FEATURE:
I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass (and Other Strange Objects)
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the 1980s
Kate Bush and the Fairlight CMI
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I have sort of covered this…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with a Fairlight CMI in 1982
in other features, yet I have not focused on the Fairlight CMI. Whilst Kate Bush did incorporate other synthesisers and equipment into her work from the time of Never for Ever (1980), it was that album that marked a real change and eye-opener – the Fairlight CMI was a passage to new worlds and possibilities. For some more information about the Fairlight CMI and Kate’s quotes relating to it, here is a useful bit of information from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia:
“The Fairlight CMI (short for Computer Musical Instrument) is a digital synthesizer, sampler and digital audio workstation introduced in 1979 by the founders of Fairlight, Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie, developed based on the commercial license of Qasar M8 dual-MC6800 microprocessor musical instrument originally developed by Tony Furse of Creative Strategies in Sydney, Australia. It was one of the earliest music workstations with an embedded digital sampling synthesizer. It rose to prominence in the early 1980s and competed in the market with the Synclavier from New England Digital.
Peter Gabriel was the first owner of a Fairlight Series I in the UK, with Boz Burrell of Bad Company purchasing the second, which Hans Zimmer hired for many recordings during the early part of his career. It was Peter Gabriel who introduced Kate Bush to the Fairlight. She first began to use the Fairlight on her album Never For Ever. By the time of the albums The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love it had become her primary writing tool.
As we have a Fairlight, it tends to negate us getting in other sampling gear. We're pretty well covered with the Fairlight and the DX7 for keyboard and the quality of the Fairlight is much better, though so difficult to use. Everyone says that. I used to programme it myself, but since the new software... I can't keep up. They keep changing it as soon as I learn to programme it. (What Katie did next. International Musician, 1989)
I'm not sure it really made me more in control, but it introduced a whole new library of sounds that I was able to access. And the Fairlight had a very specific quality to its sound which I really liked, so it was very much a sort of atmospheric tool for me. (Kate Bush Speaks. The Fader, 23 November 2016)”.
On Lionheart’s (1978) Wow, Coffee Homeground and Hammer Horror, Bush did use a synthesiser – it was played by Duncan Mackay. Whilst those songs are afforded a certain resonance and originality; the synthesiser we get on Wow does give the song a definite strangeness. Maybe Bush would have discovered the Fairlight CMI without Peter Gabriel, but I’d like to think of her, eyes wide, being blown away when she heard it played; thinking to herself what it could bring to her albums! I am not sure whether Babooshka was selected as the opening track (and second single) on Never for Ever because Bush was eager to get the Fairlight into play, or whether Babooshka just seemed like a perfect way to open one of her best albums – I suspect there was a bit of both.
I love what she manages to summon with the Fairlight CMI on Babooshka. The breaking glass sound, especially, is wonderful. In terms of the song’s lyrics, I guess the breaking glass represents shattered trust, change…or maybe Bush just wanted to take her compositions away from being largely piano-based and shake things up a bit. The Yamaha CS-80 polyphonic synthesizer appears on Babooshka and All We Ever Look For, and I wonder, actually, whether it was the Fairlight or Yamaha that Bush used to get the breaking glass effects from – I suspect it was the Fairlight. As today is International Synthesiser Day (23rd May is the birthday of Robert Moog – he was an American engineer and pioneer of electronic music. He was the founder of Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthesizer, which debuted in 1964), it is interesting to note that a Minimoog was used on the track, Egypt. In fact, Never for Ever utilises synthesisers and synthetic sounds in a way Kate Bush had never done before. Maybe Hounds of Love (1985) was when she utilised equipment like the Fairlight CMI best, though nobody can deny just how much she got from synthesisers between 1980 and 1985. Whilst the Prophet synthesizer on Breathing is magnificent, and the Prophet 5 synthesizer on Egypt works beautifully (played by other instruments), it was Bush’s playing and experimentation with the Fairlight CMI (John L. Walters and Richard James Burgess programmed it) that, to me, defines Never for Ever and how it took Bush to a new stage.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on Peters Pop Show in 1985
Some noted how Bush sounded a bit flighty on The Kick Inside and Lionheart (from 1978) and, by 1980, she was able to be theatrical, dramatic and varied without losing identity or sounding too flighty (if that is an appropriate word to use?!) – the more eclectic compositions maybe took some of the pressure from her voice, as it were. I love her first two albums, but even I wont dispute the fact Bush was evolving and producing genius work on Never for Ever. I will move on to The Dreaming and Hounds of Love (and beyond) in a bit, but this fascinating article is worth a read, as it gives a breakdown on some of Bush’s biggest songs and how the Fairlight CMI comes into play:
“Running Up That Hill
Arguably Kate Bush’s most well-known song, Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) is full of strange tones, with a dreamy background that transcends the usual synthpop palette of the era. When asked about some of the production techniques in a 1986 interview with Island Ear, Bush was very tight-lipped, preferring to keep her production secrets to herself so they wouldn’t be imitated. However, she did confirm that the songs scooped parts came from the Fairlight.
Regarding the types of sounds you get, how did you get that little part on "Running Up That Hill" that comes in first at the start of the song, after the drums and before the vocals? That's the Fairlight and that was actually what I wrote the song with. That was what the song was written around.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Babooshka on French T.V. in 1980
Army Dreamers
Army Dreamers from Bush’s 1980 album Never For Ever uses the Fairlight for its cello sound, this time the SOLOSTR2 sample from the HISTRING bank. The folk instrument that plays the melody in the intro sounds suspiciously like the KICHAPEE sample, although it can’t be the Fairlight as the sounds last longer than its sampler would allow. The song may have been demo'd with the Kichapee sound and then recorded with a real instrument for the final version.
All We Ever Look For
In the track All We Ever Look For, the intro's whistling hook comes from the Fairlight, specifically the WHISTLE sample from the WIND bank. Again, the patch is played without manipulation, although it is layered with a piano and synth to strengthen the overall sound of the sample. The synth is the Yamaha CS-80, which was Bush’s favourite at the time. The lead patch is a simple square wave patch that uses pulse-width modulation to get a wind-like hollow sound.
Babooshka
The lead plucked sound in Babooshka is the CS-80, possibly layered with a Balalaika or another folk instrument. In Arturia CS-80 V, I used the Voice I preset 9 (Guitar 1) and made use of the touch sensitivity to add a human element to the part. The touch-sensitivity is the feature that Kate has mentioned being her favourite of the CS-80, which isn't surprising as she is also a pianist”.
The Fairlight CMI can be heard on every track from The Dreaming bar Pull Out the Pin and Suspended in Gaffa. This was the first album Bush produced solo – she co-produced Never for Ever with Jon Kelly -, and I am not surprised that the Fairlight become more instrumental and used. I am not sure that, if she had discovered the Fairlight on her debut album, the record company would have been as happy to let her use it as much. I guess having the freedom to produce how she wanted meant that she could move on a direction that felt natural to her. Tracks like The Dreaming, Houdini and Get Out of My House are given extra weight and intrigue because of the Fairlight CMI. Piano was still evident across The Dreaming, but far less in the spotlight as it was on The Kick Inside and Lionheart – almost like Bush stepping into the modern day and more away from the classical image of her first couple of records.
The Fairlight isn't just capable of instantly replaying a given sampled envelope (waveshape) at a different frequency: it can be used to modify the shape, too. Kate, however, finds it infinitely preferable to retain the natural envelope. In an interview with Electronic Soundmaker circa 1983, Bush discussed the Fairlight CMI and how it transformed her music:
"Quite often there's very little that needs doing to it. Occasionally I quite like reversing it -- quite an interesting example of that was when I was working on "The Dreaming". I wanted a dijeridu, and as the Fairlight is an Australian instrument, it happened to have a dijeridu as one of its present samples." This was used as the basis of a loop, which illustrates another aspect of the <Fairlight> CMI: it can construct a sound that lasts longer than its maximum sampling period, by looping sections of the original envelope together.
"There's a page <commands for modifying or setting up sounds are presented as pages on a display screen> where you can loop your sound up, and you can vary the length of the loop according to what you want. Other pages have different functions. For instance, page two is the voice page, so that's where you actually call up the sound. You can actually create sounds by drawing your own waves, but the problem is that they do tend to sound very synthetic, and I haven't found any use for them. It's very hard to draw something that sounds natural -- it's a very complicated thing."
We then rounded on the visual dimension of the CMI.
"That's something that's very useful: you can actually see a sound. Incredibly ugly sounds can look really beautiful. It's really like another dimension: visual interpretation of the world rather than audial."
And again Kate enthused about the "human element" of the Fairlight.
"I'm very into natural sounds -- particularly taking them out of their range, and maybe sometimes putting them backwards. I suppose I like distortion of natural things. I like to still feel there's something natural in it."
The main employment for the Fairlight -- certainly as far as Kate Bush is concerned -- is as a tool for filling gaps in the music.
"When you've already got the song, and there's a gap in there, and you know that there's some kind of instrument that will fit it, you know that it's gonna come out of the Fairlight, and just can't find it, it's incredibly frustrating".
Maybe some of the sounds produced on The Dreaming was a bit too much for critics back in 1982 – since, Bush’s replication of natural sounds is seen as one of the key reasons why The Dreaming is such a rich and challenging album. Perhaps the greatest use of the Fairlight CMI came on Hounds of Love. In 1983, Bush built her own 24-track studio in the barn behind her family home which she could use at any time she liked.
This gave her the freedom to work of her schedule and, also, used the Fairlight CMI as liberally as she wished. This article talks about Bush building her studio and how she worked on Hounds of Love:
“Bush would describe building her own studio as “the best decision I ever made”, and she kitted it out with the most up-to-date music technology of the time: LinnDrum machines, a vast array of synths and, most importantly, her Fairlight CMI sampler, which she had utilised heavily on preceding album The Dreaming and would incorporate in a very forward-thinking way on Hounds of Love and future productions. She composed the bulk of the album’s material with the Fairlight after using a Yamaha CS-80 as her primary composition tool on previous albums.
Cloudbusting is a sample-heavy composition that Bush wrote and arranged on the Fairlight CMI. “Discovering the Fairlight gave me a whole new writing tool, as well as an arranging tool,” Bush told Option magazine in 1990, “…like the difference between writing a song on a piano or on a guitar. With a Fairlight you’ve got everything: a tremendous range of things. It completely opened me up to sounds and textures, and I could experiment with these in a way I could never have done without it.”
The eighth track Waking the Witch is a chilling piece of textured sound. A freaky, whispered voice states “wake up” with an ominous swelling piano chord kicking off the composition (which is actually recorded backwards) resolving into a sampled voice saying “this is your early morning call” before exploding into a sea of chopped-up myriad voices insisting that the listener (or Bush herself) wakes up. Crazed piano and guitar arpeggios then form an uneasy, uncomfortable musical landscape as the track conjures an image of a witch trial. Watching You Without Me is the perfect comedown from the insanity of the previous aural onslaught”.
Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is, perhaps, the most notable and famous use of the Fairlight CMI that, along with Del Palmer’s (he was an engineer on the album and played various parts) LinnDrum programming, gives the song such majesty and beauty. Drums, Fairlight CMI and cello are the only non-vocal parts on Hounds of Love – the fact there is no bass makes it amazing! -, and The Big Sky (my favourite song from Hounds of Love) shows that the Fairlight CMI can work alongside instruments as diverse as the bass and digeridoo! Apart from string and drums (and vocals from Kate Bush, John Carder Bush, Paddy Bush, Del Palmer and Brian Bath), it is the Fairlight CMI that provides this vibrant palette that scores one of Kate Bush’s finest songs. 1989’s The Sensual World signalled a return to more keyboard and piano and, not to equate a slight dip in quality with the relative absence of the Fairlight CMI – Del Palmer played Fairlight CMI percussion on the album -, but there might be a link. To be fair, Bush wanted to keep moving and not repeat herself, and The Sensual World features a banquet of different instruments – included are whip (swished fishing rod), valiha, mandolin, tupan, uilleann pipes, whistle and bouzouki! Fairlight programming can also be heard on The Red Shoes (1993), but I think that was the last time that Bush really used this technological aid in her music – listen to Aerial (2005), Director’s Cut (2011) and 50 Words for Snow (2011) and Bush sort of returns to the musical template of her first couple of albums – albeit, more expansively and maturely.
From the first breakthrough after The Kick Inside, Never for Ever (1980), to her magnum opus, Hounds of Love (1985), the Fairlight CMI changed the way Bush felt, worked and wrote. She was less constricted and could use technology to give her music so much more range and effect. It is a shame that she sort of retired the Fairlight CMI by the 1990s, but I guess technology changed and, as she was working in digital from that point, maybe she felt that she needed to use other instruments and change the way she composed. I listen to Never for Ever, The Dreaming and Hounds of Love, and I marvel at many things: the staggering vocals and how tight her musicians are; the lyrical range and genius throughout, and the blend of traditional instruments and the Fairlight CMI. Bush herself was inspired and motivated by seeing Peter Gabriel utilise the Fairlight CMI, but there is no doubt she influenced artists who followed her because of the popularity of her albums where the Fairlight CMI was used. With the Series I: 1979–1982, Series II: 1982–1985 and Series III: 1985–1989 making a big impact on popular music, Bush and other artists played a big role in changing the landscape of music. You can read more information about the Fairlight CMI here, but it is worth noting the connection to Kate Bush and how important Never for Ever is:
“Peter Gabriel was the first owner of a Fairlight Series I in the UK. Boz Burrell of Bad Company purchased the second, which Hans Zimmer hired for many recordings during the early part of his career. In the US, Bruce Jackson demonstrated the Series I sampler for a year before selling units to Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder in 1980 for US $27,500 each. Meat-packing heir Geordie Hormel bought two for use at The Village Recorder in Los Angeles. Other early adopters included Todd Rundgren, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, producer Rhett Lawrence and Ned Liben of Ebn Ozn.
“The first commercially released album to incorporate it was Kate Bush's Never for Ever (1980), programmed by Richard James Burgess and John L. Walters.
Wonder took his Fairlight out on tour in 1980 in support of the album Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" to replace the Computer Music Melodian sampler he had used on the recording. Geoff Downes of Yes conspicuously used a CMI with monitor on the band's 1980 tour to support the album Drama. The first classical album using the CMI was produced by Folkways Records in 1980 with composers Barton McLean and Priscilla McLean”.
Whilst the Fairlight CMI decreased in use and popularity after the 1980s, its legacy and use in music cannot be underestimated and understated – Phil Collins was another musician who took to the Fairlight:
“The ubiquity of the Fairlight was such that Phil Collins stated on the sleeve notes of his 1985 album No Jacket Required that "there is no Fairlight on this record" to clarify that he had not used one to synthesize horn and string sounds.
Coil considered the device unique and unsurpassed, describing using the Fairlight as "An aural equivalent of William Burroughs cut-ups".
In 2015, the Fairlight CMI was inducted into the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia collection”.
For Kate Bush, there was this sense of awakening and endless possibility. For someone who was so curious when it came to the studio and technology, I can imagine the Fairlight was both a blessing and curse: Bush had access to a library of new sounds, but her near-perfectionist habits must have fatigued some of her musicians and crews and she searched for those ‘perfect sounds’! Helping to define and score some of her best songs and albums, the extraordinary Fairlight CMI was a…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush buying a Fairlight CMI in 1981
HUGE revelation.