Category: Aerial 20th Anniversary

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

Having seemingly decided that she no longer wanted to conduct filmed interviews to promote her work, the arrival of the Aerial album saw Kate embracing the medium of radio with gusto in 2005. It set a pattern for all her subsequent promotion. As well as selected press interviews, Director’s Cut, 50 Words For Snow, the Before The Dawn live album, the success of Running Up That Hill in 2022 and more recently her Little Shrew animation last year, have all been accompanied by memorable radio chats, most often on her favourite BBC Radio stations.

Sometimes she even rewarded a particularly robust campaign for an interview on behalf of a presenter – we salute you, Mark Radcliffe! As early as August 2004, the BBC Radio 2 DJ had been making constant Kate references ever since somebody picked her record for the Crucial Three feature on his show. Mark, a fan of Kate’s work, duly began a “Bush-o-meter” in studio which he’d appraise listeners of daily (showing how many days he’d been waiting to get a reply from Kate to appear on the show or just call in!).

Eventually, his patience was rewarded. Kate, tickled by his very vocal on-air campaign, gave him an extensive interview which was broadcast as an hour long special, “Talking with Kate“, on the day of Aerial’s release. It was recorded at her house and she treated Mark to a nice cheese flan. You can hear it in full above.

Kate also spoke at length to John Wilson on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row programme, and she would go on to grant Wilson (and Mark Radcliffe) further interviews for her two 2011 albums also, Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow. In both Aerial interviews you can hear how relaxed and happy Kate sounds, an artist who had nailed exactly how she wanted to conduct her career away from the glare of ‘celebrity’ nonsense. You can hear Kate’s full chat with John Wilson, recorded in the penthouse suite at Abbey Road studios, below:

Kate also gave a radio interview to Hugo Cassavetti on Radio France on November 11th, 2005, on a show hosted by Bernard Lenoir. You can read a transcript of this conversation here. In it she spoke about paintings and the visuals her new music may evoke in a listener:

“I love paintings… I LOVE paintings. I really get a buzz out of seeing a beautiful painting, and it’s something I can’t do. But I suppose in a way, I think of it being more of a kind of moving image…what I do, because it’s connected with the unfolding of time. It’s much more like a movie where, in a lot of ways it is visual for me. I don’t see colours or anything like that. I know some people do. It’s more like… I remember saying this to somebody once… and it sounds so pretentious… but I do think there are comparisons. It’s almost like the lead voice is…the leading actor. And then you got all these other things, that actually sort of become the scenery, do you know what I mean? And actually somebody said that, when they heard the second disc on this record, and it was just about the biggest compliment I’ve ever had… they said “it wasn’t like listening to record, it was like watching a movie or something” and I thought that was so great!”

Aerial – Person of the day

Lol Creme is an English musician and music video director, best known for his work in the band 10cc, known for their signature hit single I’m Not in Love. He was later one half of the pop duo Godley & Creme, with 10cc drummer Kevin Godley. Lol Creme has collaborated with Trevor Horn’s Band. He sings and plays guitar, bass and keyboards.

On the Aerial album Lol sings backing vocals on π (Pi) and on Nocturn. On his fan page in 2005 he wrote: “…as for Kate’s album, I’m on album 1, track 2, singing the chorus on ‘pi’, and on album 2, the end of the track called ‘Nocturn’…I must say I keep the second album going round and round in my car, it’s very easy on the ear…”

Kate had crossed paths with Lol and his collaborator Kevin Godley on a number of occasions – by the 1980s the pair were highly regarded and influential video directors. Kevin Godley told The Guardian how they became a duo: “Lol Creme and I left 10cc at the height of the success because we felt things were starting to become repetitive. We came from an art school background and we were thinking visually. Even at that stage, there were two film-makers waiting to come out.”

Kate worked with Kevin Godley when he directed her video for The Man I Love (her duet with Larry Adler in 1994). She wrote about it on her official site in 2019 when The Other Sides CD compilation was released. “It was released as a single and Kevin Godley directed the video. I loved working with Kevin –  so imaginative and great fun.”

“I’d worked with him and Lol Creme when they directed the video for Peter Gabriel’s song, Don’t Give Up. Kevin chose to present the video in a very traditional way which suited the song extremely well. Godley and Creme are huge talents who left their mark not just in the music industry with their intelligence and wit in the band 10CC but also in the visual world with their groundbreaking videos, working with an impressive list of diverse artists.“

For their hit single Cry, Godley and Creme made a famous video where, according to Kevin they “picked loads of faces from a casting book and filmed them all singing (the song). Some said they could lip-sync but couldn’t, but it all looked great in 35mm black and white. This was before morphing, so we used these things called “wipes” which meant one face could dissolve into another. A man might turn into a woman or a punk into an old person, creating an entity that didn’t exist before. It felt magical. Of course, Lol and my faces are in it. Our “plan B” ended up becoming one of the most talked about videos of the 1980s.”

Aerial – Artefact of the day

(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)

While sadly for collectors no single sheet music was ever issued for King of the Mountain, a beautifully produced Aerial sheet music book (ISBN 0571525083) was published in the UK for the Aerial album in January 2006 by Faber Music.

It is generously illustrated with album artwork and contains piano transcriptions for all the songs including vocal line and guitar chord boxes. All in all it’s a beautiful companion book to the album – well worth picking up if you can get it for a decent price.

Aerial – Trivia of the day

As part of the bird-themed imagery found in the booklet that accompanies the Aerial album, Kate used a striking image by photographer Randy Olson to accompany the lyrics to her song Nocturn. The image shows a hunter in Pakistan wearing a bird decoy mask, which was featured on the cover of National Geographic Magazine in June 2000 (Volume 197, No.6). Kate liked the image so much that she also made it the cover of her Remastered Part II CD box set in 2018.

In the set of images Olson took, men lure wild birds near them, wiggle their heads to mimic a swimming bird and then capture them by hand. This method was used 3,300 BC as shown on artifacts that show this style of hunting. The Indus river valley maintains some surprising remnants of its ancient culture. A stone’s throw from the largest intact Harappan Site (Mohenjo Daro), Mohanis fishermen use the exact style of flat-bottom boat depicted in terra cotta and stone tablets 4,600 years old, and a group of bird hunters still practice a 5,000-year-old method of catching birds.

Hunters tie pet herons to a hoop in the river, and then submerge to their necks in the water wearing masks made from real bird skins. They wiggle their heads to mimic a swimming bird and then grab any prey that lands nearby. We know this is the ancient method they used to hunt birds because there are artifacts that show bird hunting that go back to 3,300 BC.

Randy Olson is a photographer in the social-documentary tradition. He often works with his wife, Melissa Farlow, and their assignments have taken them to over 50 countries in the past 30 years. Although they are published in LIFE, GEO, Smithsonian and other magazines, they have primarily photographed projects for National Geographic magazine. See more of their outstanding work at their website here.

Aerial – Bird of the day

Name-checked in the gloriously expanded Prologue in Kate’s Before the Dawn shows, the Chaffinch is the commonest finch in Ireland and Great Britain – found in woodland, farmland, parks and gardens. In winter can form large flocks of hundreds of birds, especially in stubble fields and under beech trees. The male’s breast, face and underside are a pinkish orange-brown, becoming a darker, wine shade in winter. The nape and crown are blue-grey.

The upper back is warm brown, while the lower back/rump is a contrasting green tone, usually hidden by the bird’s folded wings when perched. The female is much greyer, with washed out warm grey underparts. Both sexes display large white patches on otherwise blackish wings, both when perched and flying – this makes identification quite straightforward even at some range. Both sexes also have a longish tail, which shows a dark centre and white outer feathers in flight.

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

After the intrigue of King of the Mountain and as we awaited the album itself, it was announced that the Kate Bush Club (ran by Kate’s friend Lisa Bradley) would be replaced by her new official website. That would be where info and announcements would come from in future. Sadly, this meant we’d get no Aerial issue of the official fanclub magazine, something which had become a tradition of sorts – a place where Kate herself wrote and explained the inspirations and work that went into the songs on her new record.

A characteristically bold and expansive work brimming with atmosphere, mystery, passion and complex aural detail, the twin-disc ‘Aerial’ had already been declared a masterpiece by all who had heard it…but we wanted to hear from Kate!

So today we look back on what Kate herself had to say about the songs – in her press releases at the time. “I have been genuinely touched by the sense of anticipation I’ve felt from people,” she said in an official press release. “I feel really privileged that people have been waiting.” She continued: “What is quite nice for me doing the two discs, is it allows me to play with the semi-classical style which I like – space and acoustic music – but also the band-based stuff with lots of drums.”

Kate talked about the arrival of her son Bertie, and all the time his upbringing required: “I was having to work in really short little bursts, and I’d never done that before. The way I’d always worked was to just stay in the studio for fourteen hours a day. I didn’t have that luxury to use the time in the same way. So there were lots of periods where really nothing much was happening. But in some ways I’d say it was very good for me to have had those kinds of restrictions. It was continually forcing me into a situation where I had to stand back from it.”

Kate spoke about the recording sessions with musician friends old and new: “There was a sense of being at play as well as at work, I think that’s very important because it is so hard and so frustrating sometimes trying to get an idea to materialise. It’s not an easy process. I really like working with people who are old friends, it’s lovely.” Poignantly, ‘Aerial’ also features some of the last work of orchestral arranger Michael Kamen, who had worked on the score for all of Kate’s albums since ‘Hounds Of Love’ and who passed away only weeks after his contributions to the album were completed at Abbey Road studios in October 2003. “What was great about Michael was his stuff was very visual, he did such a fantastic job. It’s very hard to believe he’s not around any more.”

Kate also spoke about releasing her first double album: “I used to really like the double albums I bought of artists that I loved, it wasn’t in a way so directly connected with you spending money on an object. It was somehow more of an artistic statement. It said, ‘Here’s my music’.”

Here’s a selection of nice quotes from Kate on just some of the songs from when she spoke to Ken Bruce on BBC Radio 2 in the week before the album was released:

Kate on why the album is called ‘Aerial’: “What I liked about the word was that it’s got so many levels to it. It actually means “of the air”, and, you know, also I always have an image of aerials suggesting height, as well so, it felt like it worked very well for the second disc, uh, now with the sort of theme of birds…and also an aerial is something that collects and gives out sound waves, and we’ve all got aerials connected to our televisions and our mobile phones. I just thought it was an interesting word that had lots of puns...”

Kate on the song, π (Pi): “I really like the challenge of singing numbers, as opposed to words because numbers are so unemotional as a lyric to sing and it was really fascinating singing that. Trying to sort of, put an emotional element into singing about…a seven…you know and you really care about that nine. I find numbers fascinating, the idea that nearly everything can be broken down into numbers, it is a fascinating thing; and I think also that we are completely surrounded by numbers now, in a way that we weren’t you know even 20, 30 years ago we’re all walking around with mobile phones and numbers on our foreheads almost; and it’s like you know computers…

I suppose, um, I find it fascinating that there are people who actually spend their lives trying to formulate pi; so the idea of this number, that, in a way is possibly something that will go on to infinity and yet people are trying to pin it down and put their mark on and make it theirs in a way I guess also i think you know you get a bit a lot of connection with mathematics and music because of patterns and shapes…”

Kate on Mrs Bartolozzi: “I don’t know? Is It? Is it about a washing machine? I think it’s a song about Mrs. Bartolozzi. She’s this lady in the song who…does a lot of washing (laughs). It’s not me, but I wouldn’t have written the song if I didn’t spend a lot of time doing washing. But, um, it’s fictitious. I suppose, as soon as you have a child, the washing suddenly increases. And uh, what I like too is that a lot of people think it’s funny. I think that’s great, because I think that actually, it’s one of the heaviest songs I’ve ever written! (laughs) I like the idea of…clothes are…very interesting things, aren’t they? Because they say such an enormous amount about the person that wears them. They have a little bit of that person all over them, little bits of skin cells and…what you wear says a lot about who you are, and who you think you are…“

“So I think clothes, in themselves are very interesting. And then it was the idea of this woman, who’s kind of sitting there looking at all the washing going around, and she’s got this new washing machine, and the idea of these clothes, sort of tumbling around in the water, and then the water becomes the sea and the clothes…and the sea…and the washing machine and the kitchen…I just thought it was an interesting idea to play with. What I wanted to get was the sense of this journey, where you’re sitting in front of this washing machine, and then almost as if in a daydream, you’re suddenly standing in the sea.“

Kate on the song Bertie: How much did having a child influence Kate’s writing on the record? “I think it’s all over it. He’s such a big part of my life so, you know, he’s a very big part of my work. It’s such a great thing, being able to spend as much time with him as I can. And, you know, he won’t be young for very long. And already he’s starting to grow up and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss out on that, that I spent as much time with his as I could. So, the idea was that he would come first, and then the record would come next, which is also one reasons why it’s taken a long time. (laughs) It always takes me a long time anyway, but trying to fit that in around the edges that were left over from the time that I wanted to spend with him.“

“It’s a wonderful thing, having such a lovely son. Really, you know with a song like that, you could never be special enough from my point of view, and I wanted to try and give it an arrangement that wasn’t terribly obvious, so I went for the sort of early music…”

Kate talks about A Sky of Honey: “It’s all based around birdsong, and I like the idea of these things that are different languages from use of words, I mean, for instance, like “Pi”. It is a language, but it’s not one that we really speak. I think birdsong is a really beautiful sound. I think what I find interesting about it, too, is the way that they mark the day. Like for instance, you know, the dawn chorus – they seem to be very strongly connected with light. And I think in some ways, that was one of the sort of explorations I was trying to go off on with this, the connection between their song and light and the passing of day. (Note: This quote is actually taken from her radio chat with Mark Radcliffe – more from that encounter later this week).

Kate on how she felt as the album was about to be released into the world on November 7th, 2005: “I’m so excited about it coming out. It took so long to make, I just thought I was never going to finish it. It just took so long to try and piece it all together, and try and make it work and…so many times, I just thought I wasn’t going to have the energy or the strength to just to try and finish it. It’s a fantastic relief, to have it all done. When I first finished, I felt I had been let out of good behavior. And it’s great because I can do other things, and the response from other people has been so positive – I’m so excited. I think I did worry about there being such a long gap, I was worried that…I suppose, you know, in some ways, without wanting to sound sentimental, I was worried that people would forget about me…”

Aerial – Person of the day

Bosco de Oliveira is a renowned Brazilian percussionist, recording artist, bandleader, and teacher. He is particularly known for his influential role in the Brazilian music scene in Europe, having co-founded the London School of Samba in 1984. Throughout his extensive career, de Oliveira has toured and recorded with a wide array of internationally acclaimed artists including Kate, Sade, Terry Callier, Madness, Duran Duran (on their Wedding Album), Milton Nascimento, and Airto Moreira.

Bosco is credited with percussion on both Nocturn and the song Aerial on A Sky of Honey – brilliant performances! In addition to performing, he is a highly regarded teacher and lecturer and holds a Master’s degree in Music from London University. He has also given talks and demonstrations on the “Code of Samba” and “The Music of Cuba”. Bosco lived in the UK for almost 30 years but has since moved back to Brazil, making his occasional performances in the UK a rare opportunity for local audiences.

Aerial – Artefact of the day

(Brought to you in association with katebushcollectibles.com)

Three different Aerial lithographs were issued for sale on Kate’s official site when it launched in 2005 – each printed in a numbered edition of 250 copies. One had the album cover, another the King of the Mountain single illustration, the third a colour photo of Kate peeking through a white veil, photo by Trevor Leighton. Each was sized approx 26″ x 26″. They now fetch prices of around £200 each!

On the topic of limited edition Aerial prints, later, in 2010, Kate worked with Soundwaves Art (in aid of the Nordoff Robbins charity) to produce prints based on the soundwave of the song Aerial. These were signed by Kate and also had her handwritten words across the middle: “What a lovely afternoon…” on one and “And fold yourself up…” on another. Created, signed and numbered by UK artist Tim Wakefield, each print retailed at £1,800. 45″ x 45″. Only 50 copies of each were made.

Aerial – Trivia of the day

The image in the Aerial album artwork of the ribbon-haired girl looking pensively at the viewer while studying mathematics, is taken from the painting ‘Lesson Time‘ (1921) by the artist Frederick Cayley Robinson ARA (18 August 1862 – 4 January 1927). ‘Lesson Time’ currently appears to be part of a private collection.

The image evokes the themes of the song π (Pi) while the window frame and view of the tree outside reflects the themes of domestic life and the natural world we are surrounded by, evoked throughout the album’s songs and artwork. Another painting by him, ‘The Blue Bird Dreamships’ puts one in mind of some of the dreamy imagery of A Coral Room. Read more about his work here.

From Wikipedia: “Cayley Robinson was an English artist who created paintings and applied art, including book illustrations and theatre set designs. Cayley Robinson continued to paint striking Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian subjects well into the twentieth century despite this approach becoming deeply unfashionable.”

“His series of large-scale mural paintings for the Middlesex Hospital entitled Acts of Mercy commissioned around 1915 and completed in 1920 are some of his most impressive works, along with Pastoral (1923; Tate Britain, London), which was bought by the Chantrey Bequest for the British nation. However his many smaller paintings, particularly of interiors featuring sombre women as well as the theme of departure, are considered significant works of modern British art.”

Aerial – Bird of the day

Woodpigeons are featured in the artwork of the Aerial booklet and also on A Sky of Honey, in particular the very opening track, Prelude, where a young Bertie muses that it “sounds like they’re saying words” – and indeed, Kate can be heard singing “Don’t grow old, Bertie” in her finest pigeon impression! Woodpigeons are also named in the lyrics of the expanded Prologue during the Before the Dawn live shows.

Woodpigeons are the largest of the pigeons in the UK and Ireland with a proportionally long tail and small head. A full breast. Easily identified in flight by large white wing bands traversing the upper wing. White and green patches on the side of the neck. In the breeding season they are conspicuous in upward-soaring display flights which end in wing clapping.

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.