FEATURE:
Will We Ever See the DVD?
Kate Bush’s Majestic Before the Dawn Live Album at Five
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IT might seem odd to mark…
the fifth anniversary of an album but, as it is Kate Bush – and we do not get that many albums from her -, I want to celebrate the great live album, Before the Dawn, and ask an important question. This is one of those rare occasions where I can include audio from the album when discussing it. Even though one can buy Before the Dawn on vinyl and C.D., it is not available on streaming services. One can get it on Apple Music and preview tracks from the album there (and buy the whole thing). So, whilst it is available digitally to own, one cannot stream the album if they are on Spotify. It is a shame that Before the Dawn is not available to stream. That is tangential to the points I want to make (and I am going to drop in a few tracks from Apple Music in preview form). Before getting to Bush’s reaction to the live spectacle that was Before the Dawn, here is some background to the residency and album:
“Before the dawn" was recorded during the incredible run of 22 sold-out shows performed by Kate at London's Hammersmith Apollo in 2014.
In March 2014 Kate announced plans to perform 15 shows in London in August and September that year, her first live shows since 1979. The shows sold out so quickly that a further 7 were immediately added, with all shows selling out in 15 minutes. This very website crashed with the demand.
The first night of the shows prompted a complete media frenzy with the Evening Standard declaring that the show was "an extraordinary mix of magical ideas, stunning visuals, attention to detail and remarkable music – she was so obviously, so unambiguously brilliant, it made last night something to tell the grandchildren about."
Later that year the show won the special Editor’s award at the highly prestigious London Theatre Awards, the only contemporary music show to do so.
On November 25 2016 the live album "Before The Dawn" was released on CD (3 CDs) and vinyl (4 vinyl) and digital download. The conceptual heart of the show is reflected in the CD format, which is split over 3 discs centred around the two integral pieces – 'The Ninth Wave' and 'A Sky Of Honey'.
CD1 ends with the pivotal track 'King Of The Mountain' which bridges into 'The Ninth Wave' suite of songs on CD2.
The album was produced by Kate Bush. Nothing on the record was re-recorded or overdubbed”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn at the Hammersmith Apollo, London, in 2014/PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features
I am eager to source a review from Pitchfork, who talk extensively and passionately about the album. The last part of this feature sees me revisit a question that I and many people have asked. In fact, when reviews were out for the live album, many marked it down because there were no plans to release a DVD. The sense that the spectacle is lost if one cannot see the crowd and the show taking place. I would disagree. On the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, we get to read the linear notes for Before the Dawn:
“It was an extraordinary experience putting the show together. It was a huge amount of work, a lot of fun and an enormous privilege to work with such an incredibly talented team. This is the audio document. I hope that this can stand alone as a piece of music in its own right and that it can be enjoyed by people who knew nothing about the shows as well as those who were there.
I never expected the overwhelming response of the audiences, every night filling the show with life and excitement. They are there in every beat of the recorded music. Even when you can’t hear them, you can feel them. Nothing at all has been re-recorded or overdubbed on this live album, just two or three sound FX added to help with the atmosphere.
On the first disc the track, Never Be Mine, is the only take that exists, and was recorded when the show was being filmed without an audience. It was cut because the show was too long but is now back in its original position. Everything else runs as was, with only a few edits to help the flow of the music.
On stage, the main feature of The Ninth Wave was a woman lost at sea, floating in the water, projected onto a large oval screen - the idea being that this pre-recorded film was reality. The lead vocals for these sequences were sung live at the time of filming in a deep water tank at Pinewood. A lot of research went into how to mic this vocal. As far as we know it had never been done before. I hoped that the vocals would sound more realistic and emotive by being sung in this difficult environment. (You can see the boom mic in the photo on the back of the booklet. This had to be painted out of every shot in post-production although very little of the boom mic recording was used. The main mic was on the life jacket disguised as an inflator tube!) The rest of the lead vocals on this disc were sung live on stage as part of the dream sequences. The only way to make this story work as an audio piece was to present it more like a radio play and subdue the applause until the last track when the story is over and we are all back in the theatre again with the audience response.
Unlike The Ninth Wave which was about the struggle to stay alive in a dark, terrifying ocean, A Sky Of Honey is about the passing of a summer’s day. The original idea behind this piece was to explore the connection between birdsong and light, and why the light triggers the birds to sing. It begins with a lovely afternoon in golden sunlight, surrounded by birdsong. As night falls, the music slowly builds until the break of dawn.
This show was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever been involved in. Thank you to everyone who made it happen and who embraced the process of allowing it to continually evolve. (Album liner notes)”.
The tracklisting of the album is incredible! We get three distinct acts where Bush mixes some of her best-known songs - alongside those which many might not guess would ever come to the stage (Act I: Lily, Hounds of Love, Joanni, Top of the City, Never Be Mine, Running Up That Hill, King of the Mountain; Act II: Astronomer's Call, And Dream of Sheep, Under Ice, Waking the Witch, Watching Them Without Her (dialogue), Watching You Without Me, Little Light, Jig of Life, Hello Earth, The Morning Fog; Act III: Prelude, Prologue, An Architect's Dream, The Painter's Link, Sunset, Aerial Tal, Somewhere In Between, Tawny Moon (lead vocals by Albert McIntosh), Nocturn, Aerial, Among Angels, Cloudbusting). To be there on one of those twenty-two nights in Hammersmith must have been something! (The reviews are especially glowing). I was not fortunate enough to get a ticket, and I regret that I missed out. I think the live album gives the listener the chance to experience the show and get a sense of the magic that Bush, her band and team created. The KT Fellowship executed this awe-inspiring show that showed why she is one of the most celebrated live performers ever (even though her 2014 residency was only her second tour/residency). The reviews for Before the Dawn were largely positive. This is what Pitchfork said:
“Kate Bush always exploited technological advancement. In 1979, from just coathangers and Blu-Tack, the trailblazing British pop auteur pioneered the head mic for her vanguard Tour of Life. Her subsequent albums made her one of the earliest adopters of the Fairlight synthesizer that would define the ’80s. Before the Dawn, then, is a surprising throwback: the unexpurgated live album, a document of her 2014 live shows, her first in 35 years. There are no retakes or overdubs bar a few atmospheric FX. No apps, no virtual reality, no interactivity. She’s also said there won’t be a DVD, which is surprising given the show’s spectacular theatrics, conceived by the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a host of designers, puppeteers, and illusionists. The show, and this release, aren’t credited to Kate Bush but the KT Fellowship, in recognition of the vast ensemble effort. Yet in shucking off half the production, this hefty 155-minute, three-disc set (one per “act”) is also the best way that Before the Dawn could have been preserved, allowing it to tell its own story uninhibited by the busy staging.
I went to a show towards the end of the 22-date run, and was overwhelmed by how physically moving it was to see Bush in real life, since for most of mine she’s only existed in videos and BBC clip-show documentaries. The staging didn’t always have the same impact. The sublime Act One, as close to a greatest hits as we got, was stripped back—just Bush at the piano backed by her crack band.
In Act Two, Bush realized her long-held desire to dramatize “The Ninth Wave,” the conceptual B-side of 1985’s Hounds of Love, which documents a woman’s dark night of the soul as she fights for life while lost at sea. While her “husband” and real-life son Bertie McIntosh blithely carried on with domestic life inside a tiny, sloping living room set, a video depicted Bush stranded in dark, choppy waters (now released as the “And Dream of Sheep” video). Moments later, the real Bush reappeared on stage to fight sinister “fish people” who carried her body off through the aisles. The whirring blades and desperate search lights of a rescue helicopter descended from the Hammersmith Apollo’s ceiling, illuminating and buffeting the crowd. Despite some hammy dialogue, it was staggering, and in sharp contrast to Act Three, which focused on Aerial’s second side, “A Sky of Honey.” McIntosh played a landscape painter from ye olden times while a life-size marionette of a jointed-doll simpered around the stage, embracing Bush, who looked on in raptures. At 75 minutes long, it was a sickly, trying accompaniment to one of the subtler achievements in her catalogue.
With the visuals stripped away, some confusing vestiges of the live show remain on the record—mostly the stilted dialogue (McIntosh’s lines as the painter are cringeworthy). But otherwise it flows remarkably well: the prog grooves and piano ballads of the first act setting up the gothic tumult of “The Ninth Wave,” which comes down into the sun-dappled ambience of “A Sky of Honey.” The sound is rich and warm, but rough, too: imperfectly mic’d and properly live-sounding. The arrangements are largely faithful, even down to the synth presets, though sometimes the veteran session musicians form an overwhelming battalion. “Lily” comes out sounding a bit like Christian goth rock, and “King of the Mountain” is a victim of breadth over depth, its dynamics drowned out by every band member playing at once. It’s a shame that the terror of “Hounds of Love” gets swapped for sentimental optimism, but the band recreate that album’s second half to sound as avant-garde and bracing as any current young outsider.
Live albums are meant to capture performers at their rawest and least inhibited, which doesn’t really apply to Before the Dawn. Bush is a noted perfectionist best known for her synthesizer experiments and love of obscure Bulgarian choirs, but her recent work has skewed towards traditional setups that reunite her with the prog community that fostered her early career. With marks to hit and tableaux to paint, the 2014 shows were more War of the Worlds (or an extension of 2011’s Director’s Cut) than Live at Leeds. But never mind balls-out revamps of Bush’s best known songs; with the exception of tracks from Hounds of Love, none of the rest of the setlist had ever been done live—not even on TV, which became Bush’s primary stage after she initially retired from touring. These songs weren’t written to be performed, but internalized. Occupying Bush’s imagination for an hour, and letting it fuse with your own, formed the entirety of the experience. Hearing this aspic-preserved material come to life feels like going to sleep and waking up decades later to see how the world has changed.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features
“Jig of Life” is the midpoint of Before the Dawn, and its crux. It forms the part in “The Ninth Wave” where Bush’s character is exhausted of fighting against drowning, and decides to succumb to death. A vision of her future self appears, and convinces her to stay alive. “Now is the place where the crossroads meet,” she chants, just as her (then) 56-year-old voice channels her 27-year-old one. Despite her alleged taste for burning one, Bush’s voice has gained in power rather than faded with age. It’s deeper now, and some of the songs’ keys shift to match, but it’s alive and incalculably moving, still capable of agile whoops and tender eroticism, and possesses a newfound authority. When she roars lustily through opener “Lily” and its declaration that “life has blown a great big hole through me,” she sets up the stakes of Before the Dawn’s quest for peace. In Act One, she’s running from the prospect of love on “Hounds of Love” and “Never Be Mine,” and from fame on “King of the Mountain,” where she searches for Elvis with sensual anticipation. She asks for Joan of Arc’s protection on “Joanni,” matching the French visionary’s fearlessness with her own funky diva roar, and sounds as if she could raze the world as she looks down from “Top of the City.”
Rather than deliver a copper-bottomed greatest hits set, Bush reckons with her legacy through what might initially seem like an obscure choice of material. Both Acts Two and Three take place in transcendent thresholds: “The Ninth Wave”’s drowning woman is beset by anxiety and untold pressures, with no idea of where to turn, mirroring the limbo that Bush experienced after 1982’s The Dreaming. That suite’s last song, the cheery “The Morning Fog,” transitions into Aerial’s “Prelude,” all beatific bird call and dawn-light piano. The euphoric, tender “A Sky of Honey” is meant to represent a perfect day from start to finish, filled with family and beautiful imperfections. “Somewhere in Between” finds them atop “the highest hill,” looking out onto a stilling view, and Bush’s eerie jazz ensemble anticipates the liminal peace of Bowie’s Blackstar. “Not one of us would dare to break the silence,” she sings. “Oh how we have longed for something that would make us feel so… somewhere in between.”
Purgatory has become heaven, and in the narrative Bush constructs through her setlist, “A Sky of Honey” represents the grown-up, domestic happiness that staves off the youthful fears explored on Hounds of Love. For her final song, she closes with a rendition of “Cloudbusting,” a song about living with the memory of a forbidden love, which is even more glorious for all the hope that it’s accumulated in the past 30-odd years. Bush’s recent life as a “reclusive” mother is often used to undermine her, to “prove” she was the kook that sexist critics had pegged her as all along. These performances and this record are a generous reveal of why she’s chosen to retreat, where Bush shows she won’t disturb her hard-won peace to sustain the myth of the troubled artistic genius. Between the dangerous waters of “The Ninth Wave” and the celestial heavens of “A Sky of Honey,” Before the Dawn demystifies what we’ve fetishized in her absence. Without draining her magic, it lets Bush exist back down on Earth”.
I don’t think that we will ever see a DVD release. Bush herself has said that she has no plans. There is film of the residency, though I am not sure whether it was ever filmed with multiple cameras or has the editing and appearance of a modern Pop concert. Maybe the look and sound of a DVD would do a disservice to the time and effort that everyone put into the show. The sound quality on the live album is incredible. You get the crowd reaction and the feeling that you are in Hammersmith watching along. One of the biggest draws about seeing Before the Dawn was the incredible set designs and lighting. Whilst the sense of the epic and beautiful was recounted by adoring reviews and gig-goers, I suppose that is something the listener has to miss out on. One wonders whether a DVD could ever get you inside the show and feel what so many did. Also, is it fair for people to see the show on DVD when there was a paying audience at the twenty-two dates? Nearly five years after the release of the live album (25th November), there are still those asking whether the film of Before the Dawn will be seen. It seems less and less likely as the years pass. I do think that owning it physically is the ultimate listening experience. However, as it is available to buy on Apple Music, I wonder what the reasoning behind leaving it off of Spotify is. You can also get the album on Amazon Music if you have membership (it costs slightly less than on Apple Music). There are options to hear Before the Dawn, yet there is little in the way of visuals (apart from press photos taken during one/a few of the shows). Maybe that is okay. The moving experience one gets from listening to the album is magnificent! In terms of a DVD, we will never really know what many people saw. To me, I think that Before the Dawn’s images and movements are…
BEST left to the imagination.