Or rather, How do you keep an idiot suspended in gaffa?
Kate Bush’s new album cover reportedly contains a hidden message that fans are desperate to decode. Bush’s first album in more than a decade entitled ‘Aerial' has a soundwave image on the artwork that contains the cryptic message, apparently it is a “visual representation of spoken, or sung words over music.”It'd be funny if the message was revealed to be "Paul is dead".
No one would get it though.
Kate Bush has always been part-singer/part-performance artist so this is typical of her. her music has never been just about the tunes, btu everything else it is also wrapped up in. Her stuff goes better live I think, where you can see her interpretations. I always have to consider that aspect of her Pink Floyd-ish music when I listen to her less accessible work.
Marrionette covers some of the intended (and unintended) depth of Kate's work on her blog recently with her usual insight.
About the audio-track art:
Back in the pre-digital days audio was recorded on the film and read by the projector directly from the film. Soon the audio track will dissapear as more theaters convert to digital sound and film bu tit is still used on the prints today as back up against digital equipment failure and for theaters that don't have not yet upgraded their projection systems.
One of the best uses of the audio imagery made 'real' was in Disney's head-trip The Three Caballeros. In the animated/live action film guitar strings vibrate and strum in bizarre hallucenagenic scenes. I recommend this film from the era of the insane, drug-addicted Disney animators, but you do need the patience of a saint for some parts.
I don't get as excited about music as I used to, and I guess that is because of age (I refuse to admit to maturity). I really used to care who did what and when it would come out and with who. So since I'm looking forward to something new from Kate it must be nostalgia.
I'm not sure it's fair to say that Kate Bush works better live - on video, perhaps. But to my knowledge she's only ever done one live tour. It's showing my age to reveal that the recording of "Live at Hammersmith" actually features me in the second row. I still have the orchid she gave me, somewhere.
ReplyDeleteHer kind of interpretive dance is a bit too energetic to leave much breath for singing and so is much more effective on video. I recommend "The Line, the Cross and the Curve" if you really want to see her doing her stuff.
I've managed to successfully decipher the soundwaves on the cover of Aerial, and I'm afraid they say,
ReplyDelete"Fooled you, suckers: this album isn't coming out till 2013"
The LAH video was the performance I was thinking of. And I do enjoy her videos for the most part, strange as they may be. Again, very performance art.
ReplyDeleteAnd the 'fooled you' bit would be a great hoax.