as part of a larger tour. It would have been amazing to see how it fitted in. However, there is no denying the fact Sat in Your Lap is a masterpiece. After suffering burn out and fatigue, there was this new spark and confidence. That struggle to write song and period of inactivity did probably affect the release date of The Dreaming. If people expected an album late in 1981, they had to wait until September 1982 until her fourth album came out. Forty-five years after its release and Sat in Your Lap remains…

THIS brilliant single.

FEATURE: I Give Them What They Want to Hear: Just How Far and Deep Does Kate Bush’s Influence Extend?

FEATURE:

 

 

I Give Them What They Want to Hear

IMAGE CREDIT: Anthony Freeman/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Just How Far and Deep Does Kate Bush’s Influence Extend?

__________

I often write about…

IN THIS PHOTO: Beyoncé

Kate Bush’s influence and how she is so revered by artists new and established. Last year was one where so many incredible albums were released. I have said how so many of these albums were from artists who were influenced by Kate Bush or count her as a favourite. You can either hear it directly in their music or the artist in question is a fan. And not only artists who are inspired by one of her albums or this narrow time period. There are a lot of rising artists who are Kate Bush fans. There are a couple of huge artists who have not spoken about their love of Kate Bush or confirmed whether they are a fan. It always intrigues me, as I have this theory that Kate Bush has influenced and is admired by the majority of the very best artists. Some of the most impressive and acclaimed live tours too. Even if ROSALÍA’s LUX TOUR is very much bigger and perhaps more impactful than Kate Bush’s 2014 residency, Before the Dawn, ROSALÍA is a fan of Kate Bush, and I feel her pushing the boundaries and possibilities of what live music can be is, in part, because of Kate Bush. LUX, one of the best albums of this century, definitely has elements of Bush’s music in it. Beyoncé is one of those huge artists who I am not sure has spoken about Kate Bush, though you know, if asked, she would show love for her. These sort of gaps and blanks where you want to fill. Beyoncé has some big anniversaries this year. Lemonade turned ten on 23rd April. B’Day turns twenty on 1st September. Beyoncé turns forty-five three days later. At the time of writing this feature (9th May), there are rumours from the Beehive (the name for Beyoncé’s fans and their community) that a new album or material will drop. By the time you read this, I wonder whether something will be out. Looking at her evolution and sonic shifts, it does put me in mind of Kate Bush. Someone who I hope shouts out her music at some point.

IN THIS PHOTO: Billie Eilish photographed for ELLE, April 2026/PHOTO CREDIT: Willy Vanderperre

Another reason for re-raising this topic is to take it wider. It is pleasing that, last month, Billie Eilish shouted out Kate Bush’s 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside. Among the albums she is vibing to at the moment, Eilish also said how she was listening to the weirder and odder Kate Bush music. In 2019, this article proclaimed how Billie Eilish is the Kate Bush we need right now. In fact, it was when  Amy Poehler interviewed Eilish. The American artist talked about her love of Wuthering Heights and Army Dreamers (from 1980’s Never for Ever). An artist of such stature and brilliance this confirmed Kate Bush fan. Eilish also heard snippets of Don’t Give Up, her 1986 duet with Peter Gabriel, for the first time, and cheekily asked if she and Gabriel were ‘close’, let’s say, at the time! I know that there will be artists who are not Kate Bush fans. Though it is amazing that Bush’s influence is so wide and rich. And that artists like Billie Eiilsuh are digging the spookier or darker songs. There was a period when mostly Hounds and Love and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) were mentioned and heard. After that Stranger Things inclusion in 2022. Now, many artists are looking further. Not only Bush’s recorded material. Her interviews, causes she stands up for and her live work. Incorporation that and taking it in new and interesting personal directions. I published a feature recently where I tried to manifest a commission from The New Yorker, where I get to speak with a range of people who are fans of Kate Bush. Published in February 2028 to mark fifty years of her debut album, The Kick Inside, speaking with Billie Eilish would be incredible.

I am looking beyond music. As I am a music journalist, my main focus is artists and music. However, I have mentioned how director Greta Gerwig and actress Margot Robbie have love for Kate Bush. There is a whole book or series to be made where we think about all the people who have their own reasons for loving Kate Bush. In terms of great writers, directors, actors, comics, politicians and broadcasters, is it even possible to calculate and represent the scale and scope of her influence?! Maybe not. We know Guy Pearce (especially fervently) and Winona Ryder are Kate Bush devotees. I return to this subject again, because we talk about Kate Bush’s influence and impact mostly in music terms. How so much of the modern landscape and music from the past forty-or-so years has been affected by her. But consider wider culture. From films and productions through to works of literature. Broadcasters who are impacted by her and that feeds into their work in different ways. I suppose there will be think-pieces around this subject in 2028, as it is a big anniversary year and it would be a good time. I have not seen many (if any) articles the past few years that explore Bush’s cultural impact and how so much of the best music being made can be traced back to her. I have referenced a Brianna Holt feature from COMPLEX published in 2020 that has now been removed. It is sad that there is so little written and discussed when it comes to Bush’s importance. There is this 2018 feature that discusses Kate Bush’s ongoing incandescence and influence. This from 2021 about Hounds of Love (1985) and how it changed and transformed Electronic music. In 2022, the BBC discussed Kate Bush’s influence and why she is unique;

“Her influence, however, has been constant, with disciples including Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Lady Gaga, Bat for Lashes, Goldfrapp, Florence Welch, Joanna Newsom, Tricky and Outkast. Some artists open the door to a new room in the house of music; Bush is one of a handful whose imagination revealed the existence of a whole new wing. For her, anything can be the germ of a song (inspirations on Aerial include laundry, bird song and the number Pi) and any perspective is legitimate: a child, a foetus, a cockney bank robber, a Himalayan explorer, a man watching his wife give birth, a ghost. She is an adventurer and an alchemist; a perfectionist and a dreamer.

For a genius, Bush is unusually nice, with no reputation for tormented or difficult behaviour. The closest she has ever sailed to controversy is when she praised Theresa May, as a female prime minister, in 2016. From Joni and Aretha to Adele and Mary J Blige, great female artists are often associated with the expression of emotional pain – heartbreak is their engine – but Bush has a rare talent for joy, empathy and wonder.

In interviews she is lovely, if deftly evasive, unable or unwilling to put into words why and how she makes music of such magical intensity. The more that she denies that there is any mystery to unravel, the more fascinating she becomes. She told me that she loves it when listeners mishear or misread her songs as long as they take something positive from the experience: "Whether you've understood what the artist felt is basically irrelevant. It's how it makes you feel”.

I would say there needs to be more written about her in general. Something, ironically, I have written about a fair few times. Each time we get an artist mentioning Kate Bush or we feel her influence beyond music, it does make me wonder whether more can be done. Articles and entire books written about other artists and their legacy and how they have inspired countless people across culture and throughout the world. What started with acknowledging a Billie Eilish Kate Bush shout-out has made me examine Bush’s deeper influence. I am not sure if I have even gone as deep as I should. Without waiting for a new album or words from Kate Bush, where are the writers and podcasters who could be using the time to truly explore and dissect her brilliance and growing and widening influence. If there was to be this wave of new consideration and representation, it would be absolutely…

GREAT to see.