To celebrate 20 years of the Aerial album, we’re putting together a time capsule each day this week leading up to November 7th (the release date anniversary). It’s a daily miscellany of the events, people and objects that relate to Kate’s extraordinary eighth studio album. We can’t believe it’s been two decades, for so many of us this still feels like a “new” album, and the album’s beautiful gifts just keep revealing themselves…
Aerial – Happening of the day
Kate’s new single King of the Mountain, the only one she would release from Aerial, was played for the first time on BBC Radio 2’s Ken Bruce show on Wednesday 21st September, 2005. The 12th September issue of Music Week had described the song: “This rhythmic gem grows and grows from an almost electronic-sounding start to suggest that the wait has been well worth it.” It was a heart-pounding experience for fans to take in the first new music from Kate in over a decade.
The single was released on October 24th 2005 on 7″ vinyl picture disc, CD single and it was also Kate’s first digital single release. The B-side was a cover of Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing, featuring the uilleann piper, Davey Spillane. Initially recorded in the 1990s for inclusion on his album, A Place Among the Stones, it was left off the record as it didn’t fit in with the rest of the tracks. and Kate acquired the rights to the recording. It was a playful extra treat on her comeback single. Some unofficial dance remixes would follow, but Kate didn’t produce any 12″ or extended mixes of the song. The cover art of the King on his mountain top is a drawing by her son Bertie.
Kate’s new official site had a landing page with King of the Mountain information, lyrics and some Flash animations using Bertie’s cover artwork – see what it looked like below:
The song, her first single since And So Is Love eleven years before, was a success, charting in the UK at number 4, becoming Kate’s first top-10 single in nearly 20 years (since “Don’t Give Up”, her duet with Peter Gabriel, reached number nine in 1986). The single also reached the top five in Canada and Finland and charted in several other countries. It was her 25th Top 40 UK hit!
In the USA Kate’s new single was a smash hit on alternative and college radio stations in the USA, The Filter Weekly Radio Chart (Filter Magazine’s compilation of their favourite college, indie and modern rock and Adult Album Alternative stations around the country) had Kate is at number 1 in their Top Fifty Singles chart.
Reviews: The Sun made the single their Single Of The Week on 21st October, rating it 5 out of 5 and devoting a whole page to Kate, reviewing every single album also: “a magnum opus of almost five minutes filled with sophisticated beats, swirling synths and typically oblique lyrics. Happily Kate’s voice doesn’t sound the least bit rusty. It’s a ravishing comeback.”
Top Of The Pops give the single a 4-star review: “Right pop kids, get yer thinking caps on for a quick lesson in pop amazingness. Although Her Royal Bushness isn’t your usual quirky pop sproglett (in fact, in pop terms she’s positively ancient at 47!), she paved the way for pretty much every kooky and thoroughly unique female singer since. Anyhow, ‘King of The Mountain’ – her first single release in 12 years – has the usual Bush trademarks stomped all over it. Soaring fruity vocals, thought-provoking lyrics, a driving rhythm and gorgeous electronic twiddlings make this a gem of a song. But if jiggling your booty and punching the air is your thing, you’ll probably hate it!”
Heat magazine gave the single a 4 star review: “Great excitement awaits the first single in 12 years from eccentric icon Kate Bush. Fans won’t be disappointed with a song that flies from whispering electronic pulses to a finale of billowing melodies, edgy guitars and windswept choruses.” Gigwise also liked the track: “Now children you may think it’s a bit sad to like a track by an artist that your Dad fancied over twenty years ago, but Kate Bush deserves your attention. In a era of identikit pop stars we should thank our lucky stars that Bush has come back from the abyss to grace us with her presence and with ‘King of the Mountain’ she doesn’t disappoint. Five minutes of Bush’s eerily beautiful voice and a windswept ethereal melody proves truly mesmerising. Simplistic in the extreme it may be, but a great comeback it is also.”
The Manchester Evening News rated the single 4 out of 5 and said: “It sees her embarking on a slow ascent towards a suitable ethereal peak, synthesized wind, drums and gentle music providing a worthy companion for those familiar haunted vocals. As the title also suggests, this is something more epic than the chart-friendly numbers which she was once known for. One way of summing it up is to say that it is one of those songs which had you turn out the lights, close the curtains and sit in the dark when testing out your early CD player, and it sets the scene for a towering comeback by one of the country’s finest talents”
The UK’s Metro paper said: “With its references to Citizen Kane and Elvis, the first outing in 12 years by the mighty Bush is as strange, haunting and surreal as you’d expect. Hardly a karaoke fave but her three-octave warble is treat enough. 4 out of 5.” Rolling Stone gave King Of The Mountain their 4-star rating: “After twelve years of silence from influential U.K. eccentric Bush, her fans are setting the Internet aflame with their joy at hearing her airy proto-Tori Amos vocals again. But even newcomers can appreciate this grandiose comeback, which veers pleasurably from spooky electronic pop to majestic, reggae-inflected rock.”
Dotmusic rated the single 8 out of 10: “Built around a revolving, processed xylophone mantra and some spaced-out guitar FX, Bush’s enigmatic entrance from the fog is initially so vague and indecipherable as to conclude that she surely hasn’t been frantically scribbling lyrics for the past decade. However, the track soon shifts powerfully into billowing clarity in a thunder crack of atmospheric, elemental power, whispers of “the snow in Rosebud” and claims that we may in fact be talking about Elvis Presley here. While not exactly “Wuthering Heights” – but then, nothing is – “King Of The Mountain” marks the absurdly long-awaited return of a singular force.”
Billboard in the US on the single: “Her first work in 12 years is predictably ethereal, mosaic and nonconformist. That is to say that it takes several listens to fathom what is going on, and even then, it is a best guess. But there is that voice: angelic, fragile and ever bewitching. It is all about atmosphere here.”
Aerial – Person of the day
Kate’s music video for King of the Mountain received its first airing on the UK’s Channel 4 on the 15th October 2005, screened specially by the channel outside of normal programming. It was directed by Jimmy Murakami and produced by Michael Algar, edited at The Farm (Dublin) by Hugh Chaloner with flame and 3D effects by Niall O hOisin, Arron Inglis, Brian O’Durnin and Mark from Australia.
The official description on launch of the video: “Kate’s new video opens with an atmospheric black and white impression of Charles Kane’s empty mansion full of priceless junk, whilst newspaper headlines about Elvis swirl by. Kate is glimpsed until she is seen singing and swaying to the music. A ghostly Elvis suit dances with Kate before taking wing with the Canada Geese to Shangri-La where an elderly Elvis hides in the snowy mountains with Kane’s famous sledge Rosebud.”
Jimmy passed away in 2014, at the age of 80. He was an American animator and film director with a long career working in numerous countries, ultimately basing himself in Dublin, Ireland. Among his best-known works are the animated adaptations of the Raymond Briggs books When the Wind Blows and The Snowman. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for The Magic Pear Tree (1968).
Before directing Kate’s video for King of the Mountain in 2005, he had previously had discussions with her about directing a video for an early version of the song, The Sensual World. Speaking to Graeme Thomson in the biography of Kate, Under The Ivy, he recalls hearing the early version of Kate’s song using Joyce’s words before she was originally refused permission.
“Jeez, it was a stunning record,” says Jimmy Murakami, director of the animated classics The Snowman and When The Wind Blows and, later, Bush’s 2005 video for ‘King Of The Mountain’. “Kate came to me in the late Eighties when I had a commercial studio in Dublin. She wanted me to do a video promo on this song, this beautiful music for James Joyce’s lines for Molly Bloom. I went over to her house in England and she played this track and it was absolutely fantastic. It was done.”
Nearly 20 years later, Kate produced storyboards and held lengthy meetings with Jimmy, choosing not to direct this clip unlike her previous visuals for The Red Shoes. The video traces the journey of Elvis’s jumpsuit, from a spangly wardrobe, across a very Aerial-esque sky (spot the shirts from Mrs Bartolozzi waving) and back to the arms of an elderly Elvis Presley up on the mountain, riding a sled named Rosebud, the song’s nod to the film Citizen Kane. Another nod to Aerial are the feathers in Kate’s hair. Kate kept the replica Rosebud sleigh built for the video, as a present for her then 7-year old son, Bertie.
Graeme Thomson noted: “The video itself, shot in London on September 15th and 16th, 2005, was created using live animation techniques rather than a 3D computer because, says Murakami, Bush felt “computers don’t have that human quality.” She was closely involved in crafting the story.”
Aerial – Artefact of the day
(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)
King of the Mountain was released on October 24th on 7″ vinyl and CD. Below is the very nice ‘Limited Edition’ picture disc release in twice-stickered PVC wallet sleeve, manufactured primarily for the UK and Ireland but also distributed in Europe.
The CD single was issued in a card sleeve with card lyrics inner sleeve and picture CD, manufactured primarily for the UK and Ireland but also distributed across Europe.
In other territories the CD single popped up in a slim jewel case in Europe with insert and picture CD, which was also stickered and imported into Canada.
And we’re very jealous of those who have one of these! This is a prototype picture disc release in stickered PVC wallet sleeve, manufactured using signed (by Kate) paper picture labels and personally gifted by Kate, 10 copies only are known to exist…
Aerial – Trivia of the day
Five years after the release of the album, in 2010 Aerial was reissued on CD by EMI in the UK and Europe and by Columbia in the USA, with the songs on A Sky of Honey now programmed to run together on the disc with no breaks. This was to coincide with the debut of Aerial on the iTunes digital store. The side was re-titled “An Endless Sky of Honey” and the hype sticker proclaimed it was “reconfigured for the digital world”. Even the titles on the back cover were all merged into one. Kate also released the CD album in this format when she launched her Fish People record label in 2011, emphasising her desire for the piece to be appreciated and listened to as a single work.
The launch of the Endless Sky of Honey version of Aerial on iTunes in 2010 was accompanied by an announcement on Kate’s official website on the 11th May 2010: “We are pleased to announce that as from mid-May, Aerial, Kate’s most recent album, will be available to download from iTunes for the first time, including a version of ‘A Sky Of Honey’ that now runs as one piece of music, which is how it was always intended to be heard. With special thanks to David Munns.”
However, since her Remastered project in 2018, Kate seemingly had a re-think and reverted to presenting the songs on CD as separate, individual tracks again. Aerial would have another transformation in 2018 as Albert McIntosh (Bertie) was inserted into the album to become the new ‘Painter’.
Aerial – Bird of the day
Included in the lyrics of Prologue (Before the Dawn), the Mistle Thrush is about the same size as a Blackbird. Has a very upright stance in comparison to either Song thrush or Blackbird. The face is white with some black markings, while the eye has a distinct white eyering. The crown, nape and back of the Mistle Thrush are plain brown. The throat and upper part are white with some black streaks. This is bordered by a brownish smudge across the breast, with the rest of the underparts white with black spots. The rump is pale grey-brown, while the tail is brown – the outer tail feathers being white. The legs are pink in contrast to the dark colouring of the Fieldfare.
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