‘I Wanna Be Kate: The Songs of Kate Bush’ is now (at last!) available to download on iTunes and Emusic. Generally considered to be the best Kate Bush tribute album out there, you can read all about the CD here.
Kate has updated her official site with a note about Lyra, saying how thrilled she was to have been asked to write for the film and wishing her fans a wonderful Christmas. She advises people that the song will be available to download from iTunes December 10th, but mentions a date of January 22nd for a physical release (which we hadn’t heard before). Her site also includes a good quality short clip of the song. Kate also tells us that her classic song ‘This Woman’s Work’ is going to be heard in the Extras Christmas special – the programme by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant is set to be one of the most-watched television shows in the UK over the Christmas period, it being the two-part finale of the popular series. Two potential download hits this December then!
“Hello everyone, I’ve really enjoyed putting the ‘Lyra’ track together and working with the Magdalen Choristers was totally delightful. Philip’s trilogy is a masterpiece and I was thrilled to be asked to write this for the film. Have a wonderful Christmas…”
With all the excitement about Kate’s beautiful song for the soundtrack to The Golden Compass, I thought it’d be nice for people to re-listen to the wonderful interview Kate did for the BBC’sFront Row programme two years ago. In it Kate discusses what motivates her musically, her creative process particularly in relation to the Aerial album, and her views on the current preoccupation with ‘celebrity’. It’s a lovely chat with Kate and is happily still available to listen to here. Very nice.
Anyone having trouble hearing ‘Lyra’ from the BBC links can now see and hear a fan-made video of the radio broadcast in our YouTube theatre above. Our forum has several threads buzzing with an incredible range of opinions on Kate’s first recorded output since Aerial, so be sure to check it out. In other ‘Lyra’ news, the Oxford Mail has revealed that Kate is paying for the choir who sang on her song to take a trip to see the film. Choir director Bill Ives said: “Ms Bush came along to see the boys because it was her song and she wanted to meet them. She was lovely, very quiet and altogether charming, and the boys were very excited to meet her.” Magdalen School College choir is made up of 16 boys, aged nine to 13, and 12 men, although only the boys sang on Lyra. On top of that, Kate Bush has very kindly offered to pay for them all to go and see the film when it comes out, so we will be taking them for a treat.” The LA Times has reviewed Kate’s new track here. We can confirm that the track’s length on the soundtrack will be 3 minutes 19 seconds (thanks to Reza).
On the day of the film’s world premiere in London Del Palmer has written a very interesting account on the recording of ‘Lyra’ posted on his official website: “The song was written very quickly as Kate was asked to do it at very short notice. In fact she only had a matter of days to write and produce it. She came to the studio with a rough demo recorded at her home using a ProTools LE system. Our first job was to record the keyboard and the lead vocal so that the Choir arranger could get to work as quickly as possible. This short project was to be a happy return to analog recording for us. We used a Studer A827 24 track recorder. Once the track was recorded it was transferred to ProTools for editing and mixing. This was so that the choir recordings could be done using a small mobile setup supplied by Abbey Road on a Monday morning. They were then imported into the original ProTools session for mixing on the Monday afternoon. Kate then took a car to Abbey Road for mixing in the evening. Abbey Road studio did the 5.1 surround mix. This was because all of the soundtrack music had been done there so it made sense to do the same. The following day we did a stereo mix at our studio for the soundtrack album release. In all, the whole thing took about 10 days to do. I personally think it’s a wonderful performance from Kate considering the time restrictions, in particular her vocal.” Thanks Del, and well done on an excellent job – I’m looking forward to hearing Kate at the cinema in 5.1 surround for the very first time!
Kate’s new song for The Golden Compass soundtrack, ‘Lyra’, has received it’s UK radio premiere on the BBC Radio 6 programme Roundtable, hosted by Steve Lamacq, at 6pm GMT this evening. First impressions: It’s a beautiful track, and perfect for the end of this film, I’ve just finished reading the book and this exactly sums up where audience’s hearts should be as they think about Lyra’s story. A very loving sentiment towards this character driven by such a gorgeous vocal. As I said, perfect – cannot wait to hear this in the cinema – this song really does have a context yet to come…for the record Steve Lamacq actually called the song Kate’s “new single” but it may just be a promo single for radio airplay purposes, we’ll have to wait and see. The show is now archived on the BBC ‘Listen Again’ service, here. ‘Lyra’ is played at 44 mins 20 seconds into this audio stream.
New Line Cinema is now actively campaigning members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to vote for ‘Lyra’ in the category of Best Original Song for the 2008 Academy Awards. The studio is running the traditional ‘For Your Consideration’ advertisements in the entertainment press in the US. See a photo of one such advertisement here. (with thanks to Vickie)
News of Kate’s new song for The Golden Compass movie has rapidly filtered out across the media. The film’s official site announced it here. Click on the following links for reports from Eonline, BBC, NME, Variety, Uncut and Pitchfork. A particularly witty write-up was published by Empire Magazine. Philip Pullman fansites have been buzzing, see here and here. Perhaps the most revealing article comes from theOxford Mail. It confirms that Kate recorded her vocals for the track in her home studio, but used the Abbey Road mobile unit to record the boys choir at their school in Oxford. Entertainment Weekly in the US has even ran an article proposing Kate as a possible Oscar contender: “New Line wants to be part of the Academy Awards one way or another, and their best bet may be their just-announced news that British singer/songwriter Kate Bush will have her original song titled “Lyra” tacked onto the end credits of The Golden Compass…who knows, now we may get to see her perform at the Oscars.” This seems to be a case of putting the cart waaay before the horse, Oscar nominations aren’t even announced till January 22nd. Let’s all just wait to watch the movie first…
The Golden Compass soundtrack CD is now available to pre-order at www.play.com. The tracklisting also reveals that Kate’s song ‘Lyra’ is featured last out of 26 tracks on the CD, following the 25th track entitled ‘Epilogue’.
After a week of speculation we can finally announce the great news – Kate has written and recorded a song, ‘Lyra‘, for the upcoming major fantasy film The Golden Compass, to be released 7th December 2007! It will also be available for download as part of New Line Records’ The Golden Compass soundtrack, which will be released Dec. 11. The song, named for Lyra Belacqua, the lead character in The Golden Compass, is written and produced by Kate in her own studio, and features the Magdalen College Choir, Oxford. It will be heard over the closing credits of the film. In the most recent issue of HomeGround magazine Del Palmer revealed that Philip Pullman (author of the books on which the film is based) had visited Kate at her home earlier this year, and it’s known that she is a fan of his work. This evening’s full press release from New Line Cinema is here. [Check out the full theatrical trailer in glorious high definition here, or visit the film’s official site by clicking the film logo above. I also recommend the fan site Bridge To The Stars.]
A Dutch documentary entitled ‘Come Back Kate‘ is part of the 20th International Documentary Film Festival, held in Amsterdam 22nd Nov – 2nd Dec. It will be screened at 8.15pm Friday 23rd November (and on 3 further dates over the course of the festival). The documentary, directed by Helena Muskens and Quirine Racké, is 53 minutes long and according to the festival brochure features ‘diehard fans of Kate Bush talking about their special bond with the singer…the fans talk about her as if they were good friends…the result is a fascinating peek into the phenomenon of fandom. Bush’s devotees create their own magic world around her mythical persona, some of them celebrate her birthday on a beach in southern England…” The description certainly makes the film sound as if it’s painting Kate as an odd recluse (and we know what Kate thinks of that description!) and the featured fans as deluded and a little creepy, but having said that I haven’t seen the documentary myself. Read more about the film here.
A very in-depth new book about Kate’s work and in particular the Hounds Of Love album has just been released by Ashgate publishing as part of their Popular and Folk Music Series. From the publishers: “The album allows the author, Ron Moy, the critical opportunity to explore a wide range of issues relating to technology, production, authorship, grain of the voice, iconography, critical and commercial impact, collaboration, gender, sexuality, narrative, and social and cultural context.” Ron Moy is a lecturer in the School of Media, Critical and Creative Arts, at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. As such this book presents a very academic text book approach to appraising Kate’s work – I haven’t yet seen a copy myself, but on reading the author’s introduction the book should be somewhat refreshing after the recent published biographies. And any book which ends with a closing section called “Coda: We Become Panoramic” is a tempting proposition for Aerial-era Kate fans! The book is called ‘Kate Bush and Hounds of Love’ and can be ordered at Amazon here.
A new calendar featuring photos of Kate has just been issued. While this isn’t an official calendar release and won’t be featuring any new pics of Kate there will be demand from fans. David over at the KutureShock website is offering the calendar with free postage to UK fans from this site. You just need to enter bush2008 in the coupon section at the checkout. You can order the calendar at this page here.
Del Palmer‘s much-anticipated solo album, Leap Of Faith, is now available to order at his official website. Payments can be made via Paypal, and the CD costs just £10 plus £2 postage to anywhere. We wish Del every success with Leap of Faith and encourage all our site visitors to check it out!
There’s a lot of talk right now about Kate’s superb cover version of Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man‘ (from the Two Rooms tribute album in 1991). It’s about to be named the Greatest Cover of all time by reader’s of the Observer newspaper in the UK. The single came out between the releases of The Sensual World and The Red Shoes albums and shifted more copies than any singles from either of those two albums. Backed by a memorable appearance on the Wogan BBC TV show and by an exuberant monochrome video, Kate truly made the track her own.
Lists, as we know, are controversial things, so you can read comments on this result at the Observer Music Monthly blog here ranging from ” marvellously mad” to “nasty Eighties-style plastic white reggae”. One witty poster said: “Is Gordon Brown playing the accordion in the video? Never thought I’d ever like seeing our PM right behind Bush.” [It’s actually Alistair Anderson] All in all it’s a great excuse to re-listen to a delightfully inspired piece of work from Kate which she turned into her own personal tribute to the late Alan Murphy.