FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts: Violin

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts

Violin

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IN this deep cuts series…

I am picking album tracks that many people might not know about. Many Kate Bush fans might not know too much about these songs too, so under-discussed and overlooked are they. I have visited Bush’s third studio album, Never for Ever, before for this series. Released in 1980, one can say that most of the tracks are deep cuts. I guess Babooshka is the one we connect with that album. Army Dreamers and Breathing, whilst singles, are not that known to everyone. What those three songs show is how much Bush’s ambitions, voice and lyrics had grown and expanded since her debut album two years earlier. In terms of the themes she was exploring, the technology being used and the stage she was in her career, Never for Ever is the sound of an artist fresh from an international tour who was ready to step things up and take her work to new places. Actually, though I have mentioned Bush’s debut album (The Kick Inside) and how her sound palette and repertoire was broader, I actually want to link to it in a positive way. I love The Kick Inside more than any other album, but my point is that Never for Ever is more eclectic. On The Kick Inside, there is a number called The Saxophone Song. Bush wrote that because she loves the instrument and felt that is was very mellow, rich, and interesting. Like a woman.

A definite deep cut from Never for Ever has an instrument at its heart. Violin is one of those songs that many people have never heard. I am not sure whether Bush played the saxophone or ever thought about it but, as a child, she did learn the violin. Not as enjoyable as the piano, Bush did at least commit a song to record that celebrated the violin! Whereas the saxophone is mellow and has this romantic and sensuous quality, Bush notes how the violin is wilder and has this intense energy. Indeed, listen to the vocal performances on The Saxophone Song and Violin and they are vastly different! One reason why Violin should be better know as it sees Bush deliver a more Rock-orientated vocal. Something graveled, ecstatic and blood-rushing, maybe some people who reviewed Never for Ever felt Violin stuck out. If Bush would top that intensity on her next album, The Dreaming, with the incredible Get Out of My House, Violin was not what people were used to with regards her music. It always scores quite low when music sites and magazine rank the tracks from Never for Ever. I would argue Violin is worthy of fresh ears and affection. There are so many Kate Bush songs that very rarely get played on the radio or are given short shrift. Such an eccentric and brilliant intoxicating song, let’s hope that new fans of Bush’s work are hearing songs like Violin and enjoying it!

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Violin during her 1979 Christmas special

Before I carry on, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia provide information about the different versions of the song. I like the fact that Bush did perform the song live during The Tour of Life and her underrated 1979 Christmas special. I don’t think I have heard the demo version of Violin. As the album version is quite fulsome and layered, it would be intriguing to hear the demo and how this wonderful song started life:

“Versions

The studio version is the only officially released version. However, a demo version of 'Violin' has also surfaced. It appears on the bootleg 7" single 'Cathy Demos Volume Three' and various bootleg CD's.

Performances

'Violin' was premiered during the Tour of Life, when it was performed as the eighth song of the first act. At the end of 1979, Kate performed 'Violin' during the Christmas Special, after which she never performed the song again”.

Credits

Drums: Preston Heyman

Electric bass: Del Palmer

Electric guitar: Brian Bath

Electric guitar and solo: Alan Murphy

Violin: Kevin Burke

Banshee: Paddy Bush”.

Violin is an interesting song. Bush did perform is quite a bit, but after her Christmas special, that was that for this terrific song. I guess there was no call or opportunity to do it live after that. Not one of the singles from Never for Ever, I think a lot of people have passed this song by. It is not one of her best songs, but neither is it filler or something half-formed. Always an extraordinary lyricist, things are interesting, original, and memorable right at the start: “Four strings across the bridge/Ready to carry me over/Over the quavers, drunk in the bars/Out of the realm of the orchestra/Out of the realm of the orchestra”. Accompanied by Kevin Burke on the violin – who is a standout on this song -, I love the images that Kate Bush summons. My favourite verse is this: “Paganini up on the chimney/Lord of the dance/With Nero and old Nicky/Whack that devil/Into my fiddlestick!/Give me the Banshees for B.V.s/Give me the Banshees for B.V.s”. My hope is, with this run of features, to alert existing Kate Bush fans to songs that they might have forgotten about. For those new to her work, tracks like Violin demonstrate the depth and originality that Bush has. Every album has so many different moods and sounds. I love Never for Ever and its bigger songs, but cuts like Violin are also amazing. An impassioned song that has never quite got the credit it deserved, the stunning vocals, lyrics, and layers of this Never for Ever beauty proves that the incredible Kate Bush has many…

STRINGS to her bow.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Kilo Kish

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Kilo Kish

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BECAUSE she released…

one of this year’s best and under-reviewed albums, I want to feature the magnificent Kilo Kish in this Spotlight. Whilst not brand-new and fresh to the music world, she is definitely still coming through I feel. An artist who is both confidently realised yet not quite near her creative peak yet, this is an exciting time for the Florida-born songwriter and visual artist. Many will know her work already, she released her debut over ten years ago now. Her debut album, Reflections in Real Time, arrived in 2016, although I think American Gurl is her finest work. I have only seen a few reviews for the album. I will bring in a couple shortly. In spite of the fact there are few reviews for AMERICAN GURL and the music media shamelessly seemed to overlook such an incredible album that ranks alongside the best of 2022, there were quite a few interviews to promote it. Some big-name publications and sites too! A hugely respected musician with limitless talent, I want to set the scene and explore more of Kilo Kish’s year. Although she has been making magnificent music for over a decade now, I am going to drop songs from AMERICAN GURL through this feature, as it is her recent album and one that I think is overlooked and should be celebrated and talked about more. There are some really interesting interviews that I have found that tell us more about Kilo Kish and the phenomenal AMERICAN GURL.

The first interview I want to source from is Okayplayer. I was interested reading about Kilo Kish’s upbringing in Orlando and how she feels she has progressed in the past decade. Even though it has been a busy and successful decade, I think her best days and work still lie ahead. She is such a compelling person to read about. Such a raw talent with a very long future in the industry. Barely in her thirties, we are going to see Kilo Kish grow and produce sensational albums for years to come:

“Kilo Kish has never wanted to fit in. For the past 10 years, music has been the connecting factor between all the creative spaces the multi-hyphenate exists in. But before she became known as the alternative Black artist behind music projects like her 2012 debut Homeschool EP and the recently-released American Gurl (as well as a visual artist whose work has been displayed at The Getty Center and The Hammer Museum), Kish was Lakesha Robinson, a kid from Orlando, Florida.

From a young age, Kish felt different from those she grew up with because of her interests: listening to Bjork, cutting up and creating clothes, and reading Vogue. But she found camaraderie in a group of close friends she did everything with when she started to attend Winter Park High School, as well as friends she met in church.

“[High school] was pretty chill, it was also kind of crazy. When I was in high school, I just also smoked weed a bunch and did drugs,” she said. “It was weird because it was this dichotomy of having all this academic stuff and then also exploring.”

Let’s start at the beginning, what was it like growing up in Orlando?

I painted a lot. I was really into graffiti and I was trying to learn how to do spray paint and graffiti. I would always cut up clothes and try to make clothes. So yeah, I was creative. I tried to be on the step team. That didn’t really work out that well. I was really a part of my church as well. I was always at church because my mom was super religious, which was fun. I felt like I could be who I wanted to be, but I definitely felt different. People were like, “She’s a little bit weird, that one.”

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ray Brady

Hip-hop was poppin’ in the South at that time but people weren’t listening to hip-hop from the North, at least that’s my experience. So it was just very interesting. My parents are from up here.

Mine, too. My mom, it was like she would always be like, “You’re from up North.” She would always try to say that. And I [would tell her], “I actually was born here and I’ve been living here this whole time, so I’m pretty much Floridian.” She’s like, “You spent time in New Jersey. You’re from up north.” It’s like, it was this weird thing of not wanting to be “country” or that kind of vibe.

It’s been ten years since your first SoundCloud project. How does that feel?

I feel good about the last 10 years. I feel like, obviously, some things did not go as planned but that’s just the nature of life and learning a whole industry — a hard industry as well. I feel like I have created a space for myself that’s mine, that’s unique, and that’s all that I really wanted to do. Be as honest and truthful as I can about who I am and explore it and learn more about myself, and learn more about my world and dissect it.

I also feel like in the last 10 years, so much of my time was spent trying to fit into music. And it’s like — from the very get-go, I wasn’t interested in the same things that my music artist peers were interested in, and I fought against that for so many years. It’s just not my personality. I like to work by myself. I like to be insular. I like to be heady and think about things, and then I like to share them and present them at the end and give context and all of that, as opposed to being a personality that’s constantly in your face and people are constantly seeing.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ray Brady

What was the driving force behind your new album American Gurl?

I was super, super, super burned out. And I was frustrated with all the things that I was talking about before. I was frustrated by [the] industry and teams and trying to do all of these different things. I mean, being alternative — alternative black artists in general — it’s a weird kind of space that people don’t really always know where to [put us]. It’s much more well-received now, but I think sometimes people are like, “Well, can’t you just do it like this? Or can’t you just do it like that?” I think this project was like me detoxifying myself from all of the stuff that I heard all the time and the people that I was around, and the scenes and the conversations and just the sugarcoated nature of everything.

I don’t know why, I just started thinking about McDonald’s in this way — like sugary candy and Coca-Cola. I just started thinking, “What if I made an album that feels really bright and really kind of like pop on the surface, but then it’s really diving into some themes?” It’s kind of more like Reflections in Real Time, where it’s something that’s very near and dear to me but it’s coated in this plastic. That’s the theme of American Gurl — exploring that I am a product of my environment and these are the things that have been put on me in this time so far”.

AMERICAN GURL is an album I have been playing a bit since I heard it earlier in the year. Each time I pass through it, a different song jumps up and me and reveals something new. I have detected a definite shift and evolution in Kilo Kish’s sound since her earliest work. I am fascinated to see where she goes next. Teen Vogue spoke with Kilo Kish earlier in the year. It seems that it has been an intense period of work for her. Putting her all into the creative process, rather than AMERICAN GURL sounded burned out and tired, it is an album that is full of incredible lyrics, wonderful performances, nuanced songs and fresh incentive and energy:

“Teen Vogue: It’s been six years since your last album. What have you been doing in that time span?

Kilo Kish: Between Reflections and now, I’ve done a couple of EPs and toured a little bit and had two solo art shows and one group show. I’ve just been working the whole time. It doesn’t really feel like it’s been six years. It’s just been like continually doing things because once the album’s come out, I also then do all the creative for the rest of the album. Then there’s video, and I direct those. Then there’s merch and touring and then I’m directing and figuring that out, so it doesn’t feel like that much time has gone by, but it totally has.

I think what set up this particular album is that I was just working a lot, and I felt really just tired and strained by the process of going, going, going and doing, doing, doing. It kind of made me dissect what our culture is a bit. I started writing this album in 2019, and I wrote REDUX [Kish’s 2019 EP] in between that, then I toured [for] REDUX. When the pandemic happened, it really gave me time to think about what I had been doing for the past years, my workload and if I was happy in the life that I created for myself…it really just was dissecting a lot of like, what it means to have to make your own way, and I think the values that people preach in America are a lot of that. I really wanted to use Americanism as an umbrella to dissect some of these things that I was dealing with. Am I where I want to be financially? Did I do enough? Am I working hard enough? Am I pretty enough? Am I good enough?

TV: Did you learn anything about yourself in the process?

KK: I guess I’m just always looking for freedom. Whatever the purest form of freedom is, I’m always trying to find it. I don’t know if it’s fully attainable, but I think by figuring out the places that you don’t necessarily feel free, you’re able to kind of get a sense of what would make you happier. This project is basically unburdening myself a little bit from the things that I thought I had to care about or the things that I thought I needed to do to be happy and be successful, and dissecting what is success today because it’s not what it was five years ago. It’s not what it was 10 years ago.

TV: You always take a detailed, interdisciplinary approach when creating art, music and fashion. How does that come to you?

KK: I'll come up with a theme first. Then, I will personally craft each thing to fit into that theme and to tell an overall story of the project. And then that's what I do on the music side. And then I do it on the visual side. And then I do it all across the creation of the project, so that there's layers of depth alluding back to that same central theme and asking questions in all of the different spaces. Sometimes I can do installations around, you know, the projects themselves and music project, so it's more of a multi-layered approach than generally focusing on making an album to only be digested as an album.

TV: AMERICAN GURL is orchestrated conceptually as a video game. The album starts with characters deciding to play the game “American Gurl” and ends with them being annoyed that the game abruptly ends. What made you think of implementing that for the album?

KK: Initially, the album was kind of dissecting the entertainment game that people essentially are always referencing, so I thought it would be fun to actually make a real game that you could play. so I might try to do something like that. I want to still make that for this project, but games take a long time. I was like. maybe I can play on past memories and things and mesh it all together. I also grew up in New Jersey for a part of my life and we would always go down to the shore and we’d go to the boardwalk, so the memory of arcades just in general and the sounds of coins, the sound of commerce — the brightness and richness of sound in an arcade — it just reminds me of industry. All of these things are bright and shiny, and I think sometimes that’s kind of what art is like and how artists are marketed. We’re all for sale, we’re all bright and shiny, we’re all loud and we’re all intense, so it’s a good introduction to the things I’m discussing, which is my relationship to the music game or the game of trying to make it as a working artist”.

There are a couple of other interviews I want to drop in before getting to some reviews. Reading this interview from NYLON, and it is interesting learning what direction she intended to take AMERICAN GURL in first – compared to how it actually sounded in the end:

“The majority of American Gurl came together in 2019, the concept spawned from a conversation where she was discussing the perceptual limitations of Blackness. She doesn’t remember specifics, but recalls questions she asked herself: “Who would want to see me doing [conventional pop]? Why can’t I be an American girl?” Its release kept getting pushed off by the unraveling of the outside world — the pandemic’s onset, the murder of George Floyd. Similar to the way a social media feed can change in the blink of an eye, the context in which American Gurl was written has completely evaporated. Now, as we speak on her brief trip to New York, Russia wages war on Ukraine putting us on the edge of another world war. Kish can’t help but laugh: “This is the wildest time to try and dissect this part of our culture.”

She says that she intended to go the route of Lenny Kravitz or Gnarls Barkley for this album’s sound but states that the final result was a “Kilo Kish record, but a strange one.” Produced by Ray Brady, American Gurl’s fourteen tracks are a mash of new wave industrial pop, disco, dance punk, and trip hop while Kish dances with national and personal ego. The resulting whiplash concoction of pop is the background for her trying on different roles in order to understand herself further in relation to our warped, overstimulated reality. “What will it take to satisfy?” she asks on the robotic ballad “Distractions III: Spoiled Rotten.” The track pokes at her frustrations with consumerism by stepping into an exaggerated character whose insatiable hunger for things is never satisfied.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ray Brady

“I’d like to think, ‘Oh I’m a purist. I do things purely for the sake of art and making and giving,’” she says in a mocking tone. “But that way has been tainted through the worlds that I’ve gone through and through the seasons that I’ve lived through and through these years in this industry. Even if I was pure or if anybody was, it’s really hard to stay that way given what you need to do to survive and what is the name of the game. You go to a magazine shoot or you go to a fashion shoot and they’re like, ‘We want authentically you but actually can it be like this and can you put this on and can you say that exact thing you just said but like this?’”

It’s easy to get sucked up into American Gurl’s momentum without immediately recognizing its dark underbelly. Like a lollipop with a vitriolic center, the poppiest moments contain insidious sentiments. That fine balance not only mirrors this world’s current contradictions, but is evidence Kish is honing her craft. “The older I get and the better I get at what I do, it's like I'm able to juxtapose it better versus hitting you over the head [with] brain dumps,” she says, noting that American Gurl is more nuanced than Reflections. “If you don't want to go there with me you don't have to.

Kish is not an artist who wants to supply an answer, and she’s aware that the questions she’s asking don’t have a definitive response. So why bother to even ask these questions? Why make art that probes knowing there won’t be an explanation? “I’m restless, obviously,” she laughs. “I have a lot of energy. If it doesn’t go somewhere then it’s in me being anxiety. It’s a healthy way of getting out my fears and worries and confusion about the general nature of living.” As she continues, it seems that asking questions is her source of personal freedom. “It’s a part of my personality to constantly be wondering what’s deeper,” she concludes. Without that curiosity, she wouldn’t know who she would be”.

Maybe not directly connected to the music, I found an article and interview that discussed the ‘AMERICAN GURL style’. A connection between fashion/looks and various songs. Vogue’s feature helped bring new angles and light to the album. It made me think differently about it and, in the process, taught my new things about the incredible Kilo Kish:

“The album concept and look are Kish’s exploration of herself as she tries to understand who she is without the gaze of others. “It was me dissecting where I’ve been up until this point, my upbringing, the different subcultures that I’ve been a part of, and some of the tropes and identities associated with those,” she says of the album. “I realized that by 30, I have been indoctrinated in so many different ways of being within the music industry, then modeling, doing fashion stuff, and all of that. I was feeling, ‘Okay, what of all of this, if any, is me?’ ”

Kish’s searching isn’t a surprise: She moved to New York more than a decade ago at 18 and found herself smack-dab within the city’s scene, influenced by each social group’s styles and the larger trends at the time. Kish, who attended the Fashion Institute of Technology, recalls the “indie sleaze” era of the late to mid-’00s in which she’d wear ripped tights with jean shorts, baggy shirts, and Lacoste cardigans, which she describes as “art clothes.” Later on, in the early-’10s, she ventured into modeling and wore all black. While making music more professionally in 2012, she began to pull designer pieces and references items from the now-defunct label Elizabeth & James (founded by the Olsen twins). Eventually, Kish began to morph into the sartorial shapeshifter she’s known as today. She went through her big-suit David Byrne era around 2016 during her Reflections in Real Time album, and even wore a tutu “for a month straight.”

For her American Gurl album, Kish chose to wear American designers. Rodarte was a special influence, and allowed her to pull archival gowns for the images promoting her songs, which are designed like retro postcards and show Kish in different characters. On one, she’s wearing a frill-trimmed pink dress, superimposed on the photo of a resort with the kitschy text “Spoiled Rotten” and in another, which reads “Attention Politician,” in an ’80s-style fuchsia dress floating in front of a cityscape. “It was playing different characters in that world and then we used their different gowns to play different Americana characters," she says, noting her dress on the “Bloody Future" and “New Tricks” covers. “I have a yellow dress with all the bows on it where I am playing the character of a Southern belle.” Another special piece through this album process was, of course, that aforementioned American flag dress by Batsheva. “[Without] having that dress, would it have driven home the images much? Not really,” she says. “In some ways, it really can drive home the message that you’re trying to portray with the song”

Kish finds a kinship with the label Batsheva, which is known for—depending on your perspective—its frumpy-chic flair and its subversive qualities. Kish sees the dresses as layered and sublime, something that speaks to Kish’s own style. “It’s the juxtaposition of two things, which I like about [designer Batsheva Hay’s] designs,” says Kish. “When you go to her show, the models are having blue wigs and wild makeup and big hair. But then, the dresses themselves are quite conservative. It’s really the person wearing the dress more than the dress itself. It comes out punk in a way still, even though they’re not leather and all these things. It’s really buttoned up, but also going to rip your face off in a way, which is why I like her designs.”

Ultimately, Kish may have not cracked the code to who she is–but who has? Don’t expect her latest look to be permanent either. “I’ve been trying to accept that I am a mixture of these things and I am a product of all these things. Just because part of me as an artist always wants to be pure and not sell out and try to do the best possible work I can do, doesn’t mean that I also don’t want to be frivolous at times,” she says. “I think it’s really accepting that there’s more than duality to people. There are all of these different layers at play, and just really being accepting of, ‘Okay, today I want to be a fashion girl.’ It is what it is. That doesn’t preclude me from being something else in another moment”.

Let’s finish off with some positive reviews from an astonishing 2022 release. AMERICAN GURL is the latest chapter and big step from an artist whose music warrants wider exposure. I have heard a song or two of hers played on U.K. radio, but I don’t think she is as widely known here as she is in the U.S. In any case, go and follow her on social media and acquaint yourself with her work so far. Vinyl Chapters were among the few that gave AMERICAN GURL a spin and afforded it a deep and impassioned review:

“Kilo Kish’s AMERICAN GURL is an all killer, no filler album that interrogates the entertainment industry.

The clinking of coins in slots and the cheerful blips and beeps of arcade machines set the scene for AMERICAN GURL—a clever choice of backdrop for an album which, in visual artist and musician Kilo Kish’s words, explores ‘the American game’. Clocking in at 40 minutes and 14 songs, the American singer’s first album since 2016’s Reflections in Real Time brings forward a smorgasbord of variations on her usual dark art-pop sound.

The album makes it clear that if the public eye is going to be watching Kilo Kish, she’s going to stare straight back. AMERICAN GURL manages to be at once more experimental and more refined than Kish’s previous work, successfully performing the delicate balancing act between lyrics and musicality without compromising one for the other.

Each track is a carefully-crafted interrogation of the themes of fame, success and identity that run through the album; it’s a dissection of Kish’s personal image just as much as of the entertainment industry on a larger scale. “Who are you, baby? / Who are you keeping around?”, she asks over bright synths on title track AMERICAN GURL, introducing the key questions that lie at the album’s core. ATTENTION POLITICIAN is full of apathy, from its warped, dissonant synths to Kish’s unapologetic, attitude-packed delivery (“Ring my telephone / What, what, what / I’m in another zone / What, what, what”). NEW TRICKS: ART, AESTHETICS, AND MONEY has a similar dystopian aesthetic: “Congeniality is a basis for content / Peddling narcissism wrapped in self-love and progress / You want it, I got it / This soul is a bargain (I know you want it)”, Kish teaches to the students in her classroom, her monotone voice set over a mechanical instrumental.

Each track brings along a change in tone and style, making clear that Kish’s exploration of breaking down and remaking her image isn’t only limited to her lyrics. Once-bright synths turn subterranean on tracks like DEATH FANTASY, where they’re complemented by dull stabs of percussion and a shift to a more raspy vocal style. Behind these elements, you catch clips of ethereal falsetto from Californian R&B singer Miguel, without which the track wouldn’t have quite the same effect. It’s these careful sound design choices that separate Kish and her album from her contemporaries.

DISTRACTIONS III: SPOILED ROTTEN is a glitchy cut that features the beeping of machines, the dialing sounds of a telephone, and a repeated bridge (“Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme,”) that dissolves into a fake laugh. BLOODY FUTURE brings in a twinkling electronic Baroque motif, while NEW TRICKS features writing on a blackboard, a siren blaring, and ticking, clock-like percussion. All of these background sounds—including the occasional ‘levelling up’ sound (as at the end of ATTENTION POLITICIAN) that cleverly reminds us we’re still in the arcade—transforms the album into something closer to an experience.

But all experiences, whether good or bad, must eventually come to an end. “Is that it? That can’t be it,” the party of arcade-goers asks on the outro track, CONTINUE?, a sentiment likely shared by anyone who reaches the end of AMERICAN GURL. It’s an undoubtedly original album, maybe an acquired taste for some—and while the girls bashing the game machine might be unsatisfied, it’s unlikely the listener will finish the album feeling the same way.

Score 4.5/5”.

I am going to finish off with a review from The Line of Best Fit. One of the few British reviews I have seen, their promotion and word would have helped introduce Kilo Kish to a new audience here. I do think that AMERICAN GURL stands up against the best albums of this year. The Line of Best Fit were especially impressed by the video game-based concept of the album:

“The “we live in a society” record, which is more commentary on life than guilt-free pop collection, is a high risk, high reward career move. Janet Jackson provided grooves and commentary in equal measure with Rhythm Nation 1814 and produced a career-defining work, but Madonna took herself too seriously with American Life. Recently, MARINA’s Ancient Dreams In A Modern Land was a welcome sonic reprieve from past efforts, it still dawdled with superficial observations. With electro-alternative artist Kilo Kish’s AMERICAN GURL, however, she masters the formula of how to make pop music with a message, one that doesn’t make you feel bad listening to it.

The album is bookended by two skits – “PLAY” and “CONTINUE?” – which set up the project and explain the video game effects littered through the album. On the intro, two women enter an arcade and the “AMERICAN GURL” game catches their eye and decide to play. The album that follows is essentially the game, an incredibly smart move – every idea, concept, or theme is delivered with a wink in Kish’s eye. It’s all just part of the bit… Or is it?

The title track is the most straightforward pop song on the album –featuring a catchy beat and horn-like synths, Kish questions, “Who are you, baby? / Who are you keeping around?” Then declares, “I’m changing places / So I can’t see you anymore.” Her ambitions are simply too much for everyone else; her satirical worldview posits herself as enlightened, above it all. And she’s not sorry about it either – “NO APOLOGY!”, which comes later, is all about the absence of remorse.

“NEW TRICKS: ART, AESTHETICS AND MONEY”, the best song on the album, is a braggadocious banger delivered in the smartest, most polite way possible. Other rappers get to the point – I have so much money! – but Kish’s intelligent, even poetic lyricism comes through with “A Linx, a platinum leash / Affixed to my wallet / My hand, my stone-laced hand / Affixed to my pocket.” Frequent collaborator Vince Stapes is a feature on this track, but just ad-libs; he knows the focus is on Kish and her allegories of dogs, control, and obedience. “Man, you’re yanking my collar / Can’t dance for your dollar again,” she croons over the harsh beat.

The penultimate track, “INTELLIGENT DESIGN” seems like a reference to artificial intelligence, the future, and dystopian visions; The “Hello! Hello!” chants on the chorus bring to mind the “Hello, World!” output programs of AI. “I get up just to say / ‘I still want what this is now,’” Kish says on the pre-chorus, jaded by the onslaught of future technical progress”.

An artist I am keen for more people to know about, Kilo Kish’s AMERICAN GURL is proof of her incredible talent and vision. She has looked back and celebrated a decade of releasing music. It is interesting hearing her thoughts about how she has evolved as an artist. There is no doubt that the wonderful Kilo Kish has…

A lot more to say.

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Follow Kilo Kish

Official:

https://kilokish.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/kilokish/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7lsnwlX6puQ7lcpSEpJbZE

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2ZdzLwNxepKIl9id6qKT9A

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/kilokish

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/kilokish/

FEATURE: All I Want for Christmas… A Stocking of Seasonal Classics and Modern Gems

FEATURE:

 

 

All I Want for Christmas…

IN THIS PHOTO: Mariah Carey 

 A Stocking of Seasonal Classics and Modern Gems

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IT be a bit early to go in…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Rodion Kutsaiev/Unsplash

but, as it is almost December, I have put together a playlist of Christmas classics to get you in the mood. At the moment, we are hearing Christmas songs played on the radio. Before Christmas Day, I will suggest a music gifts-related feature for those who need ideas for Christmas presents for the music lovers in their lives. Whether you are ready for Christmas songs over a month before the big day or need to hold off until closer the time, the playlist is available and can be played whenever you like! There are some obvious choices in the mix, but there are also some modern Christmas songs to sprinkle in there. Even if the modern Christmas songs do not match the brilliance of the classics, they are still pretty good! There is going to be something in there for everyone. If you need some early Christmas cuts, then the playlist below should…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Hert Niks/Unsplash

PUT you in the mood.

FEATURE: Tom Doyle’s Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush: Kate Bush on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, 20th January, 1979

FEATURE:

 

 

Tom Doyle’s Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush

IN THIS PHOTO: Noel Edmonds posing for a promotional photo for Multi-Coloured Swap Shop

Kate Bush on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, 20th January, 1979

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THERE are a few T.V. appearances from Kate Bush…

that could be written about in detail. I love the time she was on The Kenny Everett Video Show in 1978. One of the most fascinating parts of Bush’s career is her interaction with young fans. Most people would assume adults were the only fans of Bush’s music in the early years. There were a lot of children and teens who loved her music and wanted to know more. This clip of her on Razzamataz discussing her track, Sat in Your Lap, in July 1981 is one of my favourite things. The album it is from, The Dreaming, was released in 1982. Perhaps an album not many of her young fans would have been able to digest or fully understand, it is fascinating seeing the way she interacted with the eager children who were in the studio for that interview. I always associate her interviews with adults and one-on-one. There were times when she had a bit of an audience. I am returning to Tom Doyle’s excellent new Kate Bush book, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. He dedicates an entire chapter to Bush appearing on the fabulous Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. I shall share some of Doyle’s words soon. First, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia give us some details about a unique Kate Bush promotional experience:

“The show was hosted by Noel Edmonds and his associates were Keith Chegwin, John Craven and, from 1978, Maggie Philbin. Also featured was Posh Paws, a stuffed toy dinosaur. Edmonds once explained that his name was actually spelled 'Pohs Paws', because that is 'Swap Shop' backwards as suggested in the phone in by 5 year old Duncan Beck. The content of the programme included music, visits from celebrities, competitions, and cartoons. There was also coverage of news and issues relevant to children, presented by John Craven, building on his profile as the presenter of John Craven's Newsround.

The cornerstone, however, was the Swaporama element, hosted by Chegwin, who was very rarely in the studio. An outside broadcast unit would travel to different locations throughout the country where children could swap their belongings with others. This proved to be one of the most popular aspects of the show, often achieving gatherings of more than 2,000 children. Generally, the primary purpose of the BBC OB unit was to broadcast a sporting event at that Swaporama venue later that day. This allowed Swap Shop to use the same unit and save programming costs which would otherwise be prohibitive.

On 20 January 1979, Kate Bush was a guest in the programme. She was interviewed by Noel Edmonds and answered phoned in questions.

Swap Shop was a success, attracting substantial ratings not only among its target audience of children, but also students and parents. It ended in 1982, to allow the presenters to move on to other projects — notably Edmonds, who became one of the highest-profile TV presenters in the UK. It was replaced by a series of similar programmes, most notably Saturday Superstore, Going Live! and Live & Kicking.

The programme didn't survive in the BBC archive. Every edition of Swap Shop was recorded in full every week onto two 90-minute Quad tapes. These tapes were held by the BBC until the late 1980's, at which time the Deputy Head of Children's Television, Roy Thompson, allowed many of them to be wiped and sold to Australia as recycled stock. Although Quad tape was considered obsolete in the UK, Australia was still using it extensively at that time, and as the Swap Shop tapes had no physical splices in them, they were considered ideal for re-use. As a consequence, no archive of Swap Shop exists and subsequent archive reissues of in-studio appearances had to be taken from domestic video recordings that had survived in private hands”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Shutterstock

On 20th January, 1979 (prior to The Tour of Life and after the release of Lionheart, a couple of months before she released Wow), Bush was willing to answer the fan to young fans. They would call the famous 01 811 8055 number. I have dropped in what can be found on YouTube. It is a shame that there is not a better-quality version of her appearance. I am fascinated by Kate Bush’s interviews and feel they should be remastered and all available on a website as a series of videos. Organising them by year, her Multi-Coloured Swap Shop jaunt is wonderful! It is brilliant that Tom Doyle spends a chapter transcribing the interview for his book. Clearly, it is an experience and moment of Kate Bush history that means a lot to him. It is certainly one of my favourite Kate Bush T.V. moments. Released the year before, Noel Edmonds launched in and asked Bush about her debut single, Wuthering Heights. Bush confirmed how she always wanted to be a singer and how great it is to finally being able to do that. Even early in 1979, Edmonds put it to Bush that she was dubbed the ‘voice of 1978’. Her explanation is that people associate her with one song. Maybe the unusualness of the song led people to highlight Bush in this way. Rather than silly questions being asked, it was quite a serious interview - though there was a lot of fun had.

Before Bush picked up the phone to callers, Noel Edmonds discussed him working with Bush on Top of the Pops. He was there for her second performance on the series. It was not without issues and problems, as there were plastic orchids. The fear being they would all go up in flames! Less than a year after being thrust into the T.V. limelight, Bush was recalling performance nerves and technical problems that she experienced at such a huge time. By the time she was on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, she had released two studio albums and had an international tour at the back of her mind. Rather than quote all the calls Bush took for Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, there are a few questions that caught my eye and ear. David Lang wanted to know what The Man with the Child in His Eyes is all about. From her debut album, The Kick Inside, it was the second and final single released in the U.K. (the first being Wuthering Heights). Quite a mature question from such a young fan! Bush explained – which got laughs from the crew – that men are grown-up children. She felt that this man (the hero) of the song “can communicate with a young girl because he is on the same level”. If an adult journalist had asked about The Man with the Child in His Eyes, I think they might have had a different reaction to the answer! A child asking Bush the same question is different. Bush never talks down to the children. She gives them her full attention and respect.

Aside from a question from a child who asked Bush what she’d be doing if she weren’t an artist (Bush, half-jokingly, suggested she’d work at Woolworths!), Sarah Tooley got the opportunity to ask Bush a couple of questions. Tooley asked which of Bush’s records was her favourite. Bush said it was Oh England My Lionheart (from Lionheart). Comically, the young girl gave a befuddled ‘oh’…perhaps not expecting Bush to choose a song like that! Even if Bush since distanced herself from that song, it was clear she chose that song as it was from her latest album. Maybe Bush felt on the spot too, but I am quite surprised she chose that particular number! Before wrapping up, there was a question a bit earlier that was interested. Monique Vinson asked where Bush got her clothes from. She explained from antique shops, as she bought them for the songs she sung and preferred older clothes. Perhaps less expensive and in a less public space than high street outlets, that was something I was not aware of! At the end of the interview, Bush posed a question for the listeners so they could win a bundle of prizes, including a bomber jacket from New Zealand and some shorts from Italy! Quite an international and unusual range of goodies, I wonder if they were specifically aimed at children or more for their parents?! Noel Edmonds asked Bush whether she was going to bring her skills and passion into a tour. Bush said things were sort of in air and that she would like to. Edmonds, knowing Bush was a dancer, asked if she would like to do that on tour. She was not sure whether she could leap into the air and sing and combine dance and singing in the way she wanted.

That is interesting, as it would be a short time after that interview when Bush was planning The Tour of Life. In fact, she probably already started to plant things by the time she appeared on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop! Bush read out the competition winner from the question asked in the previous week’s Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. Sadly, as Tom Doyle notes in his chapter, we never got to know who won the Bush bundle of prizes – lost as it is in the mists of time! I’d like to think whoever it was still has the items and preserves them. It is a shame that such a fun, interesting and important T.V. appearance from Kate Bush is not really available in a good form. Bush had a hectic 1978 and did a load of interviews, There were not many that were fun or had that playful vibe. After releasing Lionheart in November 1978, at the start of 1979, she was looking ahead to a third album (Never for Ever) and that all-important sole tour. I can see why Doyle dedicated a whole chapter to this one interview, as it was so much more than that! A rare opportunity to see Bush on kids T.V. and fielding questions via phone, it is sort of a one-off! It is special because it stands out from the tsunami of interviews and appearances Bush made through 1978. 1979 is a year when she was on tour and, although there were interviews, most of her time was dedicated to The Tour of Life and recording Never for Ever. Looking back at the video and seeing Bush smiling answering the phone to young fans during an edition of Multi-Coloured Swap Shop in January 1979 is…

A very interesting and fun T.V. slice of gold.

FEATURE: The Great Escape 2023: The First Batch of Incredible Artists

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great Escape 2023

IN THIS PHOTO: Maisie Peters 

The First Batch of Incredible Artists

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A festival jam-packed…

PHOTO CREDIT: The Great Escape

with terrific upcoming artists, I always look forward to seeing the line-up for The Great Escape. Held in Brighton each year, there has been a batch of names announced for 2023. The festival will be held between 10-13th May, and they have announced the Spotlight Shows. You can see Arlo Parks or Maisie Peters. On Friday, 12th May, Maisie Peters will headline the Brighton Dome Concert Hall. On Saturday 13th May, Arlo Parks will headline her own Spotlight Show, also at Brighton Dome Concert Hall. In addition to their Spotlight sets, there is another batch of names:

“The 2023 festival season starts here!! The Great Escape’s FIRST FIFTY live launch is back to showcase some of the hottest new artists around. The acts announced will give a first glimpse of the exciting talent lined up to play TGE 2023 next May.

This year’s First Fifty live launch will consist of a day of live showcases in and around East London on Tuesday November 15th, celebrating the announcement of the first acts playing at next year’s festival”.

To mark the incredible artists who have already been invited to play The Great Escape next year, I have included a song from the wonderful acts (those on Spotify). There will be more names coming soon enough, but those already confirmed are tantalising! Such an eclectic and fantastic range of talent, there are some future legends in the pack! Helmed by Arlo Parks and Maisie Peters, they join a range of phenomenal artists that will ensure next year’s The Great Escape is…

A huge triumphant!

FEATURE: Chancing in the Dark: Major Artists and the Issue of High Ticket Prices

FEATURE:

 

 

Chancing in the Dark

 

IN THIS PHOTO: Bruce Springsteen 

Major Artists and the Issue of High Ticket Prices

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THERE have bene a couple…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Giorgio Trovato/Unsplash

of high-profile cases involving major artists and high ticket prices through Ticketmaster. I know it is not the fault of the artists, but Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift are a two artists where this has applied. Where some fans are charged or have been expected to pay extortionate figures to go and see them. At a time when many artists cannot afford to tour because of costs – more on that later -, is it fair that bigger acts should charge fans so much to come and see them?! Maybe costs are humungous for major artists to mount a shot and take it arou8nd thew world, but one would think that they could cap prices to around $100 tops for any gig. Most fans shouldn’t have to pay more than that, as that is a lot on its own! As this NME reports, Bruce Springsteen fans are finding some eye-watering ticket prices to go and see him and live:

“Bruce Springsteen has responded to the backlash surrounding the ticket prices for his forthcoming tour.

An outcry ensued a few months ago when tickets for Springsteen’s first tour with the full E Street Band since 2017 went on sale, with reports that some tickets were priced at $5,000 (£4152) each thanks to Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” model. This system allows the ticketing site to charge more for tickets when they first go on sale, with the price increasing or decreasing depending on demand and in line with what a “scalper” – someone who resells tickets for profit – would sell them for, enabling the money to go to the artist and the in-house team.

Rolling Stone asked Springsteen about the controversy in an interview about his new album of soul covers, ‘Only The Strong Survive’. The Boss said that while he usually tries to charge “a little less” than peers, this time around, he wanted to do “what everybody else is doing”.

“What I do is a very simple thing. I tell my guys, ‘Go out and see what everybody else is doing. Let’s charge a little less.’ That’s generally the directions,” Springsteen said. “They go out and set it up. For the past 49 years or however long we’ve been playing, we’ve pretty much been out there under market value. I’ve enjoyed that. It’s been great for the fans.”

He added: “This time I told them, ‘Hey, we’re 73 years old. The guys are there. I want to do what everybody else is doing, my peers.’ So that’s what happened. That’s what they did.”

He did, however, acknowledge that “ticket buying has gotten very confusing” for both fans and artists. “And the bottom line is that most of our tickets are totally affordable. They’re in that affordable range,” he continued. “We have those tickets that are going to go for that [higher] price somewhere anyway. The ticket broker or someone is going to be taking that money. I’m going, ‘Hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?’”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images 

It does seem like artists could step in and avoid this sort of thing! It is only right they should earn money and get quite a bit in addition to their crew and crew. Consider how many people will see Springsteen on the tour and how much some people will have to pay, and they will get an extortionate amount! I know venues take a large slice, but they are still left with a lot of money. There needs to be something put in place so that fans desperate to see their favourite artists are not having to shell out more money than they can afford. Taylor Swift is another artist who is in the news for similar reasons to Springsteen. She has taken again what Tickermaster have done regarding presale prices. The Guardian reports of developments between Swift and Ticketmaster:

“Taylor Swift: accidental antitrust avenger?

Move over Karl Marx, it looks like Taylor Swift just radicalized the masses. Over the past few days there has been a lot of bad blood between Ticketmaster and enraged Swift fans over the disastrous rollout of tickets for the singer’s “Eras” tour. During the pre-sale process, which was only supposed to be open to around 1.5 million verified Swift fans, 14 million people, including bots, tried to get tickets. Pandemonium and heartbreak ensued. Things got even more heated on Thursday, the day before sales were meant to open to the general public, when Ticketmaster announced it was scrapping further sales due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand”. According to Ticketmaster, demand for Swift “could have filled 900 stadiums”.

This story isn’t really about how many fans Swift has, however, although she certainly has a lot. This story is more about how much power Ticketmaster has. The entertainment company merged with Live Nation in 2010 to create the parent company Live Nation Entertainment, and, since then, there have been concerns about how dominant it is in the space. Last year, for example, five Democratic House representatives sent a letter to the justice department asking it to look into Ticketmaster and Live Nation. “Ticketmaster has strangled competition in live-entertainment ticketing and harmed consumers and must be revisited,” the lawmakers said in their letter.

While concerns about Ticketmaster’s dominance aren’t new, it looks like the collective power of millions of irate Swifties means something might now be done about it. A number of politicians have chimed in to express their concern about the situation in the last few days. Tennessee’s attorney general, for example, said he was launching a consumer protection investigation into the company after his office was bombarded with complaints from Swift fans. The Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate antitrust committee, wrote a letter to Ticketmaster voicing “serious concern about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful impact on consumers”. The Pennsylvania attorney general, Josh Shapiro, announced he wanted to hear from people who had had trouble securing Swift tickets. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also chimed in to express her displeasure. “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved, and they need to be reined in,” the congresswoman tweeted. “Break them up.”

It looks like the justice department may agree with AOC’s assessment. On Friday afternoon, the New York Times reported the DoJ had opened an antitrust investigation into the owner of Ticketmaster, focused on whether Live Nation Entertainment has abused its power over the multibillion-dollar live music industry. According to the Times the investigation predates the Swift brouhaha, but it is certainly getting a lot more attention now.

Let’s hope that attention is sustained: the Swift ticketing debacle is just one high-profile example of the fact that the US has a major monopoly problem. Across numerous industries, monopolies are preventing healthy competition, which hurts consumers and lines the profits of a few chief executives. Remember the baby formula shortage earlier this year? That was partly due to the fact that just two companies – Abbott and Reckitt Benckiser – control about 80% of the US market. The US’s extortionate broadband and phone bill prices are another example of how monopolies hurt the average American. Here’s a statistic that will shock any European reader who is used to being able to choose from a number of broadband providers: a 2020 study found that 83.3 million Americans have only one broadband option. I live in a major US city and I only have two broadband options: both of which offer basically the same prices and services”.

Essentially, it is an issue with the very biggest artists and sites like Ticketmaster. One cannot necessarily blame artists like Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift, but it does seem that whilst Swift has acted, artists like Springsteen are content enough to let things be. It is not fair on fans in any situation but, without outrage and condemnation by more in the industry, the practice will continue. With demand so high for tickets for major artists, the presale prices are extraordinary! This is not a new thing or U.S. thing. Ticket prices have been rising because of cost of living and supply chain issues, and it will only get worse. I know that a lot of artists are exempt and they can provide gigs that are affordable for most, I worry that things will get worse. It is getting harder to afford basic necessities, and does that mean live music will suffer because of it? It is rather shocking to see what has happened with Ticketmaster and this monopoly. Wider afield, so many big artists do charge a lot of money for tickets. I know they have a lot of overheads and costs, but I do think that so many tickets are overpriced. Some might say this has always been the way, though I don’t think that ticket price rises are necessarily in line with inflation. As this article explores, many artists have to cancel tours because of a drop in ticket sales coupled with rising costs:

“Musicians are cancelling concerts and entire tours because the rising costs of staff and materials coupled with a drop off in ticket sales is making them too expensive to run.

Earlier this month, US band Animal Collective cancelled forthcoming European dates as “not sustainable”. Within days, the UK downtempo producer Bonobo called time on future live shows in America, describing them as “exponentially expensive”. Then electronic musician Tourist rescheduled a US stint, saying “sometimes tickets just don’t get sold”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Little Simz/PHOTO CREDIT: JM Enternational/Getty Images 

These announcements follow cancellations from acts including Santigold, Demi Levato, Poppy Ajudha and Mercury prize winner Little Simz. While some, such as Caroline Polachek, have rescheduled to spend more time in the studio, others, including Justin Bieber and Arlo Parks, have cited mental health.

“Every week we see another act cancelling a tour. It’s not a decision people take lightly,” says Sybil Bell, founder of Independent Venue Week. “It’s such a tough time and the production world is being decimated.” Kelly Wood, national organiser for live performance at the Musicians’ Union, agrees. “Artists are painfully cancelling shows. It’s a really big thing to do and there is no other option.”

The main issue is skyrocketing costs. It is easier for artists to pull dates rather than exposing themselves to expensive, empty gigs. For Annabella Coldrick, chief executive of the Music Managers Forum, it is a perfect storm. “Ticket sales are slow, people are worried about money, there is a massive labour shortage and the cost of hiring vans and trucks has gone up dramatically. On top of that, there is a currency devaluation and a fuel crisis. It’s absolutely horrible.”

It is getting harder to predict which acts will sell tickets. Many promoters use streaming figures and social media numbers to gauge interest. But does a million streams on Spotify mean people want to see an artist live? “Not necessarily,” says Elijah, artist manager at Make The Ting. “Some tracks are bigger than the artists themselves, and don’t convert well into tickets”.

There does seem to be a gulf between huge artists and everyone else. Whilst Ticketmaster are exposing some real problems and scandals, how many mainstream acts are ensuring their ticket prices are reasonable enough for most fans? Is there greater outrage from artists regarding what is happening with ticket sites? At a time when everyone is struggling, can prices be capped so that artists and crew earn what they deserve, venues get a fair cut, and fans are happy? What about the smaller artist that have to cancel gigs? It is a complex and larger issue, but I have been shocked by those recent stories about hugely inflated ticket prices. Something definitely needs to be done. So many fans are either paying too much and suffering or they are unable to buy tickets because they are out of their range. Also, many talented and rising acts are cancelling gigs because ticket demand is decreasing. The situation regarding the cost of living is different here to the U.S., but there is a growing issue in live music that is impacting fans and artists alike. Live music has been a lifeline for so many. From huge artists like Taylor Swift to smaller like Caroline Polachek, it is a pity to see what is happening. Let’s hope that there is progress and improvement…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Caroline Polachek/PHOTO CREDIT: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images

IN 2023.

FEATURE: Celebrating an Iconic and Complex Debut Album: Dr. Dre’s The Chronic at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Celebrating an Iconic and Complex Debut Album

Dr. Dre’s The Chronic at Thirty

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THERE are a couple of things to note…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Kravitz/Filmmagic/Getty Images

when it comes to Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. His groundbreaking debut studio album was released on 15th December, 1992. I wanted to mark thirty years of a Hip-Hop classic. It was not always regarded as the iconic and hugely influential album it is today. The Chronic was Dr. Dre's first solo album after he departed N.W.A and its label Ruthless Records. The departure was due to a financial dispute. The Chronic features insults towards Ruthless and its owner, the former N.W.A member Eazy-E. Also controversial because of its glamorisation of street life and its provocative and sometimes sexist and homophobic lyrics, the album has been given retrospective acclaim and focus. I can appreciate that some would dislike the album because of the way it glorifies hood life and objectifies women at various points. Some could argue that this was the sound of West Coast Rap in the early-1990s. Indeed, at the start of the 2000s, Eminem was producing far more controversial and explicit Rap. There is no doubting the influence of the Compton-born pioneer. Not only a celebrated Hip-Hop figure, Dr. Dre is a renowned and brilliant producer who has worked with the likes of Snoop Dogg, and Mariah Carey. A diverse and hugely respected and innovative producer, businessman and artist, there were a lot of eyes on Dr. Dre after he departed N.W.A. He confidently stepped out on his own and produced a magnificent debut that stands as one of the best of the ‘90s! Another controversy is that The Chronic is executive produced by Suge Knight. He was convicted for voluntary manslaughter in 2018 for a hit-and-run. Also, The Chronic is not available on streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify.

As Screen Rant states in this interview, one of Dr. Dre’s protégé’s, Snoop Dogg, is partly responsible for a Hip-Hop masterpiece being elusive across streaming platforms:

“While some people may have hoped this was just a temporary glitch, it appears to be a conscious decision from Death Row Records — the record label that owns The Chronic and Doggystyle. Snoop Dogg purchased Death Row Records in February 2022. Shortly after the acquisition, he announced that he'd be turning Death Row into "an NFT label." And those NFT plans are already well underway. On March 14, Snoop Dogg launched the Death Row Mix: Vol. 1 NFT on the Sound XYZ marketplace. Only 1,000 versions of the NFT were available, with Snoop Dogg describing Death Row Mix: Vol. 1 as, "some bits and pieces from my friends and family for you to enjoy. Even a couple minutes for you to throw your own verse in there."

What does all of this have to do with The Chronic, Doggystyle, and the other Death Row albums no longer available on streaming services? The general consensus is that Snoop Dogg is planning to re-release them exclusively as NFTs. While nothing's been confirmed about this just yet, Snoop Dogg's made his interest in the NFT space very clear — at one point saying, "Just like when we broke the industry when we were the first independent to be major, I want to be the first major in the metaverse."

As for the future of The Chronic and Doggystyle on streaming services, it may be a while before you can listen to them again. Billboard claims that The Chronic may not come back to Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms until 2023 (with no mention of a return for Doggystyle). The NFT focus from Death Row could be a win for hardcore fans of its albums, but for everyone else, it could be a pretty annoying future”.

I am going to bring in just a couple of the retrospective reviews for The Chronic. Released into the world thirty years ago on 15th December, there are some great articles about this cornerstone of 1990s Hip-Hop. The Ringer celebrated The Chronic in 2020, as it was available for streaming for the first time ever – but has obviously since been removed.

“Born Andre Romelle Young in Compton, California, Dr. Dre found himself at a crossroads in 1992. Seven of the eight albums he’d produced for Ruthless Records between 1983 and 1991 had gone platinum, including his group N.W.A’s most recent opus, Efil4zaggin, which hit no. 1 on Billboard. But he wanted out, badly: His royalty payouts were too low, and he felt N.W.A founder Eazy-E and manager Jerry Heller were taking advantage of him. (Heller, who died in 2016, disputed these claims.) Desperately wanting to start a new label, he enlisted the help of Suge Knight, a former UNLV defensive end and the bodyguard of Dre’s confidant the D.O.C. Knight, who had famously hung rapper Vanilla Ice over a balcony to get him to sign over the rights to his hit song “Ice Ice Baby,” demanded Eazy-E release Dre, D.O.C., and several others from their Ruthless contracts. When he threatened to hurt Eazy’s mother and Heller if that didn’t happen, the diminutive rapper reluctantly signed the papers.

Dre was free of his contractual obligations, but legal problems still loomed. The most high profile of those was the civil suit brought by Dee Barnes, host of the Fox hip-hop show Pump It Up, who said that Dre brutally assaulted her in 1991 because of the way a segment on the show involving N.W.A and departed group member Ice Cube had been edited. After confronting her at an industry party, Dre “began slamming her head and the right side of her body repeatedly against a wall near the stairway,” kicked her in the ribs and stepped on her hands, and followed her into a bathroom to continue the assault after she tried to escape, Barnes said at the time. Dre, who pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery charges stemming from the incident in August 1991, would eventually settle the suit out of court.

Against this backdrop, Knight, the D.O.C., record producer Dick Griffey, and a 27-year-old Dre founded Death Row Records with the help of seed money from Michael Harris, a businessman who was serving a sentence for drug charges and attempted murder. Soon, Dre and a horde of collaborators began working on what would become the label’s first release, which would double as Dre’s first solo album and a showcase for Death Row. The sessions for the project, which took place at the newly christened Death Row Studios in Hollywood and Dre’s Calabasas home, quickly became smoke-filled affairs—quite the change for someone who rapped four years earlier that he “don’t smoke weed or sess / ’Cause it’s known to give a brother brain damage.” Through that haze, a title emerged: The Chronic.

With the new studio, new freedom, and new botanical muse, Dre began crafting a sound that would redefine rap, both for his coast and the genre at large. It started with the spirit of George Clinton: “At the same time [Dre and I] were like, ‘We need to do some P-Funk–sounding shit,’” Dre’s Chronic cowriter, multi-instrumentalist Colin Wolfe, told Wax Poetics in 2014. “We wanted to make a real Parliament-Funkadelic album.” The influence is apparent on “Let Me Ride,” which samples “Swing Down, Sweet Chariot” on its hook, and especially on “The Roach,” a Mothership homage bordering on parody updated for 1992 Los Angeles. But Parliament had been sampled plenty of times before—the flower children in De La Soul scored their biggest hit with a flip of “(Not Just) Knee Deep” three years earlier, and Dre himself had mined George Clinton records for N.W.A’s albums.

What changed in The Chronic sessions was Dre’s approach. Hip-hop music at the time was largely beholden to production techniques created by its East Coast practitioners: jazzy samples from dusty records that sounded analog even as they were pumped through digital mixers. While Dre later said The Chronic was inspired in part by A Tribe Called Quest’s 1991 classic The Low End Theory, he would largely forgo direct sampling on his solo debut, instead asking musicians to replay melodies and bass lines. This came at a time when live instrumentation in hip-hop was seen as a gimmick at best and a faux pas at worst. But the undeniably thumping grooves gave the naysayers little ammo; “Nuthin but a ‘G’ Thang” doesn’t get its full-bodied sound by Dre simply running a Leon Hayward record through an S900.

Crucially, Dre added one signature element to many of the tracks: a high-pitched Moog synth line, à la the Ohio Players’ “Funky Worm.” Dre had previously attempted something similar on songs like N.W.A’s “Alwayz Into Somethin’,” and while Cold 187um—the producer from Ruthless Records group Above the Law—has repeatedly said he invented the sound, it took on addictive properties on The Chronic. Beats like the one on “Deeez Nuuuts” were meticulous blends of melody, bass, and pounding drums; they could blow out subwoofers while also worming themselves into a listener’s ears. Others sounded as suspenseful as any horror movie score, but the underlying groove drew the audience in. It’s not that the music on The Chronic was pop—it was undeniable.

The sound also had a name—G-funk—and suddenly, the man who desperately needed 1992 to break his way professionally had an aesthetic that would become the platonic ideal of West Coast rap for the rest of the decade”.

It’s likely the album flops, or at least fails to reach such lofty heights, without Snoop to ground it. Dre has always been better served as a director than a leading man, and while his rhymes aren’t quite as stilted as some contemporary reviews made them out to be, he’s missing a certain charisma. (“Let Me Ride,” one of the few songs on the album that Dre lyrically anchors, was The Chronic’s lowest-charting single.) It also didn’t help matters that he didn’t write many of his own lyrics—when he shouted-out D.O.C. by saying “no one could do it better” on “‘G’ Thang,” he was actually reciting lines his buddy penned for him.

The contrast between Dre and his deputy is clearest on “Lil’ Ghetto Boy,” a Donny Hathaway–sampling song that opens with clips from Birth of a Nation 4-29-92, a low-budget documentary that captured the Los Angeles Riots that occurred seven months before The Chronic’s release. As Dre clumsily recounts a fictional botched robbery, Snoop offers a plaintive meditation on the cyclical nature of violence and consequence, culminating in the lines: “And we expose ways for the youth to survive / Some think it’s wrong but we tend to think it’s right.” Amid all the garish violence, Snoop’s verses are the closest The Chronic has to a message.

But elsewhere, Snoop puts a smooth voice to some of the uglier moments on the record: the homophobic “Dre Day” disses aimed at Eazy-E, “Fuck Compton” rapper Tim Dog, and 2 Live Crew’s Uncle Luke, for some reason; the comically regressive posse cut “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” where Snoop debates killing his cheating girlfriend. The Chronic is sometimes cited as the first major album to make gangsta rap fun, and while it’s impossible not to get swept up in its more fantastic elements, it’d be tougher to swallow with Dre as its only leading voice, especially given his history with Barnes and other women who said that he assaulted them. And unlike our present day, when discussions over an artist’s actions play out in real time on social media, The Chronic was created in a world before mass internet access. If you weren’t reading Rolling Stone or paying attention to Kurt Loder’s MTV News updates, you likely didn’t know about Dre’s history of violence.

The controversy over the lyrical content, however, ultimately became a selling point. The early ’90s were something of a heyday for moral panics over rap music, a time when a soon-to-be president could score political points by repudiating Sister Souljah, when a metal band fronted by Ice-T was the most dangerous group in America, and when Rev. Calvin Butts steamrolled albums he deemed to be of questionable moral standing. C. DeLores Tucker, a former civil rights activist, took aim directly at the genre’s treatment of women: “I am here to put the nation on notice that violence perpetuated against women in the music industry in the form of gangsta rap and misogynist lyrics will not be tolerated any longer,” she said in 1993. “Principle must come before profit”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Dr. Dre in New York in 1992/PHOTO CREDIT: Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Vinyl copies of The Chronic are expensive, but I would urge people to get it on CD if they can. Also celebrating this wonderful album making its way to streaming services in 2020, NME produced a deep dive. There are parts of the feature that are especially interesting and illuminating:

“America had become aware of the tensions brewing in LA following the shocking case of Rodney King, a black construction worker who was badly beaten up by several LAPD officers in 1991. After the court acquitted the participating officers in 1992, finding them not guilty of police brutality, riots, fires and looting broke out all over the City Of Angels.

‘The Chronic’ was recorded while all of this was going on in Dre’s own backyard. Providing an audio depiction of the injustices taking place, it referenced several of the incidents on ‘Lil Ghetto Boy’ and ‘The Day The N****z Took Over’, noting the change in their environment, where it seemed like both gangbangers [US slang for gang members] and the police were quicker than ever to pull their triggers.

‘The Chronic’ might not have invented gangsta rap, but it was certainly the first to transform it into the dominant soundtrack of America’s party scene. Together with Snoop, Dre captured the state of mind of a gangsta, even though he wasn’t a gangsta himself per se. He romanticised the gangbanging lifestyle on tracks like ‘Nuthin’ But A G Thang’ and ‘Let Me Ride’, presenting it in the context of an eclectic and uncompromising body of work that established the west coast as a commanding mainstream musical force.

“It was the first time in the history of rap music that New York artists and producers had to ride in the proverbial passenger seat,” explains UK rap legend Rodney P. “N.W.A. had started the trend but it was ‘The Chronic’ that opened the floodgates, giving regional artists the belief that they could succeed in making music that was hip-hop. The Dirty South, Atlanta, Houston, St. Louis, they all owe a little something to ‘The Chronic’ and to Dr. Dre for removing the limitations on what hip-hop could and should sound like.”

But it wasn’t just about artists from other regions being inspired to describe and celebrate their own lives, scenes, experiences and cities. Listeners from other regions and other countries were given an insight into what it was like to live in South Central Los Angeles in that turbulent time.

“I can imagine how educational ‘The Chronic’ was for people living in other cities or in other countries around the world,” Thomas notes. “Whether you lived in Africa, London, France, or even another city like Detroit, ‘The Chronic’ was like an educational road map on what South Central LA and the west coast was all about. Dr. Dre was able to paint a picture for all of those who weren’t from South Central.”

On thinking about the impact of ‘The Chronic’, the thing that is probably the most overlooked is the shockwave it sent through the industry for years to come. It was the bedrock of one of the most dominant record labels in the history of music. At the height of its powers, Death Row Records was pulling in $100 million a year – and proving that hardcore rap could power a hit machine in pop music. In time it would inspire label powerhouses such as Cash Money Records, Top Dawg Entertainment and more.

IN THIS PHOTO: Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

In a more linear sense, ‘The Chronic’ provided a springboard for many to flourish. While Snoop Dogg is an obvious one to point out, Daz and Kurupt had a pretty successful run as Tha Dogg Pound, as did Nate Dogg before his death in 2011, featuring on songs by 50 Cent, Fabolous and Ludacris, with many considering him one of the greatest hook singers of our time.

Then there’s Warren G. Aside from him having a mammoth hit in his own ‘Regulate’, an iconic tale of LA street life, he played a huge role in keeping the lights on at legendary hip-hop label Def Jam Records after sales of his debut album ‘Regulate…G Funk Era’ injected some much needed revenue into the then financially struggling industry giant.

“A lot of people owe their career to this album,” Sway points out. “There would be no Kendrick Lamar if it wasn’t for ‘The Chronic’. There would be no Game, no YG, no Nipsey Hussle.”

Dre shaped LA’s present and future with ‘The Chronic’. But more than that, he made the naysayers who thought hip-hop lacked substance sit up and take notice, alerting them to a simple fact: this was no passing fad”.

A seminal album that impacted and infused the Hip-Hop and Rap genres soon after its release, its influence is still being felt thirty years later! In their review, this is what AllMusic said about the staggering and reappraised classic, The Chronic:

“With its stylish, sonically detailed production, Dr. Dre's 1992 solo debut, The Chronic, transformed the entire sound of West Coast rap. Here Dre established his patented G-funk sound: fat, blunted Parliament-Funkadelic beats, soulful backing vocals, and live instruments in the rolling basslines and whiny synths. What's impressive is that Dre crafts tighter singles than his inspiration, George Clinton -- he's just as effortlessly funky, and he has a better feel for a hook, a knack that improbably landed gangsta rap on the pop charts. But none of The Chronic's legions of imitators were as rich in personality, and that's due in large part to Dre's monumental discovery, Snoop Doggy Dogg. Snoop livens up every track he touches, sometimes just by joining in the chorus -- and if The Chronic has a flaw, it's that his relative absence from the second half slows the momentum. There was nothing in rap quite like Snoop's singsong, lazy drawl (as it's invariably described), and since Dre's true forte is the producer's chair, Snoop is the signature voice. He sounds utterly unaffected by anything, no matter how extreme, which sets the tone for the album's misogyny, homophobia, and violence. The Rodney King riots are unequivocally celebrated, but the war wasn't just on the streets; Dre enlists his numerous guests in feuds with rivals and ex-bandmates. Yet The Chronic is first and foremost a party album, rooted not only in '70s funk and soul, but also that era's blue party comedy, particularly Dolemite. Its comic song intros and skits became prerequisites for rap albums seeking to duplicate its cinematic flow; plus, Snoop and Dre's terrific chemistry ensures that even their foulest insults are cleverly turned. That framework makes The Chronic both unreal and all too real, a cartoon and a snapshot. No matter how controversial, it remains one of the greatest and most influential hip-hop albums of all time”.

I will finish off with Pitchfork’s review of The Chronic. At least part of it. They gave the album a perfect 10 when they sat down to review it in 2019. It is an ageless album that, whilst possibly not for those easily offended, is such a powerful, personal, and transformative listening experience:

“The confrontational machine gun funk of “Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat” and the sinister squeal of the creeping “High Powered” were emblematic of a territorial mentality. Both Dre and Snoop rapped as if on standby, calm yet poised to strike at a moment’s notice. Many of the album’s best sequences are just them standing their ground. In Daryl Gates’ Los Angeles, this was radical. “Old buster ass nigga talking bullshit/Don’t know that I’m the wrong nigga to fuck with,” Dre barks on “A Nigga Witta Gun.”

At Solar, Dre produced on a cutting edge SSL mixing console that producer Rhythm D likened to the Starship Enterprise, which felt particularly fitting since they were making beats by reworking about a dozen Parliament-Funkadelic songs in their sessions. A connection with the Mothership had yielded a magnificent and funky new subgenre. They were building songs from the ground up, according to Wolfe, “drums, bass, keys, guitar, in that order,” with drums and bass being fundamental to their hydraulic, shock-absorbent bounce. Instead of sampling records, as he had for N.W.A, Dre had his live musicians channeling the deep alien grooves of Bernie Worrell and George Clinton.

Dre helped to reshape the sound of the West using whining Moog synthesizers. The initial wave of West Coast gangsta rap was (naturally) still indebted sonically to hip-hop’s birthplace, New York City. N.W.A songs sampled Big Apple rappers Whodini and Beastie Boys. AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted was produced by Public Enemy’s team the Bomb Squad, and Cube was “obsessed with” Run-DMC. Many of the West Coast rappers that had come before Dre brought an undeniable California flavor to rap, but there wasn’t yet a distinctive sound separating them from their East Coast predecessors. The Chronic was instrumental in changing all that. The album’s reinterpretation of ’70s P-Funk, dubbed G-Funk, was altogether different. Dr. Dre’s songs moved more leisurely, a tonic for the hustle and bustle of East Coast rap.

It’s an oversimplification to say Dre beats sound good, but the man did sell a line of high-performance headphones to Apple for $3 billion on the strength of his music’s supreme fullness and fidelity. He is a production genius. “I used to spend all my time trying to make my beats be mixed as good as Dr. Dre,” Kanye West recently admitted. Q-Tip called Dre the bar for producing A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory. Dre, in turn, was pushed to match that classic’s resonant bass, and The Chronic set a new mark.

In addition to launching Dr. Dre into rarified air, the album launched about a half dozen successful solo careers. It is the nexus of an entire chunk of rap history. Death Row peaked with the February ’96 Vibe cover, more an endnote on an era than anything else; Dre left the company a month later, and by that fall Tupac was dead. In the end, the label Dre built with Suge was just as combustible as the one he left to start it. But The Chronic lives on as a timeless show of strength when the stakes couldn’t have been higher, and as the herald of a tectonic shift in rap. Without it, or Dre, there is no Game, no YG, no Kendrick Lamar or To Pimp a Butterfly, no Nipsey Hussle. Dre gave shape to L.A.’s present and future. His dispatch from inside a city in transition not only furthered its sense of place in the world beyond but helped affect the place it was becoming”.

It is unsurprisingly Dr. Dre is such in demand as a producer given albums like The Chronic. The voice for so many emerging rappers, The Chronic will get new inspection ahead of its thirtieth anniversary on 15th December. Songs about police corruption and racism are, sadly, still relevant in 2022. So many of the songs and messages still pack such a punch and hold so much truth and urgency to this day. It is hard to believe that one of the greatest Hip-Hop albums turns thirty…

TEN days before Christmas Day.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Kali Claire

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Kali Claire

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I did mention the wonderful Kali Claire…

last year, because Amazon Music recommended artists for this year to watch out for. As yet, I have not put her into a Spotlight feature. Here is a truly remarkable talent from East London. An amazing producer and artists, even though she has an impressive range of unique singles and E.P.s to her name, there are some that have not just discovered the wonders of Kali Claire. 2022 has been a busy one for her. Recently having supported Miraa May in London, she was just part of The Ultimate Seminar this year. Announcing the news earlier in the week, Music Week reported the following:

“The Ultimate Seminar has announced further names for this year's London event on November 19.

The event aims to inspire and engage with the next generation of music professionals. It follows the first ever live regional event last year hosted at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall.

Free to attend subject to availability and registration, the London event this month takes place at 1 Wimpole Street - registration is open here.

Latest additions to the London line-up include producer and artist Steel Banglez, singer, songwriter and producer Kali Claire, artist, songwriter and producer Hamzaa, rising star Lost Girl, producer NK-OK, singer, songwriter and producer Daecolm, songwriter Taneisha Jackson, and rapper Ms Banks.

Speaking on her involvement in the Ultimate Seminar, Ms Banks said: “If I could just help one person with my experience I’d be happy, so when the opportunity shows itself why not speak?”

This year's Ultimate Seminar will include discussions on the music business with the Knowing Your Business, Major Mindset, Cre8ive Breakers, Scoring A Hit, Marketing & A&R Xchange, and Artist Breakthrough panels. The event will provide attendees with the opportunity to learn from top industry execs as well as artists, songwriters and producers.

Last year’s London event saw emerging artists Jaz Karis, Bellah, Dreya Mac and Cat Burns join the PPL Artist Breakthrough panel.

Following the success of fully subscribed 1:1 consultations, the London attendees will have the opportunity to book 1:1 consultations with top execs to gain insight into their chosen field.

The Ultimate Seminar is sponsored by Island Records, Warner Records UK, Atlantic, Parlophone, EMI/ Capitol, Columbia, RCA, Ministry of Sound, Virgin, TikTok, PPL, PRS, BMI, YMU, Darco Recordings, Hipgnosis and Sentric”.

I am going to drop in some of Kali Claire’s incredible songs from 2020 and 2021 through this feature. I feel 2023 is going to be the year when she goes on world tours, releases some of her best material and produces for some major artists. There is a lot of excitement around her. And rightfully so! I will work my way to an interview from this year. A lot of sites and journalists were keen to speak with Kali Claire last year. Having been tipped for great things, she has definitely fulfilled that promise! The Line of Best Fit featured her as one of the artists that we need to look out for:

“Just over a year ago, the Audio Engineering Society revealed a somewhat alarming statistic concerning the gender gap within the recording industry. Women, global research showed, only accounted for 5% of all audio engineers and producers currently working in the industry.

For Claire, that statistic didn’t come as any great surprise. Spending every available minute learning her trade in professional recording studios, or at home hunched over her laptop mastering the ways of Logic Pro, she’s someone who proudly obsesses over those finer – and sometimes overlooked - sonic intricacies.

And yet, during those studio apprenticeship years, she routinely felt like the lone female voice.

“When I first started out, it was hard finding the confidence in a studio environment, especially as you’re completely surrounded by men,” she explains from her East London home. “Men are the producers, the engineers, the mixers, the owners. I’m quite a shy person so it took me a long time to get to where I am now, where I’m more assertive and can say what I mean when I’m in the studio. That’s the reality of it: it’s a very male-dominated world. So if I can add to that small percentage of women involved in engineering or mixing, I want to contribute. It would be nice, occasionally, to look around in a studio and see more female representation. It’s something I’m really passionate about. It all comes down to accessibility, and making women more aware that these roles are available to them.”

Kali Claire, it’s safe to say, is someone you underestimate at your peril. When she first emerged two years ago, the 22-year-old could have been easily filed away as another budding starlet from British music's inexorable R&B diva production line. On closer inspection, however, she has revealed herself to be an artist of many wonderful facets.

Over a string of acclaimed EPs and singles, her songwriting, which is far from cookie-cutter, has pin-balled seamlessly between R&B, futurist pop and soulful, cinematic balladry. A fervent collaborator, she's worked with everyone from Not3s to Unknown T to Alicia Keys. Whether she’s addressing the aspirations of London’s working class communities or kicking back against chauvinist attitudes within the music industry, Claire’s resistance to glass ceilings is what firmly sets her apart.

Reflecting on her early experiences as a young woman in the industry, on being routinely undermined for her gender, Claire responded with a gutsy, pugnacious statement of empowerment and self-worth on her recent single “Disrespekt”. Patriarchy-smashing has never sounded so dancefloor-attuned, nor so edifying.

“’Disrespekt’ was kind of my letter to the music industry,” she says defiantly. “I’ve been in certain rooms where I’ve been made to feel like a lesser person. That my opinions don’t matter, I don’t know what I’m doing, that I can’t even operate a computer. All because I’m a woman. ‘Disrespekt’ is probably my favourite release so far because of what it means. It’s me expressing my power.”

Born in South London, Camberwell, but raised in the east of the capital, Hackney, Claire’s powers of expression were nurtured from an early age. Encouraged by her single-parent mother, Claire’s passion for music was both voracious and wide-ranging: an introduction to Bob Marley (“I got one of his albums for my fourth birthday”) was followed by a nineties hip-hop phase, then a deep, enduring love affair with Beyonce and Destiny’s Child.

Beyond her immediate family, Claire’s east London community was equally as important in her artistic appreciation. She talks with immense pride about the “opportunities, if you’re young, to create and express yourself” in her native Hackney. For the teenage Kali Claire, those opportunities arrived at the Hackney Empire and Twist Music Theatre, with whom she became a regular participant in their artists' development programmes. Tasked with writing, developing and eventually performing original pieces on the Hackney Empire stage, Claire was instantly bitten by the writing bug.

“I feel like that was my introduction to writing,” she enthuses. “The idea that you can create something, entirely from scratch, then perform it to an audience. There’s just something magical about making something that didn’t exist before. I love that feeling of starting a day, opening my laptop, opening Logic, and there’s a blank cloud. But, by the end of the day, I’m leaving the studio with a song I can send to my friends, to other producers. That love for creating something out of nothing, that definitely started from those youth theatre workshops. Just feeling inspired and letting your imagination run free”.

As part of their Women’s Series, New Wave Mag asked the brilliant and inspiring Kali Claire about her experiences in music and plans going forward. As I said, next year is going to be a massive year for her but, since last year, she has been busy working and creating some amazing music:

“How would you describe your music/sound?

“I would say my sound was a mismatch of everything I listened to growing up and listen to now Rnb, but pop but singer songwriter.”

What's been the biggest influence on your music  and yourself as a woman?

“Being in the music industry. Surprisingly being around men 24/7 makes me most aware that I’m a woman.”

What has had the largest contribution in your life towards your music?

“I do this thing where I freestyle melodies, so off the top of my head. I feel like everything in my being contributes, because nothing is premeditated- it’s what’s already in me.”

Have you found it harder to find your voice as a woman in the music industry and what are some of the challenges you feel you've overcome?

“Yeah, but I’m the type of person who always has to be right .So It pushes me to prove everyone wrong. That I can produce, that I can engineer, that I can write my own songs.”

 PHOTO CREDIT: Joseph Clarke

What advice would you give a younger woman, that perhaps you knew when starting out in music?

“ Be true to you, all the time. Then you won’t regret much.”

What facilities/types of support are needed for more representation for women in music?

“Studios! We need studios where young women can be introduced to the equipment, how it works, how sessions work. Just getting more girls in more rooms!”

What are some women that inspire you in life? Can be within music or out of it

“Every woman inspires me, every person intact. Life is tough and definitely much harder over the lockdowns.”

Do you feel there are enough support networks for women in music?

“Male or female there’s not enough support for creatives. The industry revolves around the creation, but the creatives are way too often not getting what they need or deserve.

What can we expect from Kali Claire in the future?

“In the very near future I’m going to be releasing a lot more music, and honestly I’m just excited”.

I would urge everyone to check out the phenomenal Kali Claire. Music Week featured her as part of their The Legacy Series: Gifted & Black - Women In Music x YouTube present feature. It is clear that she is someone who is going to blow up next year and take her wonderful music and production talent around the world. She is attracting the attention of some major names in music to boot:

“It looks like 2022 has been a busy year for you in terms of making music. What can you tell us about how your new project is shaping up? 

“Since the start of the year I've just been writing. I've had time to think, I’ve had time to get out all the stuff that I want to say and just refine. Because I've been travelling this year, I've been able to work with so many different people. I love collaborating because it brings out a different side of me. [I’ve been] finding a sound that I want to focus on and making sure that every song has a story behind it – whether it’s whoever I made it with, or where I've made it, or just the actual meaning of the song. I'm liking it. It's kind of sad, dance alone in your room [music], but you could also be out on a walk, or on a late-night drive.”

You went to Diddy’s songwriting camp and met him – how was that?

“It was like a movie. I went to Los Angeles for a couple of days and there were so many different creatives solely there to work on his project, and the energy was amazing. I met Jermaine Dupri, Ty Dolla $ign and an amazing producer who did loads of stuff for [Kanye West and Jay-Z’s] Watch The Throne album. I don't really get starstruck but seeing people in the studio, doing what they've made a name for and gained respect for? That’s the part that makes me starstruck.”

And the Alicia Keys project you worked on?

“That was a couple years ago. I wrote at a Rihanna writing camp in 2018, or 2019. P2J called and invited me, he's just an amazing person and creative. Whenever I'm in the room, I’m grateful to be there. I never pass up on opportunities. I got there, they had already started an idea, I jumped on the mic, and we came up with Wasted Energy – and that was on Alicia Keys’ album [2020’s Alicia]. I feel like when you have a good song it travels to wherever it’s supposed to be or to whoever’s ears need to hear it.”

What’s your personal experience of the music industry been like? What’s been the biggest challenge?

“From a very early age, I was going to workshops and getting advice from people in the industry. I worked a lot at Hackney Empire, I did a project with Levi's and Skepta. I guess I was networking but didn't really know it at the time. I feel like the music is what ties everyone together – I feel so safe in a studio, or in a session, or when I'm collaborating with another creative. [The challenge is] having to know everything: making sure you're not being taken for a fool, that you're on top of what you're doing, making sure your songs are registered, that you're signed up to PRS and PPL. If you're going on a tour [you need to make sure that] you're registering where you played, if you're shooting a video it’s knowing what you need for that, and also finding people to mix and master and do artwork. And, as a songwriter, being able to figure out percentages with other people – the business, general communication and emails. There's a lot that is not music in the music industry, I feel like that’s my biggest challenge.”

You were breaking before Covid hit – you had celebrated releases, features, a support slot with Mabel. I know the pandemic affected all artists, but for new acts that threat seemed greater. How was it for you?

“It was really crazy because it was the polar opposite of what I’d just been experiencing. I literally came off a two-and-a-half-month-long tour with Mabel [in the] UK and Europe, and then a week after everyone was in lockdown. I went from meeting new people every day and travelling everywhere to staying at home. Mentally, it was crazy. Musically it didn't hinder me because I engineer myself. I built a little home studio to invest in myself when I first signed my publishing deal with Tinie Tempah in 2017, and it really came to [good] use in lockdown. I made a whole project via email, Dropbox and Google Drive links and recorded songs at home here, then sent them off for mixing. There's this crazy website where you can hear exactly what someone else is hearing on their end, so we mixed online, and I dropped a lockdown project. I felt like everyone was figuring it out at the same time. Some artists pushed releases back, but I didn't stop making music, so I didn't want to stop releasing music. I was in a creative space.”

You're still at the start of your career, but how do you want to impact the music industry?

“I want to make workshops available for anyone who wants to go, whether you're rich, poor, pink, black or white. My mum put me through drama school with the help of my auntie, I wouldn't have been able to experience something like that if they hadn't sacrificed. I'm really passionate about women in music because the facts and figures are just shocking to me – there's less than 5% female engineers in the whole of this industry. I learned to engineer by myself out of necessity, because I didn't have money to pay for studio time by the hour. No one really tells you how. I wouldn't say it's easy, but it's not super hard. If you put your mind to it, anyone could learn.”

Finally, what are your biggest ambitions as an artist? 

“One of my biggest ambitions is to go on some sort of global tour, experience the world and create music on the journey. And do a session in every city that I visit because everywhere is so different in the way they create music. My biggest goal as an artist would be a debut album, it’s a big thing for me. [I’d love to] be able to work with all the producers, writers, instrumentalists, and the best engineers that I've met along the way, and all collaborate with no ego in one space, that would be amazing”.

One of the finest producers and artists round, I have been a fan of Kali Claire for a little while now. I am not sure whether this feature can do her full justice! Check her music out via Spotify and YouTube. I will keep a watchful eye out, as Kali Claire is going to go stratospheric. There is no doubting the fact that she is…

A true sensation.

______________

Follow Kali Claire

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/_kaliclaire/

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/_kaliclaire

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/21S3j7WjnZmXyhXrNif84x

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBGUMajqrErA0jGdRNywQQA

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/people/Kali-Claire/100057912076446/

FEATURE: Let It Be: Kate Bush and Paul McCartney: Will the Two Ever Collaborate?

FEATURE:

 

 

Let It Be

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with Paul McCartney in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix

Kate Bush and Paul McCartney: Will the Two Ever Collaborate?

__________

THROUGH November and December…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with Paul and Linda McCartney, Victor Spinetti, Phil Lynott and Leo Nocentelli

I am doing a selection of Kate Bush features. Of course, with it being Christmas next month, there will be an assortment of snow-tinged pieces. I am keen to write about her 1979 Christmas Special. Also, because 2022 has been so successful and busy regarding all things Kate Bush, there will be a round-up of all the news and happenings. I will also look ahead to 2023. Also, because there is a new Kate Bush book out by Tom Doyle, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush, then there will be a few more articles based on that book and things that have caught my eye. I have spent a lot of time last month and this celebrating album anniversaries. A few of Bush’s albums have anniversaries this month – 50 Words for Snow is eleven later this month (21st) -, so that has taken up a lot of my time. Rather than focus on an album or a song, I wanted to use this feature to return to a subject that I have touched on before. In a previous feature, I looked at the link between Kate Bush and The Beatles. There are parallels that can be drawn for sure. Although the acts are very different, Bush definitely loved The Beatles and drew inspiration from them. I am going to end with a dream collaboration. I love the fact that, early in her career, Bush did cover The Beatles.

She’s Leaving Home, Let It Be, The Long and Winding Road and Come Together were songs that she sung at various point. She also mentioned in an interview that Magical Mystery Tour was one of her favourite albums. That 1967 album is fifty-five this month (it was released in the U.S. in November 1967 and as a double E.P. in the U.K. the month after), and it got me thinking about Paul McCartney. I mused before how McCartney seems like the one Beatle that Bush identified with the most. In some ways, you could say she has traits of each member, and that George Harrison might be closer to her personality – in terms of the spirituality and his musical sensibilities. In terms of songwriting and sound, I feel The Beatles did play a vital role; McCartney seemed to spark something in her. Consider The Beatle songs Bush has covered, and McCartney was lead songwriter on most of them. I feel Magical Mystery Tour is a McCartney-led album – he came up with the concept for the film and, when it came to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), he was the driving force there -, and a sense of silliness and the whimsical comes through in that album and a lot of Bush’s work. Aside from at an award ceremony in 1980, Bush met Paul McCartney on a few occasions. Abbey Road Studios connected both of them. The Beatles pretty much lived in those studios, and McCartney recorded there a bit post-Beatles. Bush also recorded there. I think one of the big reasons for that is Paul McCartney.

Last year, both led the call for streaming payments and laws to change, so there is a connection and respect between them. There is a song on a 1975 Wings album, Venus and Mars, that is called Spirits of Ancient Egypt. I wonder whether Bush got any impetus from that title for her song, Egypt (for her 1980 album, Never for Ever). I can imagine Bush was a bigger Beatles fan, but she would have also followed McCartney through Wings and his solo career. This unearthed and minor chapter in Bush’s career fascinates me! It is obvious that there was a lot of different music in the Bush household when the songwriter was very young. Bush was about four or five when The Beatles broke through but, in 1967, I think this was a year when McCartney’s role in The Beatles started to make an impression. By the time Let It Be came out in 1970, Bush was eleven. It is a formative age when it comes to musical digestion and fascination. She could not have helped but be swept up in what was happening with The Beatles and the impact they were having. Whereas one cannot draw too many parallels between the solo careers of Kate Bush and Paul McCartney, I like the fact that the two have met and no doubt swapped stories and conversations. It is telling that, in 1977 and 1978 when Bush was starting out, she did perform some McCartney-penned Beatles songs.

There are a few Kate Bush songs and ideas that I can trace back to Wings and Paul McCartney, whether it is the sound and inspiration or the title. I like the fact that both, in their solo careers, had similar approaches. Whilst both have collaborated with other musicians across various studios, each have also recorded at home and had this D.I.Y. approach. I sort of think about McCartney recording McCartney II (1980) and doing everything himself. A strange and wonderful album that is quite experimental and underrated, I think about Bush’s The Dreaming of 1982. Here, although there were other musicians, Bush took control and it is also quite an experimental and out-there album. I have been thinking about the medley on The Beatles Abbey Road – which McCartney led and wrote most of – and the song suite on Hounds of Love, The Ninth Wave. Although not a medley, that idea of a suite and flow of songs I think had an impression on Bush. There is something about the working ethics and ambitions that ties the two together. In terms of musical exploration and the span into different genres, you know that Bush has been influenced by McCartney. Indeed, I am sure that it works the other way around: McCartney would surely have been influenced by Bush and albums like Hounds of Love (1985) and Aerial (2005).

This all takes me to something I have been thinking about for a while. Bush has collaborated with musical legends like Prince and Elton John, but never Paul McCartney. I think about an album like McCartney III (2020) and it seems like an album Bush might make today. In the sense of being holed up alone and doing something quite personal and without too much distraction. That farm and barn connection. Bush’s family lived at East Wickham Farm, and Bush built her own studio there for Hounds of Love. McCartney recorded at his Scottish farm for Ram (1971), and at Hogg Hill Mill, Icklesham for McCartney III. That combination of having family around but having this dedicated and rural recording space is another connection between the two. I would love to think that these two music icons would record together. To think of them either recording at McCartney’s space in East Sussex or at Bush’s home studio would be magnificent. Perhaps that common connection of Abbey Road Studios? Going back to song connections, and McCartney wrote Hands of Love as part of a medley for Wings’ Red Rose Speedway (1973). Did Bush think of that song when writing Hounds of Love?! I think that the two would be perfectly blended. Maybe McCartney is thinking of a studio album to follow McCartney III. Many hope Bush will release her first new studio album since 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. Paul McCartney and Wings released the iconic Wonderful Christmastime in 1979. Bush performed December Will Be Magic Again during her 1979 Christmas special and released it as a single in November 1980.

The notion of the two of them releasing a Christmas song. They have appeared on record together. In 1987, for the Ferry Aid charity single, Let It Be was performed by a cast of musicians including Paul McCartney and Kate Bush. I think the two would be so electric in the studio together. Some of the collaborations between Bush and other artists have not quite resulted in terrific songs, but I feel there is a natural chemistry and love between her and Paul McCartney that fans would love to see. Also, as a sidenote, Bush is lending her voice and memories to a forthcoming documentary about Abbey Road Studios, If These Walls Could Sing. Made by Paul McCartney’s daughter Mary, it is another connection between Bush, Paul McCartney, and Abbey Road Studios. There is a lot of connected and disconnected history and similarities that I think should be explored. The two are entering stages of their careers where they are perhaps making more introspective or ‘calmer’ music. Though McCartney III has some edgier moments, I feel Bush and McCartney’s music has a similar wavelength. To hear them sing together over something conceptual or calming. Maybe a beats-driven song or something else. The possibilities are tantalising! I have been thinking about the connection and relationship between Paul McCartney and Kate Bush and feeling the two not recording together for a studio album track is a missed opportunity. Though neither have made plans or announcements for a new album, let’s hope that if they do, that they will come together. Won’t you please, please, please…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

LET it be.

FEATURE: Voodoo Child: The Iconic Jimi Hendrix at Eighty: His Greatest Tracks

FEATURE:

 

 

Voodoo Child

The Iconic Jimi Hendrix at Eighty: His Greatest Tracks

__________

I think I have…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Roger-Viollet

used this biography before from AllMusic for a previous feature about Jimi Hendrix. I am reusing this excellent insight as, on 27th November, it would have been his eightieth birthday. One of the most iconic guitarist and musicians of any generation, he left behind so much history, genius and timeless music during his brief life and career. I am going to mark his upcoming eightieth birthday with a playlist with his best cuts from Jimi Hendrix/Band of Gypsys and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. One of the greatest ever instrumentalists and most influential musicians, here is more about the man born Johnny Allen Hendrix:

“In his brief four-year reign as a superstar, Jimi Hendrix expanded the vocabulary of the electric rock guitar more than anyone before or since. Hendrix was a master at coaxing all manner of unforeseen sonics from his instrument, often with innovative amplification experiments that produced astral-quality feedback and roaring distortion. His frequent hurricane blasts of noise and dazzling showmanship -- he could and would play behind his back and with his teeth, and set his guitar on fire -- have sometimes obscured his considerable gifts as a songwriter, singer, and master of a gamut of blues, R&B, and rock styles.

When Hendrix became an international superstar in 1967, it seemed as if he'd dropped out of a Martian spaceship, but in fact he'd served his apprenticeship in numerous R&B acts on the chitlin circuit. During the early and mid-'60s, he worked with such R&B/soul greats as Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, and King Curtis as a backup guitarist. Occasionally, he recorded as a sessionman (the Isley Brothers' 1964 single "Testify" is the only one of these early tracks that offers even a glimpse of his future genius). For the most part, his bosses didn't appreciate his show-stealing showmanship, and Hendrix was straitjacketed by sideman roles that didn't allow him to develop as a soloist. The logical step was for Hendrix to go out on his own, which he did in New York in the mid-'60s, playing with various musicians in local clubs, and joining white blues-rock singer John Hammond, Jr.'s band for a while.

It was in a New York club that Hendrix was spotted by Animals bassist Chas Chandler. The first lineup of the Animals was about to split, and Chandler, looking to move into management, convinced Hendrix to move to London and record as a solo act in England. There a group was built around Jimi -- featuring Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass -- that was dubbed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The trio became stars with astonishing speed in the U.K., where "Hey Joe," "Purple Haze," and "The Wind Cries Mary" all made the Top Ten in the first half of 1967. These tracks were also featured on their debut album, Are You Experienced?, a psychedelic masterwork that became a huge hit in the U.S. after Hendrix created a sensation at the Monterey Pop Festival in June of 1967.

Are You Experienced? was an astonishing debut, particularly from a young R&B veteran who had rarely sung, and apparently never written his own material before the Experience formed. What caught most people's attention at first was his virtuosic guitar playing, which employed an arsenal of devices, including wah-wah pedals, buzzing feedback solos, crunching, distorted riffs, and lightning-quick liquid runs up and down the scales. Hendrix was also a first-rate songwriter, melding cosmic imagery with some surprisingly pop-savvy hooks and tender sentiments. Are You Experienced? was psychedelia at its most eclectic, synthesizing mod pop, soul, R&B, Dylan, and the electric guitar innovations of British pioneers like Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, and Eric Clapton.

Amazingly, Hendrix would only record three fully conceived studio albums in his lifetime. Axis: Bold as Love and the double-LP Electric Ladyland were more diffuse and experimental than Are You Experienced? On Electric Ladyland in particular, Hendrix pioneered the use of the studio itself as a recording instrument, manipulating electronics and devising overdub techniques (with the help of engineer Eddie Kramer in particular) to plot uncharted sonic territory.

The final two years of Hendrix's life were turbulent ones musically, financially, and personally. He was embroiled in enough complicated management and record company disputes (some dating from ill-advised contracts he'd signed before the Experience formed) to keep the lawyers busy for years. He disbanded the Experience in 1969, forming Band of Gypsies with drummer Buddy Miles and bassist Billy Cox to pursue funkier directions. He closed Woodstock with a sprawling, shaky set, redeemed by his famous machine-gun interpretation of "The Star Spangled Banner." The rhythm section of Mitchell and Redding were underrated keys to Jimi's best work, and Band of Gypsies ultimately couldn't measure up to the same standard, although Hendrix did record an erratic live album with them. In early 1970, the Experience re-formed and disbanded again shortly afterward. At the same time, Hendrix felt torn in many directions by various fellow musicians, record company expectations, and management, all of whom had their own ideas of what Hendrix should be doing. Almost two years since Electric Ladyland, a new studio album had yet to appear, although Hendrix was recording constantly during that period.

While outside parties did contribute to bogging down Hendrix's studio work, it also seems likely that Hendrix himself was partly responsible for the stalemate, unable to form a permanent lineup of musicians, unable to decide what musical direction to pursue, unable to bring himself to complete another album despite endless jamming. A few months into 1970, Mitchell -- Hendrix's most valuable musical collaborator -- came back into the fold, replacing Miles in the drum chair, although Cox stayed in place. It was this trio that toured the world during Hendrix's final months. With them, and many guest musicians, he had been working intermittently on a new album, tentatively titled First Ray of the New Rising Sun, when he died in London on September 18, 1970, from a drug-related overdose.

Hendrix recorded a massive amount of unreleased studio material during his lifetime. Much of this (as well as entire live concerts) was issued posthumously; several of the live concerts were excellent, but the studio tapes have been the focus of enormous controversy for over 20 years. These initially came out in haphazard drabs and drubs (the first, The Cry of Love, was easily the most outstanding of the lot). In the mid-'70s, producer Alan Douglas took control of these projects, overdubbing many of Hendrix's tapes with additional parts by studio musicians. In the eyes of many Hendrix fans, this was sacrilege, destroying the integrity of the work of a musician known to exercise meticulous care over the final production of his studio recordings. Even as late as 1995, Douglas was having ex-Knack drummer Bruce Gary record new parts for the compilation Voodoo Soup. After a lengthy legal dispute, the rights to Hendrix's estate, including all of his recordings, returned to Al Hendrix, the guitarist's father, in July of 1995.

With the help of Jimi's step-sister Janie, Al set up Experience Hendrix to put Jimi's legacy in order. They began by hiring John McDermott and Jimi's original engineer, Eddie Kramer, to oversee the remastering process. They were able to find all the original master tapes, which had never been used for previous CD releases, and in April of 1997, Hendrix's first three albums were reissued with drastically improved sound. Accompanying those reissues was a posthumous compilation album (based on Jimi's handwritten track listings) called First Rays of the New Rising Sun, made up of tracks from the Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge, and War Heroes.

Later in 1997, another compilation called South Saturn Delta showed up, collecting more tracks from posthumous LPs like Crash Landing, War Heroes, and Rainbow Bridge (without the '70s overdubs), along with a handful of never-before-heard material that Chas Chandler had withheld from Alan Douglas for all those years.

More archival material followed. Radio One was basically expanded to the two-disc BBC Sessions (released in 1998), and 1999 saw the release of the full show from Woodstock as well as additional concert recordings from Band of Gypsies shows entitled Live at the Fillmore East. 2000 saw the release of the Jimi Hendrix Experience four-disc box set, which compiled remaining tracks from In the West, Crash Landing, and Rainbow Bridge, along with more rarities and alternates from the Chandler cache.

The family also launched Dagger Records, essentially an authorized bootleg label, to supply hardcore Hendrix fans with material that would be of limited commercial appeal. Dagger released several live concerts (of shows in Oakland, Ottawa, Clark University in Massachusetts, Paris, San Francisco, Woburn in Bedfordshire, and Cologne) and a collection of studio jams and demos called Morning Symphony Ideas.

Mainstream Hendrix reissue activity continued during the 2000s and 2010s, spotlighted by major live albums originally recorded at the Isle of Wight (2002), Berkeley (2003), Monterey (2007), Winterland (2011), and the Miami Pop Festival (2013). In 2010, Sony issued a four-disc set titled West Coast Seattle Boy: The Jimi Hendrix Anthology, which offered a full disc of recordings from Hendrix's time as a backing guitarist.

That same year, Legacy, an imprint of Sony, released Valleys of Neptune. The compilation contained 12 previously unreleased tracks, and was the first of further such releases. In 2013, a second compilation appeared. People, Hell and Angels again contained 12 never-before-released songs, which in this case were recorded while Hendrix was working on the follow-up to Electric Ladyland. The final release in this series was put out in 2018, and its ten unreleased tracks also featured guest appearances from Stephen Stills and Johnny Winter”.

To mark Jimi Hendrix’s eightieth birthday on 27th November, below are some of his finest songs and performances. A masterful and virtuosic guitar player, and a hugely underrated singer and songwriter, Hendrix’s importance in transforming music and the electric guitar cannot be overstated. We lost him at the tragically young age of twenty-seven - though his legacy will live on forever. Whether you are a huge Hendrix fan or a little less devoted, below are some of the best tracks…

FROM the master.

FEATURE: Inspired By… Part Eighty-Nine: Christina Aguilera

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Bethany Vargas

Part Eighty-Nine: Christina Aguilera

__________

AMONG other reasons…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Coliena Rentmeester

as to why I am including Christina Aguilera in this Inspired By… is the fact that she was a big winner at the Latin Grammys recently. This year’s Aguilera is a Spanish-language album from one of the voices of her generation. The New York-born legend has inspired so many artists through her career. Her eponymous album was released in 1999, and her amazing (if underrated) fourth studio album, Stripped, turned twenty this month. I think that Aguilera is one of the finest artists we have ever seen. I have been checking through the old features from this series, and I can’t believe I have not included Christina Aguilera yet! From her Spanish-language albums to Pop and R&B, Aguilera has released this inspirational music that many other artists have latched onto and followed. I am going to end with a playlist of songs from artists influenced by Aguilera. First, and as I do in this series, AlMlusic provide a biography:

“With her dynamic four-octave vocal range and genre-bending instincts, Christina Aguilera has garnered critical acclaim and chart-success, balancing uplifting ballads with sexually liberated anthems all delivered with her iconic voice. A leader in the parade of Mickey Mouse Club veterans who stormed pop music at the turn of the millennium, Aguilera was the brassy diva of the bunch -- the Rolling Stones to Britney Spears' Beatles, as it were. Initially, it was difficult to see Aguilera outside of the prism of Spears, whose 1999 success launched the new millennium's teen pop boom, but Aguilera's early hits ("Genie in a Bottle," "What a Girl Wants," "Come on Over") more than held their own with "...Baby One More Time," while also revealing a vocalist with considerably more power and range than many of her contemporaries.

Soon, Aguilera distanced herself from the rest of the pack, beginning with her carnal sophomore set, Stripped, a heavy R&B album from 2002 that found its greatest success with the ballad "Beautiful." She may have emphasized her maturation with Stripped singles like "Dirrtty," but by the time of 2006's retro-swing-inspired Back to Basics, it was clear that Aguilera was the most musically ambitious, and reliable, pop diva of the boom. She has continued to push the boundaries of her career, exploring indie electronic sounds on 2010's Bionic, as well as acting and singing alongside Cher in the film Burlesque. She also appeared as a judge on The Voice and even scored a hit alongside her fellow judge Adam Levine with Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger." Through all of these changes, contemporary dance and R&B remains the through-line of her career, as on 2012's Lotus and 2018's

Born on Staten Island on December 18, 1980, Aguilera spent her early childhood in Rochester and Wexford, Pennsylvania, suburban towns just outside of Pittsburgh. At age six, she began performing regularly in local talent shows, working her way up to an appearance on the nationally televised competition Star Search. This was the true beginning of Aguilera's professional career, leading her to joining the Disney Channel's reboot of The Mickey Mouse Club in 1992. Aguilera joined a cast that also featured future stars Britney Spears, Ryan Gosling, Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, and Keri Russell. The New Mickey Mouse Club lasted for two years and after its cancellation, Aguilera began working behind the scenes of the pop industry, cutting a duet with Japanese pop singer Keizo Nakanishi called "All I Wanna Do," then representing the U.S. three years later in the Golden Stag International Festival. Her first big break arrived in 1998, when she recorded "Reflection" for the soundtrack of Disney's Mulan, a performance that led to a contract with RCA Records.

RCA released the album Christina Aguilera late in the summer of 1999, several months after Spears' "...Baby One More Time" began the teen pop boom. Aguilera's debut reached the top of the U.S. charts on the momentum of the number one single "Genie in a Bottle," which was followed in short order by another chart-topper in "What a Girl Wants" (the latter happened to be the first number one of 2000). Aguilera racked up recognition in a number of ways, playing the Super Bowl half-time show and winning the Grammy for Best New Artist, as "Come on Over Baby (All I Want Is You)" gave her a third number one single. Aguilera kept new music flowing, too, releasing the Spanish-language Mi Reflejo -- she didn't speak the language, so she learned the lyrics phonetically -- and My Kind of Christmas by the end of the year, while other labels attempted to cash in on her success via an unauthorized collection of old demos called Just Be Free. She stayed in the spotlight in 2001 via her participation of a remake of Labelle's "Lady Marmalade," the chart-topping hit from the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge that also recruited P!nk, Mya, and Lil' Kim.

When Aguilera resurfaced with new material in 2002, she began using the appellation Xtina, which was not the only "X" on her sophomore effort, Stripped. A carnal collection of risqué R&B largely produced by Scott Storch, Stripped was a defiant break from her teenybopper past, and Aguilera promoted it by flashing lots of skin on the covers of her album, Rolling Stone, and Maxim. Such striking sexuality was evident on Stripped's lead single, the Redman-featuring "Dirrty," but the album's biggest hit was "Beautiful," a Linda Perry-penned ballad that turned into an anthem and peaked at number two on the Top 100.

Aguilera took another left turn for her next album, 2006's Back to Basics. The title suggested something simple but the album was anything but, spilling out over two discs and running the gamut from brassy swing to modern dance. The album topped the Billboard 200 and its lead single, "Ain't No Other Man," was another blockbuster and Grammy winner for Aguilera. Her Back to Basics Tour was also her most ambitious to date. In 2008, she released her first hits collection, Keeps Gettin' Better, which featured two unreleased songs and newly recorded electropop versions of her two biggest singles ("Genie 2.0" and "You Are What You Are [Beautiful]"). The futuristic vibe from those reworkings hinted at the direction of her next effort, which arrived the following year.

After a four-year break, Aguilera returned with her fourth album, Bionic, in the spring of 2010. The electronic-heavy Bionic debuted at three in the U.S. and number one in the U.K., with its first single, "Not Myself Tonight," peaking at 22 on the Billboard charts. The album featured appearances by Nicki Minaj and Peaches, as well as songwriting by M.I.A., Sia, Le Tigre, Ladytron, and Linda Perry. Next up was Burlesque, Aguilera's first starring role on the big screen, which was accompanied by a soundtrack featuring original music by Christina and her co-star Cher.

In the spring of 2011, Aguilera signed onto NBC's televised singing competition The Voice. As one of the four celebrity judges -- the others being Cee Lo Green, Blake Shelton, and Maroon 5's Adam Levine -- Aguilera found herself on a hit show that elevated her profile and gave her another hit single as Levine's duet partner on Maroon 5's 2011 chart-topper "Moves Like Jagger." The Voice retained its popularity in its second season in early 2012, and Aguilera spent much of the year prepping her fifth album, Lotus, which was released in November 2012. Lotus peaked at seven on the Billboard charts; its lead single, "Your Body," peaked at 34 in the Top 40. She scored a hit in late 2013 with A Great Big World's "Say Something." The aching duet topped multiple charts and was certified multi-platinum around the globe.

Aguilera took a leave from The Voice in 2014 and 2015, concentrating on working on her eighth studio album; she also began a recurring role on ABC's prime-time soap Nashville. In 2016, she released "Change" -- a charity single for the families of the victims of a tragic shooting in an Orlando nightclub -- and sang "Telepathy" for Baz Luhrmann's Netflix series The Get Down. In 2018, Aguilera returned with her eighth album, Liberation, which included the single "Accelerate" featuring 2 Chainz, Ty Dolla $ign, and production by Kanye West. The album peaked at number six on the Billboard 200. Also included on the album was the single "Fall in Line" featuring Demi Lovato. With the 2020 release of Disney's live-action version of Mulan, Aguilera revisited the franchise that helped break her career over two decades earlier. In addition to singing the new song "Loyal Brave True" for the film, she released an updated version of "Reflection," which she first sang back in 1998 for the animated version of the movie.

In 2022, Aguilera returned to her roots with the Spanish-language La Fuerza, the first of a trilogy of EPs that included appearances by Ozuna, Becky G, and others. La Tormenta landed in May, just a day before the full-length Aguilera, which came bundled with the third installment of the series La Luz. Nominated for Album of the Year at the 2022 Latin Grammy Awards, the set paid homage to her Latin American heritage, tapping into urbano, cumbia, tango, reggaeton, and more”.

To celebrate and honour one of the greatest Pop artists ever who is an award-winner and philanthropist (Aguilera has frequently donated money to charities and supported various bodies), it is about time that she was included in Inspired By… This is proof that so many other artists owe her a nod of thanks. If it were not for Christina Aguilera, the artists you will hear below would be different, weaker and lacking a certain something! Still going strong and releasing wonderful music, Christina Aguilera will influence artists around the musical globe…

FOR decades more.

FEATURE: Revisiting... Confidence Man - Confident Music for Confident People

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting...

Confidence Man - Confident Music for Confident People

__________

I am a big fan of…

Janet Planet (Grace Stephenson) and Sugar Bones (Aidan Moore). They are the lead duo of the Brisbane band, Confidence Man. I want to come back too their excellent debut Confident Music for Confident People, as their second studio album, TILT, is one of the best of this year. I may well do a feature for this year where I list some of the very best albums. TILT is definitely among them! Confidence Man are touring the U.K. at the moment, and I hope they manage to get home before Christmas! Even if TILT is better-received and a fuller exploration and expansive of Confidence Man’s songwriting – and particularly Janet Planet’s incredible vocals and talents -, Confident Music for Confident People is a terrific work. It did get a lot of positive reviews, but I think that it is still underrated. I feel a lot of critics might upgrade their assessments given the success of the group. There are great interviews from this year, but I am going to come to one from 2018. NME spoke with Janet Planet about the band’s rise and start, in addition to what Confidence Man had planned for 2018:

“You say dorkiness – it seems like your main aim is being really fun. Is that why you’ve had such a fast rise?

Definitely, I think you can just kind of be free. That’s what I’m doing on stage as well, I’m not a professional dancer, I’m not a particularly good dancer, but when I get up on stage I just kind of do my own thing and lay down really hard so the audience feels like they can do the same, and that in itself is the best part about the band for me, just getting up there and everyone thinking that what I’m doing is intentional but actually, like, I’m not very good. People just love that and they find it really freeing. There’s not enough dork in dance music these days, and I think that’s what we bring a bit of.

You were all in different projects and living together when you formed, right?

Reggie, Sugar and I were in another psych-rock band and Clarence was doing his own thing, and the three boys were also in another band together. It was always a bit mishmash of bands, but this one’s the main one now. It’s the funnest one to write with, because we’re all best friends, so the writing process is just us getting drunk and doing stupid shit, and then the live aspect of it is so much fun, just touring with four of your best friends and cutting out all the mediocre people – it’s like the best thing ever.

What was your Glastonbury like?

It was a pretty deep time. I’ve never fallen asleep on the wall before but that happened to me at the airport afterwards. We had our first show at the Crow’s Nest, then William’s Green, then our last was the Rabbit Hole. We played there at like 3am and then straight from there we had to go to Bristol Airport and fly to Amsterdam and drive out to Down The Rabbit Hole Festival and play there at 11pm, so it was awesome – but I was an absolute mess.

The Glastonbury shows were sick. The Crow’s Nest was so hilarious. It’s on a slant and there’s like two of us dancing, I kept falling down, and then our drummer literally fell off the stage, he couldn’t fit, and his entire drumset fell off, people were trying to hold him on, like everyone’s putting hands out to get him back on the stage. I have no idea how King Gizzard would fit on there, but they did it somehow.

Who would you say are your biggest inspirations?

I like a lot of ’90s dance, like Fatboy Slim, Groove Armada, that kind of era. And then obviously the more recent obvious ones like LCD Soundsystem, a lot of Talking Heads, particularly with lyrics – I love David Byrne’s lyrics, he’s fucking awesome. I think what people say when they talk about us is that it’s all a big mush of all these influences, that it’s clear where our references come from. I’m happy with that anyway because creating art and using references is just a really good way of creating something that you like.

Do you think anything on the album is going to surprise people?

Definitely, one song on there is the most different. It was the last one we finished, ‘Out The Window’. With the first record we wanted to create a vision and portray ourselves in a certain way and have all the music going for the same purpose, which was creating what we were. And ‘Out The Window’ was where we’d go with the next record, it has probably a little bit more musical variation. It’s a bit more of a Primal Scream-y kind of vibe, which we love.

You mentioned lyrics there – do you think your personas change the way you write lyrics?

Yeah, in certain songs we actually started writing I wouldn’t know if my character would say that, so we have to keep it within a certain box we’ve created for ourselves, but I think that’s only temporary. Second album, we’re going to have to extend that because there is only so much you can do with that small-minded character. I can’t be ‘Janet’ forever. It’s expanding those characters, changing it up a bit, that’s the plan for the next record”.

Undoubtedly one of 2018’s best debuts and most exhilarating and fresh albums, I feel that people should revisit the brilliant and hugely enjoyable Confidence Man. Confident Music for Confident People is a stormer that everybody needs in their life! In their review, this is what NME had to say:

“Now then: Confidence Man. It’s a sound somewhere between the synth- and cowbell-driven electro-punk abandon of early LCD Soundsystem and Le Tigre, elevated by a sense of Beck’s genre-remixing spirit and Hot Chip’s knack for a hook, drenched in the sweet psych glaze of Jagwar Ma. Let’s not fuck about, there’s no time for that now. This four-piece from down under didn’t come here to be analysed, they didn’t come here to get heavy – they came here to get down.

If you’ve been blessed enough to see the summer’s greatest festival band live, then you’ll be chuffed to hear that their debut ‘Confident Music For Confident People’ is every bit as hedonistic and balls-out daft as the choreographed Eurovison nightmare you’ve witnessed. From opening house banger ‘Try Your Luck’ and the tongue-in-cheek, Right Said Fred brilliance of ‘Don’t You Know I’m In A Band’, Confidence Man set out their manifesto: leave your inhibitions at the door and raise the fucking roof.

“He tries to make me breakfast but I hate bacon and eggs,” mourns singer Janet Planet on the irresistible earworm of ‘Boyfriend (Repeat)’. It would sound dumb if it wasn’t carried off so shamelessly. ‘Catch My Breath’ is the best ‘90s banger that Ibiza hasn’t heard yet, and ‘Bubblegum’ does exactly what it says on the tin. Further surprises come in the form of the Madchester baggy bounce of ‘Out The Window’ and ‘Fascination’, and the devious constant crescendo of devious fucker ‘Better Sit Down Boy’.

It won’t change the world, but it will cheer you up: the comedown never comes. With a Balearic pulse and horizontal attitude throughout, this record is ready-made sunshine – MDMAzing pretension-free fun for the masses. This is the album we need in these hard times, even if we don’t deserve it. Put this record on, dance until sunrise, gurn through Brexit and rave until war is over. Now stop reading. Get the fuck down”.

This feature is dedicated to great albums from the past five years that need fresh examination now or are worth picking up again. This year’s TILT is a magnificent album from a group that are growing in statute and confidence. Their incredible 2018 debut is intoxicating and full of life and colour! I think that Australian artists and groups have an ingredient or extra component that artists from other nations do not. It is hard to explain, but the music of Australia definitely stands out from the pack. Drowned in Sound awarded Confident Music for Confident People 9/10 when they reviewed it:

“Sometimes it only takes one listen to a particular song for it to make an immediate impact. 'Anarchy In The UK', 'I Feel Love', 'Dog Eat Dog', 'You Trip Me Up', 'Pearly Dewdrops Drop', 'You Made Me Realise', 'Motorcycle Emptiness' all fall into that category, and so did 'Boyfriend (Repeat)' the first time I heard it nearly 18 months ago. A booking agent friend played it prior to a Christmas night out insisting both song and band would dominate the following summer's music festivals. With a handful of highly entertaining and totally unforgettable shows at The Great Escape and Glastonbury in the bag, he wasn't far wrong either, and by the close of 2017 Confidence Man had become many people's favourite new band.

Having signed to Heavenly Recordings at the tail end of 2016 only the most obtusely negative soul would bet against them delivering an album that will be held as a standard bearer for the year. It's probably no coincidence that many of the greatest pop records were made in the most adverse of times and Confident Music For Confident People is no different. As a means of escape it's second to none. But as with the best of its kind, it also leaves an impression that's built to last, and more importantly outlast the competition.

They say genius steals whereas talent borrows and while such a lofty appraisal might be slightly premature for a band still in their embryonic phase, Confidence Man take the best bits from some of your favourites and at times, manage to construct something even better. The four-piece - better known by their respective pseudonyms Janet Planet, Sugar Bones, Clarence McGuffie and Reggie Goodchild - have channeled those aforementioned influences and ideas into an album that aims to be this generation's Sound Of Silver or Screamadelica. No, really.

Sure enough, there are reference points galore from the moment 'Try Your Luck' kickstarts the record into a dizzying mix of Peaches style sleaze ("I must confess, I was sleeping with your ex cos I heard he was the best") topped off with beats straight out the DFA stable. Indeed, go through every one of Confident Music For Confident People's eleven tracks and something will appear instantly recognisable. But then that's the whole point. Confidence Man don't aim to reinvent the wheel. Instead they've replaced the spokes and inflated the tyre on the existing one and it works an absolute treat.

The aforementioned 'Boyfriend (Repeat)' bears all the hallmarks of The B-52s, LCD Soundsystem and Deee Lite thrown into a blender and mixed for one of the 21st century's most insatiable musical moments. Imploring all and sundry to "GET DOWN!" to the point where it's now become a catchphrase synonymous with all things Confidence Man. While 'Don't You Know I'm In A Band' is Right Said Fred's 'I'm Too Sexy' for the iPad generation. Sugar Bones taking the lead vocal with a song mocking every self-important "Do you know who I am?" wannabe you've ever met.

'C.O.O.L. Party' celebrates hedonism like The Waitresses celebrate Christmas while 'All The Way' and 'Catch My Breath' take us back to a time when rave culture made it okay to wear oversized hoodies and 40 inch flared jeans with acieeed patches sewed on the pockets. The album's coup de grace belongs to 'Out The Window', a song that encapsulates the highs and lows of an early morning comedown from the night before. Starting off like The Breeders' 'Cannonball', it eventually mellows out into something Andrew Weatherall would undoubtedly be proud to call his own before the enormous "I only want a good time, time to free my mind!" refrain takes it into Screamadelica territory. It's certainly an eye opener for those still unconvinced whether Confidence Man are little more than a novelty act that if anything, elevates the band into learned waters.

'Bubblegum' and 'Better Sit Down Boy' up the pop ante once more, while album closer and live favourite 'Fascination' once more delves into a time when the Hacienda was the central hub for music. Confident Music For Confident People is exactly what it says on the tin. It's also the most unashamedly addictive record you'll hear all year. Get Down!”.

A sensational debut album from a remarkable group led by Janet Planet and Sugar Bones, they are currently wooing the U.K. They have a huge and loving fanbase here, so let’s hope they play again here in 2023. I am not sure when more music is due, but I know Confidence Man are enjoying touring and delivering their music to the fans. If you are a new follower of the mighty Brisbane group then I can thoroughly recommend…

THEIR dazzling delirious and delightful debut.

FEATURE: A Great Stage Return: Darkness Before the Dawn: Kate Bush’s Stunning Live Album at Six

FEATURE:

 

 

A Great Stage Return: Darkness Before the Dawn

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush was suspended for six hours in a tank of water at Pinewood Studios filming visuals for And Dream of Sheep on The Ninth Wave

Kate Bush’s Stunning Live Album at Six

__________

IN spite of there being some bootlegs…

available, the official release of Before the Dawn captures three acts of live perfection from Kate Bush (or The KT Bush Fellowship to be more precise) in Hammersmith in 2014. I know that there are also some low-quality videos fans took during one of the twenty-two nights at the Eventim Apollo. In terms of official and authorised output, the live album is the thing we have. There has not been any news regarding any DVD release. I don’t think there will be. As the Before the Dawn live album was released on 25th November, 2016, I wanted to mark its sixth anniversary. It is not for a while, but I think that people should be aware of it. The latest album in Bush’s discography, you can get the vinyl here. I have written about the residency itself, and I will do so again next year. As I did not get to see Before the Dawn, the live album is my window into what must have been such a wonderfully moving experience! As I did with my previous feature about the album, I will bring in a review. Apologies for repeating anything from that previous piece, but I want to end with an angle around Bush as an innovator in terms of her live work. To start, Kate Bush’s official website says this about the remarkable Before the Dawn:

“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”.

I am not going to include them here, but Bush did give some interviews and press around the live album, where she talked about her nerves returning to the stage. The Independent have an interview, whereas The New York Times have one here. She had performed various live performances since 1979, but that year was when she delivered her first live spectacle: the awesome and groundbreaking The Tour of Life. Thirty-five years after Bush helped produce one of the more remarkable and important debut live tours in history, she returned to the same venue that she performed on the final night of The Tour of Life’s run. It is interesting reading the linear notes to Before the Dawn and hearing Bush’s feelings about the show:

“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)”.

I will come to talk about The Ninth Wave and that coming to the stage. Given the fact the residency was so celebrated and sold-out, the reviews for the live album were going to be pretty good. That is not always the case. If the sound is mixed wrong or there is something out of place, it can ruin a live album. It is not a case of grabbing recordings from one of the nights and leaving it there! Bush herself produced the live album and took a lot of care to ensure that it was as good as it could be. I remember buying Before the Dawn and being blown away by the sound and atmosphere. Such a beautifully mixed and produced album, you are transported to Hammersmith and imagine yourself in the audience! This is what Consequence said in their review of the mesmeric Before the Dawn album:

“When we think of musicians, fear isn’t usually the first emotion that comes to mind. Even when the stakes are high — say, the first run of shows in nearly four decades — audiences usually assume artists will still have a cool, controlled demeanor. Kate Bush, despite the absolute wealth of accomplishments she has secured over her decades of musicianship, however, felt deep fear.  Her surprise reappearance on the live circuit caught many off guard; perhaps, even herself. In a recent interview with BBC 6, Bush admitted that calming her nerves proved to be a challenge every single night of the tour. Nevertheless, in the grand span of her career, fear has always been the least of her concerns.

As a woman struggling to make her mark in an industry controlled by men, Bush’s journey was never easy. Still, she was a force to be reckoned with, and her whip-smart intelligence, passion, innovation, and creative genius have ensured her a spot in Britain’s cultural pantheon. The tour that spawned her new live album, Before the Dawn, then, was one of the last hurdles Bush had to overcome. She had not toured at all since “The Tour of Life” in 1979, when Bush pushed herself to the point of exhaustion. The stress of bringing together a theatrical production of that scale, coupled with the death of a crew member midway through, would prove to be too much. While a handful of false starts and rumors persisted throughout the years, nothing would materialize until 2014’s “Before the Dawn”, and with it a string of twenty-two shows.

Beyond that engaging backstory, Before the Dawn remains fascinating despite a lack of focus on Bush’s greatest hits. “Hounds of Love” and “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” are relegated to the first of three discs, rather than acting as the thunderous ending that they could have been. While “Cloudbusting” acts as an appropriate finale, the show’s emphasis is firmly placed on two of Bush’s more experimental and ambitious works: “The Ninth Wave” (side two of Hounds of Love) and “A Sky of Honey” (side two of Aerial). That means there is no “Wow”, no “The Man With the Child in His Eyes”, and sadly no “Wuthering Heights”.

Bush, as always, never takes the easy way out. Much like “The Tour of Life”, the “Before the Dawn” tour is an amalgamation of concert, theater, and dance; without that multimedia extravaganza, the resulting album is a little awkward. Throughout “The Ninth Wave” and “A Sky of Honey”, extended versions of songs carry along a plot and dialogue that, without any visuals, sometimes lack for impact.

While “The Ninth Wave” was conceived with a narrative in mind, the subtlety of its studio counterpart’s story made it all gel as a listening experience. “Waking the Witch” still crackles with energy, but the additional two minutes of dialogue add little to the song. Dialogue-only tracks, such as “The Astronomer’s Call” and “Watching Them Without Her”, are interesting distractions that are safe to skip upon a second listen.

The transition from stage to disc is a bit smoother for “A Sky of Honey”, perhaps due to the fact that it was presented as one, extended piece of music on the studio album. While Bush’s songwriting isn’t as direct or attention-grabbing as it in “The Ninth Wave”, the simpler narrative of “A Sky of Honey” solidifies quickly and allows Bush to stretch out into her more atmospheric tendencies. The story revolves around an outdoor summer adventure, and its charming to hear Bush chirp with the birds in “Aerial Tal” and revel along with a jubilant crowd at the ending jig of “Sunset”.

Of course, this would all be for naught if the main attraction wasn’t up to par — but despite the time away, Bush still sounds absolutely astounding. A full 31 years after releasing Hounds of Love and her vocals still tug and tear at the heartstrings. It’s a glorious display of passion empowered by a tight and focused band. (The album’s press release proudly proclaims that “nothing on the record was re-recorded or overdubbed.”) While some of the heavier ’80s guitar crunch may sound a bit silly and outdated, Bush’s complex arrangements and knack for implementing uncommon, international instruments keep things sounding fresh and relevant.

With her usual keen eye for storytelling, a coda of “Among Angels” and a triumphant closing “Cloudbursting” act as a magnificent link between “The Ninth Wave” and “A Sky of Honey” — as well as tying up Before the Dawn rather nicely. Despite the 20-year difference between the two medleys, Bush’s overarching vision is all the more apparent in this grand merging.

While it’s tempting to look at this as an endpoint — a final and well-deserved victory lap — Bush has described this album as “a rather big comma.” This isn’t the end, apparently, and nor should it be. If anything, Before the Dawn is living, breathing proof that Bush still has the creative prowess and unique sensibilities that made her a superstar in the first place. Like most live albums, this is not essential listening for new or casual fans. However, for dedicated fans, both those who could and could not attend the run of shows, it is a reminder of the still very potent lust for life that Bush has always exhibited in her music, art, and personality. It’s a reminder that fear can be conquered in the most ambitious and uplifting way, that fear does not define who we are”.

Some reviewers noted how, if Bush had not performed the suite from Aerial, A Sky of Honey, she could have put some more hits in the mix. One of the reasons for Bush performing that suite was so that it could pair with Hounds of Love’s, The Ninth Wave. The Tour of Life was a brilliant event, as it combined songs from her first two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart (1978). In fact, one of the alternate names is The Lionheart Tour. A lot of the brilliance came from the staging and the combination of mime, theatre and different artforms into a live show. Rather than it being conventional and rather static, there is so much movement and sense of concept and cinema throughout. One of the great losses is the fact Bush had not yet brought the mighty The Ninth Wave to the stage. That changed in 2014. When it comes to live innovation, the staging and execution of The Ninth Wave takes some beating. As such an important and loved aspect of Hounds of Love, getting the visuals and story right was a must. With Astronomer’s Call opening the suite, and ending on The Morning Fog, Bush’s 1985 odyssey was recreated for twenty-two nights. If you do not know the story of The Ninth Wave, it involves a woman adrift at sea in need of rescue. She slips in and out of dreams and nightmares.

She loses hope and then regains it. The suggestion is she makes it out though, if you read between the lines, it seems more likely that she did not make it out – and any suggestion of rescue was a dream or her looking on from the skies. In the stage version, Bush did make it out and to safety. The thrill of seeing her winched from the water must have been otherworldly for old and new fans. That said, as Bush herself said, what we see filmed is real. That would be And Dream of Sheep. Everything that is on stage is a dream. It makes me wonder whether, again, what was on stage was part of a dream - and Bush’s heroine ever actually made it out. It is such an intriguing and inscrutable scenario. I think Kate Bush would like to say that everything worked out (to please fans who saw her perform), but I think something darker and less hopeful is the actual reality! Few people who know and love Hounds of Love would ever think they’d get to see its creator bring its suite to life on stage! Of course, other songs from Hounds of Love are included in Before the Dawn. I think The Ninth Wave was one of the major reasons why Bush did come back to the stage. On 25th November, its live album turns six. Aside from remastering her studio albums in 2018, Before the Dawn is the latest album from Kate Bush. I guess the future is open, so you can never say what Bush will do. I do love that she came to the stage and gave fans such a phenomenal show! The live album is absolutely wonderful to hear. It makes me wonder whether we will ever get a live album of The Tour of Life. Maybe not. Back in 2014, before going on stage for that first date of Before the Dawn on 26th August. One can imagine how Bush felt! The live album did relatively well internationally. Except for the U.S. (where it charted very low), it made the top forty in more than a few countries. Reaching four here in the U.K., Before the Dawn got to number two in New Zealand! One of the all-time great live albums, it is something that…

EVERY Kate Bush fan needs.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Jade Novah

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Jade Novah

__________

I would love to see and read…

more interviews with the remarkable Jade Novah. A sensational songwriter-singer from Ohio, she may not be known to some people. That is why I want to put the spotlight on her. This feature is designed to highlight rising talent and artists established that may not be in everyone’s consciousness. In the case of Jade Novah, she is definitely established, and yet I think her best days are ahead of her. A wonderous musical force with a voice like no other, she is someone that I want people to know more about. Her recent E.P.,  Moon In Pisces, was released back in August. It is a sensational work! I will finish off with an interview related to that and based around it. There was a lot of anticipation around that E.P. I wonder what Novah has in store for 2023. Seeing her in the U.K. would be a real treat! I know she has some U.S. dates at the moment. There will definitely be a third studio album at some point. Her remarkable 2018 debut, All Blue, was followed by 2020’s Stages. The latter album was released at a time when there was change in the world. The pandemic meant it was not possible to tour widely, and it must have been an odd time. It is a staggering album from an artist who keeps growing stronger. I will come to a 2020 with her. First, and if you do not know about Jade Novah, AllMusic have some biography about the truly sensational and captivating artist:

“Versatile contemporary R&B singer and songwriter Lindsay Fields combines her love of both music and acting under the alias Jade Novah. After working as a backup singer and a songwriter-for-hire, she made her recording debut as Novah with the Shades of Jade mixtape in 2012. She is also known for her musical sketch comedy videos and her fully produced cover videos, including a version of Rihanna's "Diamonds" that got over ten million views on social media. Novah's first official album, All Blue, saw release in 2018. Her 2022 EP Moon in Pieces included a duet with Kenyon Dixon.

Born Lindsay Fields in Cleveland, Ohio, Novah was influenced by her father's love of rock music and her mother's affection for musical theater. She sang in church from a young age, eventually moving on to female vocal groups. After a random meeting, Missy Elliott flew her to Miami to sing backup on her 2003 album This Is Not a Test! Later, Fields earned a spot as a backing singer on tour for the Tyler Perry show Madea's Big Happy Family. Deciding to focus on songwriting, she began attending writing camps while networking as a songwriter in New York and L.A. She eventually landed a publishing deal, and wrote songs for the likes of Mya, Melanie Fiona, and Christina Milian as part of the writing group the PenUp Dolls.

Fields returned to singing in 2012, and adopted the pseudonym Jade Novah before releasing the Shades of Jade mixtape later that year. In the meantime, she garnered attention for both a sketch parody of Beyoncé and several cover videos, culminating in millions of online views for her versions of the Rihanna hits "Stay" and "Diamonds" in 2013.

Over the next few years, Fields continued to find work as a songwriter and touring vocalist (Rihanna, Lady Gaga), all the while continuing to work on her own music. More videos appeared on her video channel, including a parody ad for a Christmas album that saw her impersonating Beyoncé, Erykah Badu, Shakira, and others. Fields and her husband, singer/musician Devin Johnson, teamed up on a separate series of covers in 2017 that spanned such well-known artists as Kendrick Lamar, Whitney Houston, and Ed Sheeran. Jade Novah's official debut album, All Blue, followed in mid-2018 on Let There Be Art/Empire. That year, she appeared as a vocal coach on the Fox series The Four: Battle for Stardom, and in 2019, she was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding New Artist.

Novah's second full-length, Stages, appeared on Let There Be Art in 2020. It featured collaborations with Eric Bellinger and Jared Brady. She returned in 2022 with an EP titled Moon in Pieces. The six-track set included the song "Rollercoaster" featuring Kenyon Dixon”.

Grammy chatted with Jade Novah back in 2020. Whilst All Blue was a solid and original debut, there was something even more amazing about 2020’s Stages! It is an album that took her to an even wider audience. I have been playing the album a lot the past couple of weeks, in addition to her new E.P. Jade Novah is one of the best artists out there without a shadow of a doubt:

“Following the release of her debut offering All Blue, which focused on the multi-faceted artist grounding herself in positivity and elevation, Novah’s life as a singer/songwriter, comedian and social influencer took a complete turn. Recognized by both fans and critics alike, All Blue is one of the most lyrically and vocally focused R&B debuts in recent memory. The project not only helped launch Novah into ventures as a voice actor work and a hosting gig at an Atlanta-based morning radio show, but it also earned her a nomination for the Outstanding New Artist NAACP Image Award last year.

Where All Blue did well to create the colorful foundations of Novah's sound, her sophomore Stages follows in even more evolved fashion. Though, as she notes, the album is not necessarily a sonic departure from her previous release, Stages brings new vigor and intensity to the very aspects of Novah's musical charisma and allegiance to touchstone R&B and hip-hop.

For Novah, Stages represents vulnerability on a completely new level. The project is anchored in genuine emotion that shines through songs written and performed with relatability and authenticity. Inspired by her own life's journey, each song takes on a character and narrative of its own to create an intimate mosaic of personal growth and creative progression.

Songs like lead single "Somebody Son" and "Lay It Down" tout soul and airiness against Novah's silky vocals, while others like "Lifestyle" see Jade opting for heavier hip-hop sensibility, floating over 808s and trap-leaning beats with relative ease.

On the album's opener "Stages," Novah sings of past issues and experiences: "I had food stamps in my Louis Vuitton, felt like a star but couldn’t keep the lights on." Letting listeners into her world may not always be easy, but it’s clear that Novah has committed to being open and honest in her songs for the sake of connecting.

Following the album’s release, the Recording Academy caught up with Novah to discuss the inspirations behind her project, the roadblocks of being an independent artist and how being a "Jane of all trades" has helped her evolve musically.

Can you talk a little bit about your new album Stages? How does it compare to your debut All Blue in its nature and what kind of themes were you trying to present with it?

Stages is my second album, my second full project. I don't want to say it's a departure from my last project. My last project was All Blue, and this project Stages I think is just unique in that each song has its own original character. Literally its own persona, its own vibe and on the record, I’m going through all these stages that I've been through as a woman, as a single mother at one point to now being a wife, just that journey from the beginning to this point in my life. I feel like every song has something that everyone can relate to, everyone who’s finding or going through their own stage with this album. I’m pretty excited about it.

You had a pretty big year in 2019 following the release of All Blue, including a nomination for Outstanding New Artist at the NAACP Image Awards. How did all of that feel and where did it put your headspace going into the recording of Stages?

As far as last year, it was definitely a year of transition. In addition to working on the project, I was voicing all these characters for a cartoon called "Sugar & Toys!" and I was hosting a morning show in Atlanta during the day. As you mentioned, some of the awards and accolades that happened in the midst of all those transitional things was just confirmation. You know, it’s one thing to be respected amongst yourself and your peers, but it’s another thing to reach that level of respect in the industry, to even be nominated. Especially, considering the independent artist part. The journey has been that much more difficult kind of doing things on your own and realizing all of the feelings and roadblocks that you have to deal with when you don’t have a machine behind you, so that was sort of a payoff for anyone that was a naysayer or even taking more of the road less traveled to maintain my creative control, my musical integrity and my masters, just thinking of the long run.

Those things starting to happen last year helped inspire this new project because in those roadblocks I realized, okay, there’s more of a story to be told here. I feel like I've lived a million different lives, between the morning show, the cartoon, being a mom, all these hats that I’ve had to wear. I thought that it was important to tell a story as a woman that look, you can do it all. I remember there was a point when I was doing a lot of comedy and then also trying to create music for my first project and be taken seriously for both. In the beginning of my career, people would be like just pick one. "What do you do?" But I feel like in 2020 with social media we’re in such a beautiful space to be able to do multiple things. Stages is not only a musical project for me, but it’s also storytelling, which I love to do, and showcasing all these different factors of myself to say we really can do it all, don’t box me in.

Everything has its own sound too which is super unique because the common thread in the project is really just the fact that it's telling my stories. Sonically it's everything from hip-hop to '90s R&B. It’s really kind of a nod to that. Being in that space of feeling like I can do whatever I want to do, unapologetically.

One thing I noticed about Stages in listening is that it’s lyrically very personal. Why is sharing that way important to you as an artist and how are you able to open up so much through your songwriting?

Well, I think authenticity is really the only way to connect. If you're making art, why wouldn’t you make art that's honest and genuine? I’ve always been an open book and I think that helps to strengthen the bond with my supporters or the people who are connecting with my music. For me to be vulnerable, it allows them to deal with their emotions or reflect on the things that they’ve been through so that when we do it live, it’s that much more impactful.

The last tour that we did for All Blue, it was hearing other people’s stories and them coming up to me and saying "Time" touched me and it made me feel. I'm not 25 anymore either but I still got time. Putting yourself out there makes it comfortable for everybody else to do the same and I think the more vulnerable we all are, the more we can realize that we’re not that different and we're all connected. That's really the most powerful thing I think about being an artist and being a musician, in particular, is being able to tell stories that everyone can really relate to and all just being on the same wavelength.

What were some of your influences and inspirations? You mentioned that the album has a lot of different sonic range, so who were you listening to at the time of recording?

I love 90’s R&B! I feel like everyone in my generation does, but I really really have an appreciation for it. Just because there was integrity with vocals that I don’t know is still as present today. I grew up loving Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey—artists who really understood the importance of vocal excellence.

As far as hip-hop, Left Eye and Missy Elliott. Female MCs who weren't afraid to take risks and who didn't necessarily always lean towards hypersexuality. Which, again, is a beautiful thing and I do touch on it in this album as well, but I could only listen to certain artists when I was younger so I naturally gravitated to the more creative and resourceful hip-hop artists. And also Lil' Kim! I know she got down and dirty but no one was out-rhyming her.

What inspired me to tell those specific stories, I’ve been journaling since I was a little kid. Literally, since I was about eight years old, I have stacks of journals from eight years old all the way until now. I was going through this transitional space in my life and figuring out what are the things that I want to focus on moving forward in my career? Doing a lot of self-reflecting and looking back at old journal entries, looking at the things that I wanted and seeing the things that finally manifested. That realization of "Woah, there was a journey from point A to point B that I don’t think I really highlighted."

All Blue was all about positivity and elevation, which is a beautiful thing but I think that it’s not realistic to promote only that one sort of story since in order to get there, you have to go through some sh*t. Even sometimes when you’re in a space of positivity you backslide or sometimes you have a bad day. Last year was the most up and down year for me that I had ever felt. Especially being an artist on the independent level because for example, I went from my tour and selling out eleven cities, but I was still doing the morning show to make ends meet. That realistic portrayal of what it really means to be an artist inspired this project.

Do you think doing so many things—the morning show, background singing, acting, voiceovers, building and maintaining a social media audience—has helped you evolve in your music?

Yeah, it has. Especially the morning show, because I got to interview my peers and artists that I look up to. Everyone from Lil Nas X to storytellers like Issa Rae, getting a chance to hear their stories. Nick Cannon specifically was one of the most amazing interviews that I did because he is someone that has mastered the art of literally doing it all. He’ll go from hosting shows to putting out a rap song to doing a woke-ass podcast to dominating social media. That definitely inspired me, hearing everyone’s stories and realizing, wow, we have a lot in common. I think that the average person who doesn’t necessarily create also has those experiences too. But yes, doing all of those things has definitely helped.

So what’s next for Jade Novah?

We’re getting ready to take it on the road, the Stages tour. It starts March 20 and we’re doing 17 cities. I’m doing it with my husband Devin Johnson, who also executively produced the album. He's Lizzo’s musical director and he's done so many amazing things. He’s also my music director so I’m really excited to bring that story to life on the stage”.

I am going to round things up soon. Rated R&B talked with Jade Novah earlier this year about the excellent Moon in Pisces E.P. If you have not heard the E.P., then I would very much urge people to hear it now. There is something about the songs and Novah’s vocals that ensure every moment stays with you. Such a heartfelt and stunning singer. I know she has done some acting but, honestly, I think that she would be a very natural actor who could star in a wide range of fascinating projects. Just a bit of a side-note there!

“Jade Novah is many things — a singer, songwriter, a Beyoncé impersonator, but she is decidedly a woman madly in love with her man. The multifaceted entertainer made it hard to deny at Amos’ Southend in Charlotte, North Carolina, as part of her Moon in Pisces Tour.

Novah embarked on a national tour with her husband Devin Johnson as her sidekick, playing drums and keys. He also served as her muse for most of the setlist, relentlessly bouncing between tempos and moods that chronicled aspects of their relationship and where she’s at right now.

The songs on Moon in Pisces, her most recent EP, showcase their durable bond. “It’s a full musical journey where we navigate our ups and downs in love while healing and self-reflecting,” Novah said in a press statement.

Featured songs on Moon in Pisces include the lead single “I Just Wanna Know” and the current focus track “Trip.” She just released a music video for the latter, which Rafael Gutierrez directed.

Although she just released Moon in Pisces, Novah is already in album mode for the follow-up to 2020’s Stages. “It’s just the beginning,” she tells Rated R&B.

Following Novah’s extraordinary hour-long set and special performances by Dondria and Jared Brady, she invited Rated R&B to her green room for wine and conversation. She reflected on touring the new EP with her husband, collaborating with Kenyon Dixon and more. Check out Rated R&B’s interview with Jade Novah below.

You wrote and recorded Moon in Pisces with your husband, Devin Johnson, and toured it with him. What’s the energy been like performing the songs you created together?

The live show is such a reflective experience. It’s a healing experience for both of us because when we created the concept for the project and the tour, we both relived a lot of moments. I was telling a story [on stage], some of it was about us, but some was about our past relationships. So telling those stories and talking to each other about those things, we were able to get this stronger bond and this stronger appreciation for the connection that we have. Living it every day, performing it, and just telling this story through art together has been some sort of transformation that has gotten us even deeper in our love in our relationship just from doing all these things together. It’s been beautiful.

You’ve been out on the road for most of the summer. How does performing on tour affect what to do next in your music?

For this tour specifically, it was the first time we really used all of my gifts of storytelling, comedy, and music because the variety show is ultimately what I’m trying to create. Seeing the reactions and energy from people is just affirming.

You’ve mastered diva impersonations of Beyoncé, Toni Braxton, and Cardi B, among others. What’s another diva impersonation that you’d like to include in the future?

I’ve been working on Doja Cat (laughs). I’m going to work that one out. I’d love to incorporate Megan Thee Stallion. Hopefully, those ladies come on soon.

FOR years to come.

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FEATURE: To Have Been There on the Night… Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn Live Album at Six

FEATURE:

 

 

To Have Been There on the Night…

Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn Live Album at Six

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A couple of Kate Bush albums…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

celebrate anniversaries in November. In fact, that is not true. What I mean is a couple of non-studio albums celebrate anniversaries. I wanted to include and highlight them, as they are important. One is her greatest hits album, The Whole Story. I wanted to spend some time today looking at the live album of her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. I have talked about that twenty-two-date series of shows many times though the years. The live album is incredible to listen to. Before the Dawn is an amazing album that Bush spend a long time helping to mix and get right. I do love when artists get involved with the final sound of a live album. There has been no DVD of the show, so the live album is the only documentation those who did not go have. I did not get a ticket, so I can only imagine what it would have been like in Hammersmith at the Eventim Apollo watching in 2014. The live album was released on 25th November. I am going to publish another feature about the live album nearer to the anniversary. There was a series of unofficial releases called Before the Dawn from Apollo. In fact, a few bootleg and unofficial releases are there that were recorded during the first few nights of the residency. It is a shame that these are available, because the official album is one that fans need to buy and treasure – though I can appreciate these unofficial releases are cheaper.

Before the Dawn was released on a four-L.P. set, a double-C.D., and a digital download. Reaching number four in the U.K., this album is very important. Not only is it another that has reached the top ten – all of her studio albums have reached the top ten, as did The Whole Story -, but it is technically the latest album from her. 2011’s 50 Words for Snow is the latest studio album – and Bush remastered her albums in 2018 -, but this is the latest album with original vocals and performances. Because Before the Dawn is six on 25th November, I wanted to approach it from different angles. Released on Kate Bush’s Fish People album, it is a phenomenal recording from The KT Fellowship (the name she gave to her band). Go and get the album on vinyl if you can afford it, as it is such an immersive and jaw-dropping experience! Sourced from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, here are the linear notes from the extraordinary album:

“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)”.

You can pick up memorabilia of Before the Dawn if you were not lucky enough to be there. I think that the album is one that every Kate Bush fan should have in their collections. I want to get to a couple of reviews for the 2016 live album. Before that, FADER were one of the lucky few who interviewed Kate Bush to promote it. It is interesting hearing what she said about the shows – and the fact she ranks Before the Dawn as one of her greatest achievements:

“You really dug into the archives for your 2014 live shows. How has your relationship with your older material evolved?

Well, part of the decision to do the live shows was because it was such an interesting challenge to work with the two narrative pieces [“The Ninth Wave” and “A Sky of Honey”], rather than just doing a bunch of single tracks.

It was within such a specific context, because [the setlist] was very much put together for a live event. Through that process, the songs naturally evolved because I was working with a band, a lot of whom I never worked with before. I just chose tracks that I wanted to do, that really worked with the band, and to keep it really focused in a rhythmic way.

Although the music was always kept as the lead, I didn't want the visuals to feel separate. What I had hoped was that what had been created was an integrated piece of theater that worked with the music — that it wasn't just music that had theatrics added to it — that there was a real sense of it being something that worked as a whole.

As a performer, do you get lost in the moment or do you focus on the technical intricacies?

I had to stay really focused as a performer because I'm quite nervous, and I wanted to make sure I was really present when I was performing so that I could try and deliver the character of the song. And actually, the first set was the most difficult part to perform for me, because almost each song is from a completely different place.

Before the 2014 shows you hadn’t toured since 1979. When your return to the stage was so well-received, did you wish you’d done it sooner?

I don't know really. The original show was of the first two albums that I’d made, and I had hoped that to do another show after I had another of two albums’ worth of material. And as I started getting much more involved in the recording process, it took me off into a different path where it was all about trying to make a good album. It became very time-consuming, so I moved into being more of a recording artist. And every time you finish an album, there's the opportunity to make visuals to go with some of the tracks. So I became very involved in that, as well.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during her Before the Dawn residency in 2014/PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay

Are you currently working on new music?

No, I'm not. I've been tied up with this project for a really long time. And right now I'm tied up with the promotion and other elements that go with getting ready to release the album. I'm looking forward to being in the space where I can think about what's next.

Do you have a technical achievement that you're most proud of in your career?

I'm really proud of what we did with those live shows, because it was very ambitious and I didn't know if it would work. It was a very complex technical show that involved the most incredible team of people. The most intelligent, sensitive people. Fantastic band, actors, everybody there had something so special to bring to that show, and I think the response that we got was more than you could ever wish for. I'm so pleased that we did it.

It was a very humbling experience, really. Every night you had a completely different audience, and every night they were so warm. It really meant so much that they liked it. It was very moving, because it felt like the audience came on that journey with us, and, each night, it was a slightly different journey”.

I want to round off with a couple of reviews for Before the Dawn. The reviews were largely positive for this live extravaganza. You can tell that Bush and the entire crew and team put their all into every show! The live album is an amazing documentation of something we will never see again. You can hear Bush’s happiness radiating throughout. Although nervous, there is no doubt she was feeling the love from the crowd each night! The Guardian said this in their 2016 review of the Before the Dawn album:

“A pressing question looms over Kate Bush’s new live release, her first since Live at Hammersmith Odeon in 1994, an album drawn from her then most recent live shows, some 15 years before. That question being: what’s the point? Live albums can only ever hope to give the faintest flavour of the multi-sensory experience of attending a gig, and Bush’s 2014 shows at the Hammersmith Odeon were about as multi-sensory an experience as gigs get. The subsequent album isn’t credited to Bush but the K Fellowship, presumably in recognition of the vast ancillary cast of musicians, technicians and actors required to bring Before the Dawn to fruition – but it obviously doesn’t capture most of the results of their work. You get a vague sense of the crackling excitement in the audience, but despite the plentiful photos in the CD booklet (“Note the parked helicopter at the top,” reads one caption) it can’t give you any real sense of the overwhelming visual spectacle of the shows, which the DVD that was mooted to appear last year, but never did, might have done. There are moments on the album when the audience break into spontaneous applause during a song. If you were there, you find yourself scrolling through your memory to work out what provoked it – not an easy task, given that audiences frequently seemed to be so overwhelmed to be in Bush’s presence that they applauded pretty much everything she did. If you weren’t, it’s doubtless even more frustrating.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to work out whether the original show’s solitary misstep – the clunky, ostensibly comedic playlet by novelist David Mitchell inserted in the middle of The Ninth Wave – is amplified or minimised by appearing on an album. Divested of the accompanying action, its dialogue sounds even more laboured, even more like a particularly spirit-sapping scene from perennially unfunny BBC1 sitcom My Family. On the other, well, there’s always the fast-forward button, although long-term fans might suggest that it wouldn’t really be a Kate Bush project unless an array of dazzling brilliance and original thinking was offset by at least one moment where she felt impelled to follow her muse somewhere you rather wish she hadn’t. You can file the playlet alongside The Dreaming’s Australian accent, dressing up as a bat on the back cover of Never for Ever, and The Line, The Cross and the Curve, the short film that accompanied The Red Shoes, later appraised by its author as “a load of bollocks”.

Clearly a degree of tinkering has gone on with the music. A beautiful take on Never Be Mine, from 1989’s The Sensual World, seems to have mysteriously appeared in the middle of the initial act, which never happened during the actual concerts, raising the tantalising prospect that far more material was prepared than made it to the final show. Perhaps they were off in a rehearsal studio somewhere, trying out versions of Suspended in Gaffa and Them Heavy People after all. But the really arresting thing about Before the Dawn – given that Bush is an artist whose perfectionism has led her to make a grand total of three albums in the last 22 years, one of them consisting of pernickety rerecordings of old songs – is how raw it sounds.

Of course, raw is an adjective one uses relatively, when considering an album that features a band of blue-chip sessioneers, celebrated jazz-fusion musicians and former Miles Davis sidemen: you’re not going to mistake the contents of Before the Dawn for those of, say, Conflict’s Live Woolwich Poly ’86. But, unlike most latterday live albums, it actually sounds like a band playing live. There’s a sibilance about the vocals, a sort of echoey, booming quality to the sound, the occasional hint of unevenness: it doesn’t feel like a recording that’s been overdubbed and Auto-Tuned into sterility. Given their pedigree, you’d expect the musicians involved to be incredibly nimble and adept, but more startling is how propulsive and exciting they sound, even when dealing with Bush’s more hazy and dreamlike material. It’s a state of affairs amplified by Bush’s voice, which is in fantastic shape. On King of the Mountain or Hounds of Love, she has a way of suddenly shifting into a primal, throaty roar – not the vocal style you’d most closely associate with Kate Bush – that sounds all the more effective for clearly being recorded live. Furthermore, there’s a vividness about the emotional twists and turns of A Sea of Honey, A Sky of Honey – from the beatific, sun-dappled contentment associated with Balearic music to brooding sadness and back again – that just isn’t there on the studio version, great though that is.

That answers the question about what the point of Before the Dawn is: like 2011’s Director’s Cut, it’s an album that shows Bush’s back catalogue off in a different light. And perhaps it’s better, or at least more fitting, that her 2014 shows are commemorated with an album rather than a film or a Blu-ray or whatever it is that you play inside those virtual reality headsets people are getting so excited about. They were a huge pop cultural event, as the first gigs in four decades by one of rock’s tiny handful of real elusive geniuses were always bound to be, but they were shrouded in a sense of enigma: almost uniquely, hardly anyone who attended the first night had any real idea what was going to happen. Even more unusually, that air of mystery clung to the shows after the 22-date run ended: virtually everyone present complied with Bush’s request not to film anything on their phones, and the handful that didn’t saw their footage quickly removed from YouTube. Before the Dawn provides a memento for those who were there and a vague indication of what went on for those who weren’t, without compromising the shows’ appealingly mysterious air: a quality you suspect the woman behind it realises is in very short supply in rock music these days”.

I am going to end with Pitchfork’s take on Before the Dawn. Perhaps it is not a shock to see positive reviews for the album as the live show itself was lauded so highly! Not available on streaming services (just Apple Music), I hope that it does come there one day – as it would provide greater accessibility to new fans. The vinyl and C.D. versions are well worth the cost:

“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

“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”.

Such an amazing album, Before the Dawn is six on 25th November. With Bush fully involved in the mix and sound for the album, it does make me sad that this might be the last live recording we hear from her. Those who attended one of the twenty-two nights in Hammersmith back in 2014 were treated to a remarkable and rare spectacle! In part persuaded to return to the stage by her on Bertie, the public definitely missed her! Listening to Before the Dawn transports you to that space. The songs come alive and, although we cannot see what the audience saw, you can imagine what is happening. It is a powerful and memorable live album from…

THE sensational Kate Bush.

FEATURE: Dreaming, Nightmares and Reawakening: Kate Bush 1982-1983: Her Most Transformative Career Period?

FEATURE:

 

 

Dreaming, Nightmares and Reawakening

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush and her mother Hannah in the video for Suspended in Gaffa, 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush and Little Brown Book Group (from KATE: Inside the Rainbow)

Kate Bush 1982-1983: Her Most Transformative Career Period?

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I have written about Kate Bush…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at Abbey Road Studios on 15th October, 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport/GI

and the year 1983 before. I will come back to that. I am writing a run of features around albums of hers that have anniversaries this month. One of them is 2005’s Aerial. That year and double album was a real revelation. Many did not think there would be another Kate Bush album after 1993’s The Red Shoes. Many might think that both 1993 and 2005 are crucial years and transformative periods for Bush. The former was a busy year where Bush reached a point where she could not really carry on how she was. Perhaps exhausted and not at her peak, she would step away and was growing weary of being seen as weird and reclusive. Perhaps still being labelled and judged, she need time away. Not that she had a breakdown or was ground down. You could tell that this was a time in her career when she needed an extended time away without demands. In 2005, Bush came back to music seemingly renewed. With a different sound and type of music, this was a very different artist to the one that the public heard in 1993. After the birth of her son Bertie in 1998, you get the sense Kate Bush was reinvigorated and given fresh purpose and inspiration. It is arguable to say 1993 and 2005 were pivotal times in her career. I would say, in terms of transformation and revival, looking at 1982 and 1983 are the most crucial two years.

I shall not revisit 1982’s The Dreaming too much, as I did so when writing features for its to mark its fortieth (which happened in September). I am thinking back forty years and what Kate Bush’s world must have felt like. Consider the fact she was immersed in recording and promoting The Dreaming in 1982. The album seemed to be most exhausting for Bush. The first she produced solo, Bush threw everything into it. From the density, depth, and originality of songs, through to the amazing sound, use of the Fairlight CMI and the breadth of the compositions, this was her most compelling, layered, and innovative album to that point. The effort, attention and time committed to getting it finished did not gel too well with EMI – who wanted to something sooner (her previous album Never for Ever, came out in 1980) and commercial -, and there was a slight sense of confusion from some critics. In retrospect, one might see 1982 (and the period from September 1980 when she started recording) as a year when Bush burned out or, in an effort to have autonomy and prove herself as a serious artist, pushed herself beyond the limit. I actually think it was a moment when Bush wanted to follow music heroes and innovators like David Bowie and release something almost artistic. A record that would last for decades. I have raved about The Dreaming and how important it is. Acclaimed now and considered one of her best albums, there were repercussions and effects.

Before getting to that, Frieze recently looked at The Dreaming and ended with some profound and thought-provoking words (…“the transmutation of her sweet (if ‘kooky’) aesthetic into something rambunctious and resistant. But a description, too, of how we ought to behave as belated adepts of such a creation. The icon, no matter how loved or venerated, is not the artist – let alone a substitute for the waywardness of the work. Before and after The Dreaming, and likely for different reasons, Bush shied from her wildest instincts, or directed them to more melodic or commercial ends. But here, for a moment, all is suspended, all is possible. Am I doing it? Can I have it all?”). There are some sections of the article that really caught my eye and are relevant to this feature:

“In some ways, The Dreaming – Bush’s first commercial failure following three hit albums – is very much an artefact of 1982. It was the year that avowedly primitive, if futuristic, synth pop gave way to something more lush, wild and expansive. ABC’s The Lexicon of Love, The Associates’ Sulk, Prince’s 1999: like The Dreaming, these are records on which the rigours of inherited forms – pop, funk or post-punk – are thrown to the wind and all whims indulged, whether recording in an abandoned swimming pool (Bush) or filling the drum kit with water (Associates). The new technologies of digital synthesis and (especially) sampling began to recast mainstream pop as pure aural adventure, everything suddenly vaster than it had sounded months before.

Of course, some versions of this moment were more extreme than others, but the shift, which lasted until the middle of the decade, was towards a kind of digital psychedelia, distinct from the one then emerging in dance music of the same period – more sheerly strange new sounds on the radio than anyone had heard since 1967. In 1982, nobody expected Bush to be at or near the hard edge of a new aesthetic. From her first hit, ‘Wuthering Heights’ (1978), onwards, the combustion was all in her melodies and skyrocketing voice.

By contrast, the instrumental texture of her records sometimes sounded as if confected by the house orchestra of a 1970s chat show. But Bush had lately become fascinated by the potential of the Fairlight CMI: a digital synthesizer, workstation and sampler she’d employed sporadically on her 1980 album Never for Ever. And she was impressed by the huge, gated-reverb drum sounds attained on recent albums by Peter Gabriel and Public Image Ltd. Bush engaged the recording engineers Hugh Padgham and Nick Launay, who’d worked on those records, but produced The Dreaming herself; the result, as Richard Cook wrote at the time in New Musical Express (1957–2018), is an album on which ‘at any one moment, everything is going on’.

“After The Dreaming, Bush retreated, built her own studio, went deeper with her machines and returned on Hounds of Love with a sleeker sound for the album’s four singles, while also establishing a simple division between these and the record’s eerie, conceptual second side, titled The Ninth Wave. Suddenly, she was perceived as a mature artist, an avant-gardist of the hit parade, a pioneer of a modern, studio-bound version of female independence in the music business. All of which is in play now when we speak of her legacy among artists since: Björk, Fever Ray, FKA Twigs, Lorde, Joanna Newsom, Caroline Polachek, SOPHIE and Tricky. Such lists, and regular interview namechecks, can feel dutiful and obvious, pointing to superficial resemblances. Whereas the actual influence (if that is at all the word) of a work like The Dreaming is more fleeting, submerged, a matter of textural spectre or unlocatable atmosphere”.

How bad, transformative, and challenging was 1982? It was definitely a busy year. I think, in terms of media perception and what she was being asked in interviews, there was still a feeling that she was not a serious artist. Perhaps too kooky to be considered relevant and serious. Before wrapping up the 1982 section with a sense of how she was feeling and how essential 1983 was, I want to quote from the BREAKTHROUGH 5 interview that Abby Sheffield conducted circa 1983:

“Home for Kate Bush means both her parents' house in Kent and the place that she and her brothers, Paddy and John, have bought about seven miles away. The location of the new house is a closely guarded secret <no longer where Kate herself lives> and they bought it so that trips up and down to London would be easier. Home also means seeing her friends--some new ones from the music business, some old ones from school days and from her brother's old band, with whom Kate used to sing before going solo. Finally, home means being with her boyfriend, about whom she is understandably secretive.

"It's hard because my life is so unpredictable. He's an artist, by the way, but not in the music business.<This is a rare instance where Kate has made an outright lie to the press.> It's the one area of my life that I really do consider private. And I can't keep it private unless I keep it close."

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Griffin

Have three years as a superstar changed her at all? "Yes," she admits; "I've become a perfectionist, for one thing." Although not a lonely teenager, she did spend a lot of time on her own, singing, reading and writing the poetry which forms the basis of her songs. "I wasn't a daydreamer," she says. "Writing songs and poetry is putting into words and music my real feelings. Without being too critical of Wuthering Heights, I do think that it was a bit misleading; it seemed to suggest too much fantasy and escapism"

Kate wants to dispel the notion that she is someone who writes about fantasy. "I think my lyrics have a far tougher edge to them now. I always thought that ultimately I would be super tough...presuming that as I gathered experiences I would learn to accept situations for what they are. That has worked in some ways, but in others I'm far more vulnerable."

One new song on her next album has Kate talking about herself and her new awareness of life, its goals and inevitable pressures. "The song is called Get Out of My House ," she says, "and it's all about the human as a house. The idea is that as more experiences actually get to you, you start learning how to defend yourself from them. The human can be seen as a house where you start putting up shutters at the windows and locking the doors--not letting in certain things. I think a lot of people are like this--they don't hear what they don't want to hear, don't see what they don't want to see. It is like a house, where the windows are the eyes and the ears, and you don't let people in. That's sad because as they grow older people should open up more. But they do the opposite because, I suppose, they do get bruised and cluttered. Which brings me back to myself; yes, I have had to decide what I will let in and what I'll have to exclude.

"While I was working on this album I was offered a part in a TV series. I've been offered other acting roles, but this was the first totally creative offer that has ever come my way. I had to turn it down--I was already committed to the album. Sadly, I don't think that offer will be made again, but you have to learn to let things go, not to hang on and get upset, or to try to do it and then end up making a mess of everything else. It's like wanting to dance in the studio when I'm recording--I want to but I know that I can't because it will just tire me. I wish I had the energy to do everything," she says, sighing at her limitations, "but at least I'm healthy and fit."

Kate is one of those lucky people who never puts on weight. <Well...> She's a slim, elf-like, five foot three and has been a vegetarian since sixteen because, she says, "I just couldn't stand the idea of eating meat--and I really do think that it has made me calmer." She smokes occasionally--though she admits she shouldn't--and hardly drinks. "Champagne, I love champagne...but I don't really call it alcohol!" She confesses that she doesn't do breathing exercises, though she is very aware of breath control when she is singing. She regards her voice as a "precious instrument: it can be affected by almost anything: my nerves, my mood, even the weather." On stage she's a bundle of energy--a complete contrast to the calm, mature, pretty girl who sits drinking coffee in the elegant farmhouse drawing room.

"My plans for the future..." she muses. "Well, I want to get into films. And I want to do more on stage. I love staging my own shows, working out the routines, designing the whole package, and using every aspect of my creativity." What kind of films would she like to make? "My favourite is Don't Look Now. I was incredibly impressed by the tension, the drive and the way that every loose end was tied up. I get so irritated by films which leave ideas hanging."

Singing, she says, will always be with her. So will songwriting. Never satisfied with her voice or with her work, she strives all the time towards some impossible goal of perfection. "But, I suppose," she says, "that if the day ever came when I was 100 per cent satisfied, that would be the day that I stopped growing and changing--my deatch knell."

Despite her stardom, Kate Bush has remained amazingly gentle and sensitive. She is well aware of how easy it would be to be sucked into the music business, drained of all her natural creativity in and artificial world. To her the most important thing is, "To feel that I am progressing with my own life and my work. I also desperately want to feel some kind of happiness in what I am creating. Not contentment," she pauses, "but pleasure”.

1982 was a year where Bush released the album she had always wanted to make. In retrospect, maybe she put too much into it and needed to balance the experimental and esoteric with more commercial and accessible. Also, one cannot deny how influential The Dreaming was. As a female artist in 1982, there were not many peers releasing music like this, let alone writing it themselves and producing it! Consider 1982 was the year Madonna released her debut single. Worlds away from The Dreaming, there are a tiny amount of other female artists I could compare to Bush – maybe Laurie Anderson is close in terms of brilliance and the type of music she was making. Working tirelessly, not eating a balanced diet and sleeping far less than would be recommended, there was a degree of mental and physical draining. Throw into the mix the promotion and barely having time to have a day off, and it took its toll! I know Bush liked a certain amount of buzz and activity. In May 1982, The Dreaming is completed after a combined work period of more than sixteen months. Bush goes off to Jamaica for a holiday. It was not a chilled and relaxed bliss-out. The quiet and lack of noise, busyness and bustle was almost deafening! That inability to relax and recharge was due to the way she was living before that point. Suffering mental fatigue this year, her father, Dr. Bush, diagnosed nervous exhaustion and recommended bed-rest. Bush signed copies of The Dreaming in Oxford Street, London, on 14th September (1982). On 21st September and 1st October, she made T.V. appearances. This continued into November. Changes needed to be made…

There is a useful timeline here that shows what was happening with Bush in 1982 and 1983. Interestingly, in May 1983 (the month I was born), Bush’s book, Leaving My Tracks, was shelved indefinitely. I was not even aware of this! Bush released Hounds of Love in 1985. In January 1984, she had pretty much finished constructing a studio bespoke for her and was ready to get going. 1984 was the year when work resumed full-scale and there was this new period of intensity. A different method and experience with 1982 (1980-1981) with The Dreaming, this was defined by more space, family, nature, countryside, rest, and health. Even if Hounds of Love was quite demanding to record at times, lessons had been learned. It is clear there was this instant shift from the end of 1982 to 1983. There was a U.S. mini-album in 1983, and further attempts to get Bush noticed and her profiled raised there. An interesting exert from that timeline site takes us to November 1983:

“To continue the buzz in the U.S., EMI conceive the idea of touring the Live at Hammersmith Odeon video around the American colleges. 32 venues are set up, with a competition for the college radio programmers for the best presentation. The prize will be a trip to the U.K. to interview Kate. One college hires an art gallery and combines the event with a wine tasting. Another invites 700 guests, including the local state Senator, and the then Speaker of the House of Representatives "Tip" O'Neil. The debut date of the tour is held on the fourth floor of the Danceteria in New York, where the College Media Society are meeting”.

Go back to September 1983, and Bush started to demo material for the future album. Under a year after she released The Dreaming, Bush was now working on her fifth studio album. It is the period between the end of 1982 – when Bush would have been spent and unsure of her next move -and before September 1983 that interests me. Unlike some albums where singles were released the year after the album and there was still a lot of press and attention (Hounds of Love being a perfect example), that was not really the case with The Dreaming. There Goes a Tenner (in the U.K.) and Suspended in Gaffa (in continental Europe and Australia) were released on 2nd November, 1982. The only other single from The Dreaming, Night of the Swallow, was released in November 1983. As buzz was growing in America, this single was released for Ireland only. Closer to home, Bush needed rest. I think there was this click in the mind and a big moment when Bush moved away from London briefly (she would live there again) and had to take stock. Rather than recording at several studios, the next album would be recorded in her own one for the most part. She spent a lot of the summer of 1983 relaxing with friends and her boyfriend Del Palmer (her engineer and band member). Pursuits like gardening, driving her car and going to the cinema. It was a normalisation and more modest life that did usher in a more natural-sounding and relaxed Kate Bush. Someone less anxious and paranoid in her music. Hounds of Love is expansive and embracing of the elements. The Dreaming had a haunted house, cigarette smoke, a drowning escapologist, bungled robberies, regret, explosion, anger and personal introspection. One could definitely paint a portrait of Bush’s mind and creative angle in 1982!

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush (with her dogs Bonnie and Clyde) in an outtake from the Hounds of Love cover shoot, 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

1983 was a chance for her to find the space and loving bosom to both rest and also rebuild in a different setting. If 1982 was pivotal and transformative in terms of Bush achieving goals and producing a masterpiece, it also burned her out and highlighted how something needed to go. What went was this working method - and her spending countless hours in small studios and intensely working. 1983 did see her make plans and start work, but it was a year where not too much happened in terms of promotion and media rounds. In fact, for the most part, Bush was building foundations and taking things slower. It would pick up in 1984. If The Dreaming was a nightmare in some senses, Hounds of Love also had a title one could take in another direction. Bush has mooted that it could be about hounds of love chasing someone away. It could be a positive force. You only need to look at the cover of both albums to sense a difference. The monochrome/duller-coloured cover of The Dreaming shows Bush with a key in her mouth. Playing Houdini’s wife, Bess, it seems to be about a woman herself looking for escape or sensing deeper psychological questions. It is based on a song on the album, Houdini, and is based on how Bess Houdini would pass a key to Harry Houdini by a kiss so he could escape from peril. The cover of The Dreaming, to me, is more about Bush and that need to escape.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in October 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Sunday Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty Images

By contrast, Hounds of Love sees Bush in a gorgeous purple swathe with her hounds, Bonnie and Clyde, in her sleepy embrace. Both photos were taken by John Carder Bush, but they are dramatically different. 1983 was a year that, in some ways, transformed Bush’s life and introduced a new colour palette. Some would say years like 1987, 1993 and 2005 are the most important, transformative, and important in Bush’s career. To me, the years 1982 and 1983 were the most crucial and impactful. It was the end of one way of working and phase of life and the ushering in of a new one. Whilst I love The Dreaming, if Bush continued working how she was, we may have lost her from music. In 1983 and 1984, she started work on Hounds of Love. It culminated in a triumphant 1985. I am glad that Bush did revive and find the strength, support, and determination to build her own studio and produce an album that was very different to The Dreaming. EMI did not want her to produce another album after a relative commercial downturn. Thank God she prevailed. The fact that she came back stronger than ever is…

A huge relief.

FEATURE: Second Spin: Adam and the Ants - Prince Charming

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

Adam and the Ants - Prince Charming

__________

I featured the title track…

IN THIS PHOTO: Adam and the Ants in 1981/PHOTO CREDIT: Allan Ballard/Scope Features

from this album not too long ago. Adam and the Ants were formed in London in 1977. The group existed in two stages and lives. Both fronted by Adam Ant over the period 1977 to 1982. The first, were founded in May 1977 and known simply as The Ants until November of that year. The final line-up of this incarnation - Dave Barbarossa, Matthew Ashman, and Leigh Gorman - left the band in January 1980 at the suggestion of manager Malcolm McLaren to form Bow Wow Wow. The second stage and period of Adam and the Ants featured guitarist Marco Pirroni and drummer/producer Chris Hughes. This group lasted from February 1980 to March 1982. I want to focus on the band’s final album, Prince Charming. The third album from the group is their most underrated. Perhaps a little patchy, I think that it warrants another spin. Released on 6th November, 1981, it featured classics Prince Charming, Stand and Deliver and Ant Rap. I also think many of the deep cuts are superb. Adam Ant released his debut solo album, Friend or Foe, in October 1982. Maybe personnel change and a sense of creative fatigue led some critics to feel that Prince Charming was a slump or weaker album from the awesome band. Even though the album reached number two in the U.K., it placed low in the U.S. It wasn’t a great commercial showing, despite having some really strong singles.

I am going to bring in a couple of reviews. The first is a bit of a mixed review from AllMusic. Some critics bemoaned a perceived lack of depth and the sort of good songs and hooks that defined earlier albums like Kings of the Wild Frontier (1980):

“Kings of the Wild Frontier brought Adam and the Ants massive popularity in England, and it brought enormous pressure for Adam and guitarist Marco Pirroni to stand and deliver another slice of dynamite. The first single, the punchy horn-laden "Stand and Deliver," suggested that they were up to the task, but when Prince Charming appeared in late 1981, it was pretty much universally panned and it still stands as the weakest record from Ant's classic period. With its ridiculous song titles and cover photos, which suggest that the Ants were moving away from Native Americans and toward pirates, it's hard not to view it as a descent into camp, yet Adam claims in the liner notes for Antbox that he believes that Prince Charming is "a very serious record based on very classical, historical themes." That may be true on certain tracks, but it's hard to see where "Mile High Club," "S.E.X.," "Mowhok," and "Ant Rap" fit into that scheme, but he's right about the intent -- this is a markedly different record than Kings, intentionally so. The group have not only moved on in image, they've also left behind their signature Burundi beats while upping the cinematic qualities inherent in their music. So, "Five Guns West" and "Mowhok" are given neo-spaghetti western backdrops, while eerie guitars, mariachi horns, and trilling vocals underpin "That Voodoo." There are a lot of little details like that to dwell on in the production -- "Picasso Visita el Planeta de los Simios" sounds absolutely terrific -- but apart from "Scorpios," "Stand and Deliver," and the cheerfully ludicrous "Ant Rap," the songs just aren't there. Kings had style, sound, and songs, while Prince Charming simply has style and sound -- which, in retrospect, isn't all that bad, but it's also not hard to see how it sparked a backlash at the time”.

I want to finish off with Louder Than War’s deep investigation and look back at Prince Charming. A real lost album that has plenty of highlights, I do think that this 1982 album warrants a second spin and more respect:

“In November 1981 Adam And The Ants released their third album, Prince Charming. Despite being a big hit, the album has spent years being looked on as the hangover after the huge success of the preceding Kings Of The Wild Frontier album and by some as that album’s lesser cousin. But as the decades roll past and the context changes Prince Charming unveils itself as another quirky work of art rock genius that justifies more than just a revisit.

By 1981 Adam Ant was like a combination of Trextasy and Beatlemania rolled into one. The dark star of the undergound debut album ‘Dirk Wears White Sox’ had gone supernova and into the mainstream. The hipsters had turned on him but he was still dealing an off kilter music that managed to combine a poptimism with a dark energy.

On release, Prince Charming was a big hit slamming into the charts at number 2 but compared the astonishing success of the number one for months of the Kings Of The Wild Frontier album it felt like a flat success, the reviews were lukewarm and the band’s younger fan base were starting to move on to less interesting pop pastures. There was still enough petrol in the tank though to propel the band’s to two preceding single releases and album cuts to massive number hits with Prince Charming and Stand And Deliver but the album has spent years being looked on as a disappointment.

The pop genius of Adam was still there though and years later like a team of archeologists discovering a golden city under the ruins of a rubbled ancient settlement decades later we find an album that is as bizarre, brilliant and beautiful as Kings.

Prince Charming has moved on from Kings whilst retaining some of its hallmarks. It’s full of odd rhythms, strange songs and a perfect art-house pop that needs to be celebrated and makes it one of the great lost albums of the period despite its then big chart status.

We have already the staggering moment when Adam And the Ants went from underground freaks to mainstream Antmania and it was always going to be difficult to replicate that shock of the new value.

It’s still quite staggering how such a strange band managed to turn themselves into pure pop with a thrilling dark undertow, sex and an art school obliqueness. That whiff of cordite danger is what makes the greatest of great pop and Adam understood that and that fine line between the weird and the toppermost of the poppermost has stood his music in good stead for decades.

The narrative is now set in stone…his debut Dirk album was a monochromatic cult oddity beloved by his kung fu slippered Ant fans and the remnants of the freak fierce punk scene who gathered around the band after the Sex Pistols imploded.

Adam was the sound of the early punk squats and the freak scenes up and down the UK – those strange post-punk dark disco songs of sex and violence and post-modernism were perfect for the time. His breakthrough album Kings Of The Wild Frontier was a glorious technicolor masterpiece that was the gateway album for a whole new generation of fans.

In that early eighties pomp Adam, like Bowie, was the gateway artist who opened the doors for all kind of underground artists, musicians and authors that Adam was referencing. Goth would never have been as big with Adam or even industrial and even Britpop and beyond with many of the later generations of musicians retaining a huge affection for him. Dealing his fantastical pop and an esoteric culture hinterland he took his fans on a trip. Kings was huge and it glorious Burundi pop was carved into shape by his band of merry like the wonderful Marco and into one of the great British pop records.

Where do you go from there? Prince Charming was the swift follow-up after the brief regal reign of the banD and is yet another gem that needs revisiting. If it lacks those thrilling Burundi drums of songs like Kings Of The Wild Frontier and Dog Eat Dog off the preceding album it was because it had moved on into yet another brave and exotically strange collection of rhythmical pop perfection.

The visual themes were less piratical and were now about the dandy highwayman – the outlaw was still being celebrated as well as that glorious tradition of the English dandy. The album’s biggest hit and the biggest hit of the band’s reign was Stand And Deliver which embraced these themes – themes that hark back deep into the heart of Malcolm and Viviene and the Sex shop – that  combination of Dickensian waifs, rubber wear, dandys, pirates and outlaws – Adam was perhaps the only musician who took these themes and really ran with them – his art school background connecting perfectly with Maclolm’s themes and obsessions. He also had the charisma to pull off the genius of ridiculous – Adam understood that ridiculous is a key part of pop culture vision – those who dare win!

Stand and Deliver itself is a romping rush and the closest to the classic Ants tribal sound as it gallops along like Dick Turpin taking the loot whilst flirting with the occupants of the carriages as they took the hazardous route into London. The handsome outlaw as a combination of Robin Hood and james Dean – the outsiders outsider raiding pop’s gilded palace. The album’s other huge hit was Prince Charming which is arguably the weirdest sounding number one of all time. A mid-paced ooze of the song, it’s a tribal reaffirmation of self respect and warrior pride that Adam was so genius at. The empowering anthems that were part and parcel of his oeuvre. The classic lyrics have been tattooed onto the minds of so many of that generation who were grappling with the early teenage complexity and insecurity of life and needed that pop empowerment. The song itself, which is borrowed from Rolf Harris’s War Canoe is an example of the sheer breathtaking scope of influences Adam and Marco were dealing with – they were not hamstrung by snooty snobby cool and were as likely to be treasuring a Rolf b sides album as much as they loved the Velvets and Roxy Music. The song has huge drums and a dark heavy undertow and was driven by a strident acoustic guitar and the avalanche of sparse tribal drums – its a magnificent work.

After the debut’s astonishing success the musical themes had to be a style switch – pop gets bored quickly but somehow you have to retain the hallmarks that made you. The album kicks off with Scorpios which swiftly deals with this – ditching the Burundi beat but embracing a more Samba type percussive feel – it’s like a street party in Rio transposed to rainy day UK and it sees an even more full colourful Ants emerging musically and sartorially. Scorpios is a perfect fusion between the new Ants – the dandy full colour glam highway men as first seen in the album photo and this stretching out of their sound. The song is perfect embrace of world rhythms and a chorus that is pure Adam that harks back to the Dirk period – it also sounds like the theme tune from one of those sixties detective shows that also informed the band’s aesthetic.

Picasso Visita El Planeta De Los Simios is my favorite track on the album and one of the great Adam and the Ants songs – again it seems to fuse the dark warped humour of the Dirk period of the band and is a comfy bedfellow to older wonk songs like Puerto Rican or Young Parisians – those quirky off-kilter pop songs that the band always dealt in but with a new improved version. The song itself comes from this earlier period and the chorus is sublime and the subject matter bizarrely and beautiful barmy. There are even the deep tribal aaaahs in the backing vocals and a nice guitar line from Marco – this is such a fantastic song.

Contemporary reviews of the album complained about the lack of melodies on the album – maybe they were listening to another record? songs like Picasso are pure melody albeit unconventional. 5 Gun West is another of those hang them high western workouts like that the band loved and all the better for it. That fantasy of the Wild West was such a huge cultural shadow in post war UK. It seemed like a fantasy place full of cool clothes and big country soundscapes. Of course the cool kids like Adam quickly worked out that that native Americans were the heroes but retained a love for the twangy outlaw theme.

That Voodoo brings the pace down like Human Beings did on Kings Of The Wild Frontier. It hangs on a yearning feedback drenched guitar line switching to a big Glitter glam groove and is a song that could have fitted perfectly onto the preceding album with its updating of glam to a post tribal eighties. Mile High Club is another lost track – it features some of those fantastic layered Adam singing – vocal lines that come with so much detail as he builds up his layers that some still leave breathing space in the song. This is a trick that is really hard to pull off and adds to the quirky originality of the song that is full of great sounds and off kilter textures. It sounds like the very early demos from Kings when Adam and Marco were trying to make sense of the new ideas of combining African music, rhythms and chants into western pop – those demos are fascinating with the African chants being sung by Adam as he seeks whole new vistas and spines for songs – could Mile High Club be a hangover from that fascinating and fantastic period of pop experimentation?

Ant Rap is the song that is singled out for the most critical beating but still hit number 4 as the post album single release. Its cod rap is kinda goofy but no more goofy than Blondie’s wonderful Rapture. The sparse song is full of clattering and propulsive rhythm from the samba drumming workout the twists the then proto hip hop beat into different spaces the bands. The vocal roll call is funny and the lines ‘From the naughty north to the sexy south’ have become iconic. You can understand why Mowhok would have confounded critics at the time – it’s more like a piece of film soundtrack and a nod to the sounds and atmospheres of Native American cultures who Adam had already written to to ask for permission for their influence. It underlines just how far away Adam And The Ants were from their pop contemporaries like  Duran Duran and is classic Adam weird wonk . From its tribal chants and marimbas and lines of guitar filth and native American leanings, its Kings Of The Wild Frontier Adam reworked and reinvented for Prince Charming. It’s vocal layers are spellbinding and that marimba is a great flavour and is a welcome reminder of the kooky side of the band and a fantastic track. In the hands of another band it would have been a much hallowed John Peel session track – an example of the experimental rhythmic experiements that were going on in late night radio land at the time. The song being wedged towards the end of what was considered a teenybop record had somehow lost its true audience! It’s another high point from the album.

S.E.X.  closes the album and is return to Adam’s favourite theme in one of those sparse pieces that is constructed from a collection of great Marco guitar feedback drenched lines interspersing with a grinding disco groove creating space for Adam to build the tension towards the chorus that is like a yodel jamming with classic Syd Barret – perfect weird English pop. It’s yet another fantastic oddity and a seductive addictive slice of perfect weird pop. I’m not sure anyone else could ever make this work but the hands of The Ants it’s a perfect and weirdly downbeat end to the album and the end to the band’s glorious pomp.

There would be great records after this and bigger worldwide hits but the tribal Ants and their wam bam glam outlaw tribal pirate pomp was over after, like the band after Prince Charming.

To signify the end of this period, Adam ended the band and future releases were as as Adam Ant singular. The most bizarre period and journey of any band in British pop was now over leaving a fascinating legacy of fantastically off records to unpick for decades after”.

The final studio album from Adam and the Ants, rather than it being a damp squib or far past their best, there are a couple of forgettable songs, but I think Prince Charming is very strong and worth better than it got from critics. Fans in the U.K. bought it, but there were lower chart places elsewhere in the world. If you have not heard Prince Charming, then I would suggest that you listen to this fantastic and…

UNDERRATED farewell.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Georgia Cécile

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 Georgia Cécile

__________

ONE of the most remarkable young artists…

in any genre of music today, the amazing Scottish Jazz artist Georgia Cécile is someone whose music I adore. Her remarkable, passionate, hugely beautiful, and soulful voice has elements of Jazz and Soul legends of the past, but her accent and distinct sound comes through. It is a magnificent and intoxicating blend of sounds that makes her an artist that people need to know about. I think that certain genres do have an issue crossing into the mainstream or getting wider exposure. Stations like Jazz FM are great sources to discover the best new and classic Jazz, but artists like Georgia Cécile should be spun and championed by national radio stations and everyone else. A wonderful artist who has a great future ahead, I want to bring in some interviews and bio about Georgia Cécile. She has been nominated for the Scottish Jazz Awards for the Best Vocalist. It is well deserved when you hear her beautiful and hugely powerful voice. Such a remarkable artist! I will start off with Jazzwise’s introduction back in 2020:

“Upcoming Edinburgh singer-composer Georgia Cécile almost became a lawyer, but fortunately for jazz, the lure of music proved too strong, and she is about to record her all-originals debut album. Peter Quinn talks to her about carrying on a family tradition

“I would expect the clarity of her tone, her creativity and ability to sing with genuine emotional depth to take her a long way”. The prophetic words of 606 club owner and musician, Steve Rubie, quoted in the ‘Who to look out for in 2019’ column in the Dec2018/Jan2019 edition of Jazzwise.

With an acclaimed 2019 London Jazz Festival debut under her belt and a ‘Best Vocalist’ gong at last year’s Scottish Jazz Awards, it would be fair to say that the Edinburgh-based vocalist Georgia Cécile hasn’t disappointed.

As well as being shortlisted for Vocalist of the Year in the Jazz FM Awards 2020, the singer was due to perform at both Cheltenham Jazz Festival and Love Supreme this year – the pandemic sadly put paid to that. Cécile appears sanguine about lockdown.

“I’m grateful to be well and safe,” she tells me. “I teach vocals with Napier University one day a week at the moment, and that's been supplementing my income. I'm lucky enough to live with my partner, Fraser [Urquhart], who's an amazing piano player, and we've been doing some livestream shows and people have been very generous.”

Just as the great Kurt Elling may have been lost to the world of academe, Cécile looked set to follow a legal career after signing up for a law degree at Strathclyde University. But the pull of music was too strong: she dropped out after a year and switched to a four-year BA Hons in Popular Music at Edinburgh Napier University. Cécile traces her love of jazz back to her childhood. Her grandfather, Gerry Smith, was a jazz pianist in Glasgow who toured in the 1950s and 60s, while her Aunt Ann was a jazz singer.

“Unfortunately they’ve both passed away now so they haven't lived to see me carry the baton,” she notes.

Napier represented a formative experience for Cécile, a time when she not only started to write songs but also met her co-writer, the pianist and composer Euan Stevenson.

“We've had a long-term collaboration now, over 10 years,” she says. “We have very similar influences in terms of our upbringing in music, that was apparent right away: Steely Dan and Stevie Wonder, but also Gershwin, Ellington, Cole Porter. He’s a real jazzer at heart.” Anyone who’s heard the duo’s 2019 single ‘Blue Is Just A Colour’ will know just how good a songwriting partnership this is.

In terms of her own musical aesthetic and what has influenced her both as a writer and singer, Cécile’s ‘Game Changer’ track which she chose for BBC Radio Scotland’s ‘Jazz Nights’ programme – Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson’s performance of ‘Come Sunday’ from Black, Brown and Beige – was telling.

“I feel like music is a gift for me and it's my duty to share that gift,” she says. “I think Duke Ellington and the performance of that song – there's nothing egotistical about it, it’s just for pure love, and to make other people feel that love. When I first heard it I just felt safe and comforted. It's very powerful but in a subtle and dignified way. And that's the power of Duke Ellington's music. It touches me on such a deep level.”

The choice of ‘Come Sunday’ also provides deeper insights into the elements of music which Cécile values most highly as an artist.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Rianne White

“Certainly, the first thing I feel and admire is that unveiling of true self and honesty, and authentic emotion and storytelling. For me, whether it's an instrumentalist or a singer, they have to be telling a story, they have to be purely in it to connect with the listener and open themselves to let that magic, that music, flow from them. I think you are the vessel. And you have to let go of worry and stress and just let that thing flow from you. And that's what I try and do when I sing.”

In terms of artists on the scene today that she particularly admires for having that storytelling quality, Cécile namechecks the aforementioned Elling (“he's got that ability to put himself aside and just give to the music”) and Cécile McLorin Salvant (“she isn't just a song stylist, she's an artist”).

When lockdown ends, Cécile’s thoughts will immediately turn to finishing her debut album (all originals), which was tantalisingly close to being done and dusted, with a band that features bassist Mario Caribé and drummer Max Popp, in addition to Stevenson on keys.

“I feel I’ve found my family – they've always got my back, they know my voice, they know what I'm going to do on a live gig and they follow me. We’ve lived with these songs for two, three, four years and we’ve played them live a lot, which has been a blessing because we’ve realised what works.”

This next step on the singer’s journey will, you feel, surely be worth the wait”.

I have been a fan and follower of Georgia Cécile for a while now. I will come onto her debut album soon, but I have put her social media links at the bottom. Please go and check her out and follow this sensational artist. Discover Gigs ad Tours spoke with Georgia Cécile in October 2021. Having released her Only the Lover Sings album, it was getting a lot of praise. You do not have to be a fan of Jazz to appreciate her music and fall in love with her:

“How does it feel to have topped the UK Jazz charts with your new album, ‘Only the Lover Sings’? Tell us all about it!

This album has been a long time in the making, we started writing some of these songs around five years ago, so to finally see it out there in world, and for it to be received so positively is wonderful. It’s an album of 10 original songs, all of which I write with my pianist Euan Stevenson. We’ve got a telepathic songwriting relationship, where we both know what the end goal should be. Sometimes we don’t even speak, we just sing and play until it’s right. Every song is different to the next and no two songs sound the same.  This album is the result of 10 years of growth, both personal and musical. I think you can really hear that in the music. You can tell I’ve lived these songs… so I’ve been told.

For people that haven’t seen you perform live before, what can they expect?

Lyrically, I like taking people on an emotional journey through my music, where each song takes a step through a different doorway of the heart.

Sonically you can expect sweeping cinematic piano and strings with cool vivacious horns, all framing the intimate lyrics.

Jazz and soul music are at the centre of our sound, so groove and improvisation are another big element. We’ll be playing all the new music from my debut album.

If you had to file your sound next to some big names in the industry, who would you be filed next to?

I’m mostly inspired by artists from days gone by – Duke Ellington, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Donny Hathaway. But I would say my music is relative to that of modern day artists such as Celeste, Laufey, Norah Jones, Gregory Porter. I actually just found out I’ll be supporting him on his next tour which is absolutely wild.

Which track are you most excited to perform and why?

Harpoon. It’s my favourite song on the album! It started off as a love poem so the music has a sensual old school Latin flavour. The dramatic slow build up to a fortissimo crescendo ending reminds me of something from a 1960’s Bond movie. It always shocks people! Maybe it could be the next Bond song, who knows?”.

I am going to wrap up fairly soon. There is so much to explore when it comes to Georgia Cécile and her fabulous body of work. One of the most moving and naturally talented artists I have heard in years, who knows just how far she can go! Square Mile interviewed Georgia Cécile in October 2021 too. I love the fact she mentioned how she’d love to write a Bond theme. I could see her knocking that out of the park if she is ever asked:

“SCOTTISH JAZZ SINGER Georgia Cécile not only has a beautiful voice but also a wise head on her shoulders.

Take her perspective on social media. "There is a lot of pressure to keep up a presence on social media," notes Cécile. "Some days we just don’t feel like sharing every aspect of our lives."

However she also embraces its benefits – such as showing off cute animals. "I recently gave my kitten an Insta account because the world needs to see how beautiful she is, so I can't complain, really..."

Nobody can complain about additional kitten pictures in the world. Nor can anyone complain about more music from the extravagantly talented Cécile – she supports Gregory Porter at the Royal Albert Hall this week and released her latest album Only The Lover Sings last month.

What upcoming project(s) are you most excited about?

I have known that I’m going to be singing at the opening gala of the London Jazz Festival with the Guy Barker Orchestra for almost a year now, so the excitement and build up has been excruciating.

It has always been a dream of mine to sing at the Royal Festival Hall with a live orchestra; the fact I will be singing one of my own songs with them too, feels like a real milestone moment.

What is your proudest professional accomplishment?

I would say completing my debut album to the standard I had always hoped is my proudest accomplishment so far. Myself and my co-writer Euan Stevenson worked hard for many years towards the goal of creating a classy, timeless body of work.

It was not without struggle, and I had to push past a lot of people who thought they knew better. I think when you have something that appears to people as a product on the outside, it can be easy to let others determine what you are going to do with your art and how you are going to market it. Finishing this album has been an opportunity for me to be courageous and learn to trust myself.

I am proud of the obstacles I overcame to present something that is authentic and true. To hold the finished record in my hand was actually the best feeling ever.

If you could change one thing about your career, what would it be?

Having a career in music is extremely fulfilling and rewarding, but you can't be afraid of hard work. Singing on stage and connecting to audiences is where I feel most alive and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

If there was something though, I would say there is a lot of pressure to keep up a presence on social media, and because we are only human, there are some days we just don’t feel like sharing every aspect of our lives.

I’m intrigued by other creatives like Saoirse Ronan and Lea Seydoux who have never used social media at all, yet somehow achieve and maintain mainstream success in their art forms.

Still, I love sharing new music and connecting to fans on social media, and I recently gave my kitten an Insta account because the world needs to see how beautiful she is, so I can't complain, really...

What do you hope to achieve that you haven’t yet?

I want to write and sing on the next Bond movie song – let's bring back the real Shirley Bassey glamour and sophistication!

Outside of your family, who is / was your biggest inspiration?

Besides my family and musical heroes, I am inspired by the great poets and writers!

My album title ‘Only The Lover Sings’ was inspired by a book by the German philosopher and author Josef Pieper who wrote about the idea that music can open doors of the heart, and that through music-making and listening, we can discover, know and love the darkest and furthest corners of our souls.

This sentiment deeply resonated with me and so it was crowned album title.

Tell us something nobody knows about you…

Contrary to what my confident nonchalant persona might present externally, I am actually very sensitive and take things all too personally at times. I care so much about hurting others, sometimes at the expense of my own progress.

That being said I am becoming more aware of my feelings and try not to take criticism too personally, especially on my art.

Before coming to a fairly recent interview, it is worth getting in a review for Only the Lover Sings. Jazzwise had some very positive things to say about Georgia Cécile’s wonderful debut album. I have been listening to the album a lot. There is something transformative about it that puts you in this particular headspace when you hear it. Such is her brilliance and command, I keep coming back to Only the Lover Sings are am moved by it:

“2021 was definitely something of an annus mirabilis for the vocalist and songwriter, Georgia Cécile. She won a host of new fans supporting Gregory Porter on his four dates at the Royal Albert Hall, made her Ronnie Scott's debut, delivered a standout performance at the EFG London Jazz Festival's opening gala, Jazz Voice, and released her debut album, Only The Lover Sings, which scooped ‘Best Album’ at the 2021 Scottish Jazz Awards.

With 10 superbly-crafted original songs, outstanding arrangements courtesy of Cécile's long-standing songwriting partner – pianist and composer Euan Stevenson – plus a central vocal performance which mixes passion, power and playfulness, this debut is an astonishing achievement. Cécile kickstarted proceedings at ‘Jazz Voice’ with her fine original – and album opener – ‘The Month Of May’. It's one of several songs (‘He Knew How To Love’ and ‘Goodbye Love’ are two more) which possesses a Bacharach-like richness both in terms of its arrangement and its harmonic journey. The moving ballad ‘Come Summertime’ showcases Cécile's ability to sustain and really sing through the melodic line. Tempos and textures are nicely varied, with ‘the radio-friendly ‘Always Be Right For Me’ shifting easily through the gears, while the pulsating ‘Blue Is Just A Colour’ emphasizes what an incredibly tight band this is”.

I am going to bring things fairly up to date. In August, Jazzwise spoke to Georgia Cécile again. They are huge supporters of her work! I feel that she will pique the interest of some of the most popular newspapers and music magazines very soon. No doubt about the fact Georgia Cécile will be a major star of the future:

“The release of a truly stunning debut (Only The Lover Sings) which garnered ‘Album of the Year’ at the 2021 Scottish Jazz Awards; supporting Gregory Porter at the Royal Albert Hall on four consecutive nights; a sold-out debut at Ronnie’s; part of an all-star gala concert at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival; as well as airplay aplenty across BBC Radios 2 and 3, 6Music and Jazz FM… It would be fair to say that, since we last chatted on Zoom during the first UK lockdown in 2020, things are most definitely on the up for vocalist and songwriter Georgia Cécile.

“A lot of people have said how much they love the songwriting,” Cécile notes regarding the phenomenal response to the debut, “which is the biggest thing for me – take away the arrangement, take away the window dressing – the actual songs themselves, the melodies and the lyrics, what Euan [Stevenson] and I have crafted and worked on for so long. To be acknowledged for that and to be recognised as a serious writer is such a big thing to me.

“When you put out your first album, there's a lot of pressure and a lot of anxieties about how it's going to do, but what I've realised is that it's out in the world now and it’s got its whole life ahead of it.”

While you might be forgiven for thinking that being offered a last-minute support slot for the aforementioned Gregory Porter in one of London’s most iconic venues would faze even the most seasoned of singers, Cécile clearly took it all in her stride.

“It was amazing, being on that stage where all my heroes have stood and sang. I felt like I had arrived home. I was a little nervous, but it felt very natural. I felt ready – the band, the songs, everything had been building up to that moment over the last however many years. When the opportunity came, literally within a week of the date, I felt ready for that.”

Of her Ronnie’s debut, she notes that “the audience was amazing – so warm, so enthusiastic, loved the music and queued up to buy the CD afterwards. It was a great night.”

Since we last spoke, singer and band have also made their debut appearance on US stages as part of the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.

“PRS Foundation, a great supporter of emerging artists, gave us the opportunity to go,” Cécile tells me. “We had two showcases, one at a really cool jazz club called Elephant Room, the other on a stage for UK artists. We had a great time and checked out loads of other bands, there was something like 16,000 gigs on! We got to meet a lot of other artists from the UK and from the US, other agents, other industry people, so it was a really good networking opportunity.”

Watching the vocalist perform live at last year’s Jazz Voice, the EFG London Jazz Festival’s opening night gala concert, it was clear that the storytelling and stagecraft elements of her artistry were both things that she highly values.

“That's something I’ve always worked at and included as part of what I do. I have literally spent hours and hours on YouTube studying people like Nancy Wilson and Tony Bennett – I’ve watched all of his concerts with Ralph Sharon on piano – seeing what they do, how they join songs in a set, how they communicate, and just really studying that, practising it, and building on it. All these little tips and tricks that I've picked up from watching the greats, but keeping the real focus on the song and the story and honouring that at all costs and making the audience feel part of that journey.

“For me, it's not enough to just get up and play songs back-to-back. People are paying money to watch you, when times are hard, and I want to leave them with something that they will remember forever and make them feel transported, uplifted or moved in some way. Taking them on that journey through the ebbs and flows of the music and the stories behind the songs – and presenting that visually as well – is really important.”

Cécile reunited with Guy Barker to perform on the opening night gala concert with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Barker’s big band at this year’s Cheltenham Jazz Festival, where she reprised ‘The Month of May’ from Jazz Voice and also sang Duke Ellington's ‘Prelude to a Kiss’. Originally broadcast on BBC Four, you can still watch the concert on the BBC website (‘Jazz All Stars: Cheltenham Jazz at 25’).

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jordan Hare

Even on first listen, the 10 superbly-crafted songs on Only The Lover Sings sound like future standards. Songs such as ‘Harpoon’ possess an almost Ellingtonian elegance of construction, and it comes as no surprise that Cécile and her pianist Stevenson share a huge love of the Duke’s music.

Other songs such as ‘Blue Is Just A Colour’ nod to the influence of US soul greats. “I've spent a lot of time listening to Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. For ‘Blue Is Just A Colour’, I came up with rhythmical ideas that go against the groove or against the piano, singing in all the gaps and the offbeats and coming at it from a more percussive position. ‘Love The Stars You’re Under’ started off as a metre-based poem which was inspired by the Don McLean song, ‘Vincent’. We wanted to write something that sounded like a stream of consciousness. I think we just sat outside one day under a tree in the park and I started writing down these things that I was seeing – the birds, the trees. I'm always really inspired by nature”.

I am going to leave things there. Someone whose live shows are always so memorable. A recording artist that is unique, and yet you can feel elements and influences of others weaved into the mix, I know that Georgia Cécile has a passionate online following already. This is going to expand and increase through 2023. Her must-hear music has a…

BEAUTIFUL heart and soul.

_____________

Follow Georgia Cécile

Official:

http://www.georgiacecile.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/georgia.cecile/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/georgia_cecile

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0KjGICUAvAWs6qev5iovJa?si=JxtOkNuZQQy-00pdidaDhg&nd=1

YouTube:

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

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/GeorgiaCecile/

FEATURE: Chart Positions, Interviews…and What Comes Next… Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Eleven

FEATURE:

 

 

Chart Positions, Interviews…and What Comes Next…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a Creating 'Lake Tahoe’ shot in promtion of 50 Words for Snow in 2011 

Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Eleven

__________

AS it turns eleven…

on 21st November, I wanted to do one more feature about Kate Bush’s most recent studio album, 50 Words for Snow. I have already done some features that are a bit more specific in terms of songs. I wanted to use this final one to be a bit more general and give an overview of the album. What I want to start out with is a snippet on an interview from The Quietus. There were some great print interviews with Bush around the release of 50 Words for Snow. What I shall move onto, and something that is quite irksome, is that there were some brilliant BBC radio interviews that were uploaded to YouTube and subsequently removed. Without the BBC putting them back on their site, many will never hear these brilliant chats! In terms of promotion, Bush was very generous with her time. After completing and releasing two albums in a year – the first, Director’s Cut, came out in May 2011 -, maybe she was glad to have got all that done. She desperately wanted 50 Words for Snow out in 2011, otherwise she would have waited until winter 2012 to put it out – as the album is very much wintery and would not suite a release at any other point of the year. Here are some exerts of the interview from The Quietus:

“Kate Bush's abilities as a songwriter just get better and better with age. The keen eye that saw a couple’s sex life writ large in their entwining clothes drying on a line in the breeze on ‘Mrs. Bartolozzi’ (Aerial) is at evidently hard at work on every song here. She sees the erotic poetic potential in places other song writers wouldn’t dare look for it. ‘Misty’ is the story of a love affair or one night stand between a snowman and a girl and she has no problem taking this to its soggy but bittersweet conclusion. She inspires a powerful performance out of Elton John on ‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’, as the pair play disembodied lovers, trying to be together for all time despite corporeal disaster constantly wrenching them apart.

Kate Bush: I’m sorry I’m late phoning but I’ve been caught up in another interview that went on for much longer than it should have.

That’s fine. That’s not a problem.

KB: How are you?

I’m great thanks, how are you?

KB: [indecisively] I’m good… [decisively] Yeah! I’m good thanks!

I’ve got a five-month-old boy, he’s my first child so sleep’s at something of a premium. I say this to everyone at the moment because I'm half asleep.

KB: Awwwww!

So obviously looking at the artwork, the track listing, the title, and the lead single ‘Wild Man’ from your new album 50 Words For Snow, it's pretty clear what the theme is. Now culturally snow is really interesting stuff. It can symbolise birth, purity, old age, death, sterility… I was wondering what it means to you.

KB: [laughs derisively] Well, I’ve never heard of it in terms of old age or death… [laughs] That’s quite an opening line. Well, I think it’s really magical stuff. It’s a very unusual, evocative substance and I had really great fun making this record because I love snow.

What are your memories of snow like from childhood? Was playing in the snow something you really looked forward to?

KB: Well… yeah. Do you know any children who don’t look forward to playing in the snow?

I know what you’re saying but there are some who like it more than others…

KB: …

Er…

KB: … Are you knackered?

Yeah.

KB: Have you been up all night?

Yeah, I have.

KB: [laughs uproariously and good naturedly] Well John do you like snow? Don’t you think snow is a thing of wonder and beauty?

I think that if I lived outside of London, maybe in the countryside where it doesn’t turn to a mixture of slush and hazardous black ice, I might like it more. Also, I’m very tall and for whatever reason I just fall over when it’s icy, I always have done. It’s very dangerous I think.

KB: [laughs] Are you a kind of glass half empty kind of guy?

My glass used to be completely dry. Now it’s half empty but I’m working on making it half full… No, I’m joking, of course I like snow, it’s simply marvelous stuff. But obviously there’s been a great thematic shift between Aerial and this album.

KB: Yeah.

So Aerial is full of images of clear skies, still water, warm days and it’s full of the bustle of family life and an easy domesticity. 50 Words For Snow is a similarly beautiful album but there is a chill to it - it lacks the warmth of its predecessor. I wondered if it represented another switch from an autobiographical to a narrative song writing approach?

KB: Yeah, I think it’s much more a kind of narrative story-telling piece. I think one of the things I was playing with on the first three tracks was trying to allow the song structure to evolve the story telling process itself; so that it’s not just squashed into three or four minutes, so I could just let the story unfold.

I’ve only heard the album today so I can’t say I’m completely aware of every nuance but I have picked out a few narrative strands. Would it be fair enough to say that it starts with a birth and ends with a death?

KB: No, not at all. Not to my mind anyway. It may start with a birth but it’s the birth of a snowflake which takes its journey from the clouds to the ground or to this person’s hand. But it’s not really a conceptual piece; it’s more that the songs are loosely held together with this thread of snow.

Fair play. Now some of your fans may have been dismayed to read that there were only seven songs on the album but they should be reassured at this point that the album is 65 minutes long, which makes for fairly long tracks. How long did it take you to write these songs and in the course of writing them did you discard a lot of material?

KB: This has been quite an easy record to make actually and it’s been quite a quick process. And it’s been a lot of fun to make because the process was uninterrupted. What was really nice for me was I did it straight off the back of Director’s Cut, which was a really intense record to make. When I finished it I went straight into making this so I was very much still in that focussed space; still in that kind of studio mentality. And also there was a sense of elation that suddenly I was working from scratch and writing songs from scratch and the freedom that comes with that”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay

There are a lot of interesting things about 50 Words for Snow. Whilst Bush has deployed themes and narratives through other albums, I don’t think she has specifically dedicated a whole album to a subject like snow. Across seven tracks, we get everything from a tryst with a snowman (Misty), Elton John playing Bush’s love who is separated from her through time in various scenes (Snowed in At Wheeler Street), a literal list of fifty words for snow (the title track), and a ghost who rises from a lake in the U.S. (Lake Tahoe). Aside from the final track, Among Angels, there is this snow-themed atmosphere, environment and world that Bush creates. Released in a chilly November in 2011, fans were stunned that Bush released her second album in a year! After almost clearing the snow and re-recording older tracks for Director’s Cut, she was free to plough ahead with fresh endeavour. No surprise that 50 Words for Snow was a chart success in the U.K. Not that any of her studio (or greatest hits/live albums) have charted outside of the top ten, but her tenth studio album got to five. As I have said with albums such as The Sensual World, you would have thought 50 Words for Snow would be embraced more heartily by other nations. To be fair, it reached ten in Netherlands, eight in Finland, and twelve in Switzerland. It also got to the top twenty in Belgium and Ireland. Other counties did not take to the album quite as hard as those I have mentioned. Not that this signals any sort of failure with the album. Quite the reverse! In fact, it is amazing to see that Bush’s music resonates so much and widely so many years after her debut.  

The final part of the final feature for 50 Words for Snow ahead of its eleventh anniversary on 21st November. Sixty-five minutes of bliss, this is the current Kate Bush studio album. She released the live album of her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn, in 2016, but 50 Words for Snow is the latest studio album. I have raised the question many times, but it does provoke fans to ask when, if at all, we might get an eleventh studio album from our favourite artist. There has been activity in terms of Bush’s music being used on Stranger Things earlier this year. Because of the Netflix series, 2022 has actually been on her most successful and busiest. We have seen so many news features, and she even provided an interview to Woman’s Hour. Nobody knows for sure but, as 50 Words for Snow was such a phenomenal album right up there with her best week, of course there is huge appetite for more music! In terms of what it would sound like, one would not expect it to vary too much from 50 Words for Snow. It is not as though Kate Bush is going to go back years and give us an album similar to The Dreaming! I think, as much as anything, Kate Bush fans around the world wish her health and happiness in 2023! That said, it would be a wonderful treat if something, anything, were to come from her music-wise. With quite a few of her albums celebrating anniversaries this month, 50 Words for Snow’s eleventh on 21st is one of the most significant. Kate Bush has produced so many remarkable albums through the years. The sublime, dreamy, wonderous and hugely moving 50 Words for Snow is…

AS brilliant as you’d imagine.

FEATURE: Live and Let Die? A Potential Decline in Live Music and Exodus of Artists from the Industry

FEATURE:

 

 

Live and Let Die?

IN THIS PHOTO: Little Simz/PHOTO CREDIT: Jamie Hawkesworth for The Gentlewoman

A Potential Decline in Live Music and Exodus of Artists from the Industry

__________

IT is a hard time for everyone…

 PHOTO CREDIT: djswingkid/Unsplash

and, because of a combination of things, people are struggling more and having to budget in a way they have never done. This extends to energy bills, food, and non-essentials. There are reasons why things are so bleak, especially in the U.K. The invasion of Ukraine has caused impact regarding energy prices/supply and food. This Government has mishandled things and they are leading the country into darkness (perhaps literally come the winter!). For everyday people, life is a lot harder than it has ever been. Of course, this extends to music. There are a couple of recent articles from The Guardian that show the damage that is being done to the industry. For many artists, touring is the only way they can make money. Album sales and merchandise and important sources of revenue but, if they cannot afford to tour and travel, this means that their livelihoods and futures are at risk. After the woe of the pandemic and the damage that did to live music – what with artists and fans unable to see one another -, there is a new tsunami that threatens to do irrevocable damage! For many, live performance now is for exposure. Many artists are touring and losing money; perhaps doing the thing they love to give something to fans at the detriment to their own pockets and welfare. That is a huge sacrifice at a time when live music should be supported and giving a big lifeline. It helps to many people and provides community and connection when we sorely need it! The Guardian reported worrying news and testimonies for their feature last month:

“There was no single last straw that caused Santigold to pull the dates behind her new album, Spirituals. “It was a buildup of factors over the last 10 years,” she says. The rise of streaming was a key issue: a stressor that forced musicians to find other ways to make money. “All of a sudden you constantly had to do social media to keep marketing yourself, find out what you can sell, get branding deals, do private gigs,” she says. “It’s almost undoable.”

Then came the pandemic, which stopped gigs and heightened the demand for artists to self-promote. Once restrictions lifted, musicians resumed touring rabidly. “You rush back out and everyone’s rushing out,” says Santigold. “So I had a tour that had me making no profit – and possibly a loss – and the only incentive was to stay in the public eye. And that’s the biggest fear for any musician: if you are not constantly in people’s faces you will not last.”

 IN THIS PHOTO: Santigold

For years it has been apparent that stresses in the live music industry needed to be addressed. The constant gripes about ticket prices suggested the finances were not working for anyone: from fans feeling they were being taken advantage of, especially with the introduction of dynamic pricing, to artists seeing ticket spend lining the pockets of touts and resellers. During the pandemic, some promoters I spoke to hoped that the pause in live performance might lead to a conversation about lowering artists’ fees. No one is winning.

The situation now is even grimmer, given the lifting of restrictions and the current economic crisis. British acts are facing the costs of Brexit on European touring, while Britain, always the short straw of the international touring circuit, with its low fees and mediocre artist support, is less appealing than ever for visiting acts. Audiences are feeling the pinch and the cost of touring utilities and infrastructure has risen.

“The supply is much more limited because so many people went out of business during the pandemic,” says Sumit Bothra, managing director of ATC Management, Europe, which has PJ Harvey and Katie Melua among its roster. “On top of that, a lot of venues closed, and a lot of promoters went out of business, so there’s increased demand there. A 20-date tour might now have to be a 10-date tour. And you need talented crew to put a show together, and a lot of crew left the business during the pandemic.” (It’s impossible to overstate how deep the effects of the pandemic run: earlier this year, the head of one arena show production business told me there was a real problem with finding the correct-sized bolts to construct a stage.).

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Anchoress/PHOTO CREDIT: Lily Warring

The bottleneck of artists returning to the road has also made it challenging to route tours sensibly, one key way to keep a tour viable. It’s not just about the geography making sense – driving from London to Glasgow via Manchester rather than Southampton – but ensuring that days off are minimal since the crew still have to be paid and the artists still need per diems. With venues booked up, that is much harder now, says Mike Malak, an agent with Wasserman Music, who books Billie Eilish, Kelis and Pusha T, among others. “If you’re trying to put together a tour in Europe, if you don’t plan a year in advance, you can’t get the beautiful routing you want. A lot of artists are now accepting they might have to go a couple of days off or go longer distances between shows, which might mean two drivers – another cost.”

Artists’ fees, meanwhile, have remained the same, or worse. Catherine Anne Davies, who tours and records as the Anchoress, says she has had offers that were half the pre-pandemic level, despite acclaim for her 2021 album The Art of Losing. “When I toured my first album, every show made a loss,” she says, “but you’re building something and you think, next year we might do better. We’re not even starting from zero now, though. We’re starting from minus 20.” Maybe she could make it up by working her merch table harder, she says, but then she exposes herself to an increased risk of catching Covid – which would mean cancelling more shows, with no insurance to make up the shortfall”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Billie Eilish/PHOTO CREDIT: Kelia Anne MacCluskey

There are still issues when it comes to streaming platforms paying artists fairly. This is not a sustainable or realistic source of income for most artists. Where do artists get their money so they can keep touring and play live? Is the Government willing to let live music die?! It is shocking to read! Things will recover at some point, yet there needs to be more injection of money to the industry than has been suggested. I am sure there is an instant support package in place, but there is an urgency and need for realistic and sustained financing to ensure that artists can perform live. Of course, things are not as simple as that. It is an almost impossible situation now where artists are in the same boat as everyone else and are struggling to stay afloat. Another article from The Guardian this week heaped more misery on music fans. Not only is live music under threat, but thee is a possibility that so many artists will leave the industry! In spite of some bad news and potential disaster, there is potential light at the end of the tunnel:

“About 98% of musicians are worried about how the cost of living crisis will affect their career, new research shows. The study, by charity Help Musicians, reveals that half of the 525 UK artists surveyed are “extremely” or “very” concerned they’ll be forced to leave the industry.

As living costs soar, 91% say they are unable to afford music equipment and 90% of UK musicians are worried about affording food with their current income. Meanwhile, the hike in energy and fuel costs is making travelling to gigs and heating rehearsal spaces difficult for many.

The issue of rising costs has compounded with the ongoing effects of Brexit and the pandemic, according to Help Musicians CEO James Ainscough.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Animal Collective/PHOTO CREDIT: Hisham Bharoocha

“Musicians came into 2022 with quite an uphill battle,” he says. “As they rebuild their careers, what they’re finding is not only rampant inflation driving up the cost of working, but also the whole other set of factors that have stacked against them: they can still get ill with Covid and have to cancel shows, audiences haven’t all returned to pre-pandemic levels, there are touring challenges thanks to the Brexit deal, which makes it harder to build your career with audiences outside the UK. All these things together create a really brutal environment.”

The research shows that 60% of musicians say they are earning less than they were a year ago, while eight in 10 have reported earning less than before the pandemic.

“It’s a set of circumstances I don’t think musicians have ever seen before,” Ainscough says.

The new financial pressures are affecting musicians across the world. Last month, Animal Collective cancelled their UK and Europe tour dates due to increased costs. “From inflation, to currency devaluation, to bloated shipping and transportation costs … we simply could not make a budget for this tour that did not lose money even if everything went as well as it could,” the band wrote in a statement.

Animal Collective is just one in a series of bands and musicians cancelling upcoming tours for this reason. Metronomy also cited costs when cancelling their US dates; earlier this year, Mercury prize winner Little Simz said it made no sense financially for her to tour the US.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Metronomy

Independent venues and fans are also experiencing barriers due to rising costs. Faced with growing bills, the country’s smaller institutions are having to downscale operations and contemplate redundancies, while rising ticket prices to account for losses mean that listeners are getting “priced out” of live music.

The implications for the economy and culture more generally could be pronounced, says Ainscough: “Music is a highly successful industry in the UK. Pre-pandemic, it was worth well over £5bn a year to our economy. As an industrial sector, as something that represents Britain, we need to make sure that we don’t see it wither from the grassroots up.”

He adds: “We need music: it lifts our souls, it brings people together. It’s in everybody’s interests to make sure that we don’t have a whole bunch of highly talented musicians leave the profession over the next six to 12 months. The impact could last years and years.”

Help Musicians’ data shows that derailed careers and financial stresses are also having a knock-on impact on wellbeing. Of those surveyed, 68% say their mental health is worse than before the pandemic and Help Musicians has seen a 34% increase in calls to its support services this year.

In response to the findings, the charity has pledged to invest £8m into services that will support musicians this year, including 24/7 mental health support, mentoring, funding for touring and debt management services.

Ainscough hopes that these efforts, along with sector-specific support from the government and increased public uptake in live music will make a difference. “We can not only save the music scene but leave it in great health ready for 2023 and beyond”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Wet Leg/PHOTO CREDIT: Parri Thomas for NME

In the same way as financial aid helped venues and artists during the pandemic, a similar pledge and effort needs to come into effect – as it seems like it will – to safeguard venues and artists again. It is worrying to hear that so many are thinking of leaving because they cannot afford to make music and get so little back. Having to work regular jobs and maybe so music more as a hobby, it is devastating to consider what impact that will have wider afield. I also feel that the state of live music – whereby artists are not earning enough to sustain themselves – and it being more of a chance for exposure rather than earning money is another troubling fact! There is a definite disparity between mainstream artists and newer acts. Even so, big acts like Little Simz are feeling the strain. Artists are also pushing themselves and touring more than normal to make ends meet and pleaser their fans. This has a troubling effect on mental health. Earlier this year, artists including Wet Leg and Sam Fender announced they would be cancelling gigs to focus on their mental health. In the same way it shouldn’t be the case artists are having to quit what they love because they can’t afford to keep going, they also shouldn’t be struggling as they are in terms of mental health and gigs. There are bodies that provide mental health support, but it is worrying that the industry is seeing artists push themselves so much. I hope that 2023 offers greater stability and hope. There will be damage, as many artists will quit the industry and many will scale down their gigs. Let’s hope that financial assistance will mean that there is hope for live music and the industry at large next year! So much troubling news is coming out at a time when we need musicians and their talent now more than ever! Musicians are so vital to all of us, and live music is so important! Let us hope that we do not…

LET it die.