Kate Bush, eh? can’t beat a bit of safe 80’s pop music.
Yup, Kate Bush did it again with Experiment IV, a brilliantly weird non LP single released in 1986 to trail her The Whole Story greatest hits effort, in sweetly contemptuous defiance of any commercial logic, because behind the doe-eyed soft focus of this sleeve a strange and troubling beastie lurks.
We were working secretly for the military
Our experiment in sound was nearly ready to begin
We only know in theory what we are doing
Music made for pleasure, music made to thrill
It was music we were making here until
They told us all they wanted
Was a sound that could kill someone from a distance
It’s a wonderful supple pulsing track, the only credited musicians are guitar, drums and violin, although there are certainly keys on it, if not bass*. Wearisome buffoon though he is, Nigel Kennedy’s playing on ‘Experiment IV’ is a thing of joy, he swoops, stoops and soars into the mix occasionally, sparingly and adds real touches of emotional depth to the music. Bush’s, mostly, sweet vocals and the measured drama of the piece belie it’s essentially unpleasant tale of scientists developing sonic weapons for the military; subject matter doesn’t get much more commercial than that surely?!
From the painful cries of mothers to
The terrifying scream
We recorded it and put it into our machine…..
It is as Kate as Kate could be, nobody else could, would, or should ever have recorded anything as singular as this. It is also a bit of a hidden masterpiece** given its lack of placement on any of her studio albums. The 12″ version wins out massively over the shorter single version, there’s just more of everything I like about this single on it, unlike an awful lot of 80’s 12″s it doesn’t sound like it has been needlessly stretched out to fill the format. All this and she borrowed the helicopter sound at the end from her friend Dave Gilmour care of ‘The Happiest days of Their Lives’.
I had never seen the video of Kate Bush Experiment IV before today and that’s not surprising, it was banned by the BBC and deemed too violent for tea-time transmission; it’s all a bit Quatermass & The Pit to me. The cameos from Dawn French, Hugh Laurie and Peter Vaughan are good and I find myself yearning for Kate dressed up as an orderly.
I actually bought Experiment IV as a cheap way to get my calloused mitts on Kate’s Christmas song ‘December Will Be Magic Again’, another single only release from 1980. If you don’t know it, you should. I can be a bit of a sucker for Christmas songs^ and this is a real beauty, Kate Bush at her dippiest and most inventive – swooping melodies, all the odd trills and frills. I know it’s only 18 September but a caught a slight Christmas on listening to this recently, which for a man as jaded as I am is no mean feat.
The historian in me bridled at the fact that Experiment IV included a new vocal version of ‘Wuthering Heights’. It’s a bit shite really. The vocal is less nasal and shrill, less energetic and more studied, a bit more ordinary – not a word that should ever come near a song so singularly extraordinary as this. My main problem with it is the mix, the new vocals just seem to have been dropped into the middle of the mix and they sound strangely muted and gated in that mysterious way that things from 1986 often do. I shrug it off as a rare misstep.
Overall, wonderful, a hamsterpiece. Now where’s that orderly? it’s about time I had some tea.
796 Down.
*tired old ears.
**I’m not going to get into the whole ‘masterpiece’ vs. ‘mistresspiece’ debate that was raging in literary criticism when I was at university, if pushed I will simply adopt the gender neutral alternative ‘hamsterpiece’. True story.
^Wat Tyler Where’s Me Fuckin’ Presents? being a particular favourite Christmas single of mine. Hail Satan!
Good one.
Oh man I thought you were gonna ask the orderly for your sponge bath, not some tea.
Admittedly I don’t know much about Kate Bush except the hits, although I worked with a guy years ago who said he really wanted to get into Kate’s Bush. Er.
I will send all of the Christmas songs for you. Personally, I think they are the muzak on Dante’s levels of hell.
Tea first, sponge bath afterwards.
You don’t like Christmas songs?! Man you’d make a shite elf!
Excellent combination of the orderly’s efforts!
I truly don’t like Christmas songs. I’m not a grinch, I like the family and people-together aspect of Christmas. I don’t really need the religious or consumerism aspects, but I can eat Christmas dinner with everyone at the table for sure. But Christmas songs? No thanks, they set my teeth on edge. In no small way, they make me LESS jolly at Christmas. So I suppose I would make a really shite elf, yeah!
A definite hamsterpiece for the ages.
I see what you did there.
All sounds very wonderful, but I’ve just never understood it all. Maybe cause my mum likes her… or maybe just cause it just doesn’t do anything for me.
Heretic! I think she’s just incredibly talented and creative, so much of what she does/did nobody else could ever do.
My mum was very into her too, used to play ‘Lionheart’ a lot.
See, I tried again, but it’s just not for me.
I’ll give you the pun “Katermass and the Pit” as a present. You can use it on a future review.
Never heard this but I do like a bit of Bush (titter ye not). Shame she’s a dirty Tory!
I love you! That’s perfect. Now I shall delete your comment and pretend I grew that title in my own head.
I think you’d love this one and yes, I agree on her political views.
A bit of bush, titter and dirty in the same response.
Nice.
We got it all going on down here at 1537.
Kate does Sonic Attack, eh? Fascinating. Amazing vid. Love the name of the shop front near the end.
I thought I had Ms Bush covered pretty well*, but this is news to me. Great stuff.
* Cue ‘nudge nudge’ joke, but really to mention the CD single Rocket Man/Candle in the Wind, probably my only Kate rarity. Or maybe it’s not rare. Dunno.
I hadn’t thought of that at all! You’re bang on, it is ‘Sonic Attack’, albeit a bit lusher and with fewer references to orgasm and wheels.
Arggh! Elton John! No, it burns!!
I know, I know. But if you focus on the visage of Ms Bush, the pain fades away.
I don’t think I’m smart enough for Kate Bush. In fact I know so. I took the Kate Bush IQ test in the early 90s and I scored so low that Ms. Bush contacted me directly and told me never to listen to her or buy any of her music again or there would be Hell to pay.
Hell, she said.
I’m sorry Mr H. Not all of us can be chosen.
I’ll take my oversized head and undersized intellect and go home.
Hamsterpiece.
Sounds like something you found on an old roll of Richard Gere’s duct tape.
Mwah-ha-ha! I’ve ben chuckling to myself all day over this. True story.
I’m glad someone enjoys my humour. Now I can tell that one to my mother-in-law as an ice breaker. I need to get back in her good books.
I skipped Kate in the 80’s. Actually, I don’t think I could have named song until now.
You have brought shame on your famly.
I know!! I am ashamed and embarrassed.
Is there a ‘masterpiece’ vs. ‘mistresspiece’ debate? I missed that one.
In early 1990’s literary criticism there was. I still think my suggestion rules. But there again I’m just an incorrigible egotist.
You’re an incorrigible hamsterist.
I don’t deny it.
Yup, one of her very best songs and it’s not on any of her albums. It’s an interesting bridge between Hounds of Love and Sensual World too – it feels halfway between those to my ears.
Couldn’t agree more. The weirdness of The Dreaming is in there too but hidden behind the melody.
This is my Kate Bush top ten songs from my blog:
Cloudbusting
Wuthering Heights
Nocturn
Moments of Pleasure
Love and Anger
Running Up That Hill
Night of the Swallow
Breathing
Experiment IV
Snowed In At Wheeler Street
What no ‘In the warm Room’, or ‘Man With the Child in his Eyes’?!! Shame on you!
Never really got into Lionheart much, but Man With The Child… would probably be #11.
I’d also shoehorn ‘How to be Invisible’ in there somehow, that’s a monstrously good track too.