FEATURE:
Drink the Music
IN THIS PHOTO: Del Palmer in 1993
Insight from Del Palmer: Kate Bush’s Fantastic The Red Shoes at Twenty-Eight
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THERE is a great feature from 1993…
where engineer and musician Del Palmer talked about his experiences working on the Kate Bush album, The Red Shoes. Rather than including this in the Kate Bush Interview Archive, I will bring in some fascinating insights into an album that remains under-explored. There is a lot of criticism still levied at the album in terms of the song quality and sound. Whereas there are fewer standout tracks compared to Hounds of Love (1985), I don’t think there is much wrong with The Red Shoes. With a few weaker tracks ending the album, there are still clear highlights and some of Bush’s best material on there. I feel, as this was the 1990s, the biggest change from her previous work was the digital sound. One can definitely hear a change in her production style on The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes. I think looking at the working relationship and working bond between Del Palmer and Kate Bush (they were also in a romantic relationship and split around the time The Red Shoes was completed) sheds new light on an album that many people have put aside or do not dissect in detail too much. I have chosen a few sections from interview/feature mu:zines put out in 1993:
“Kate Bush's private studio was initially set up to record demos for Lionheart; Del Palmer was the only band member interested in operating the tape machine! Fifteen years on, Del is Kate's main man with the faders, and what was once a demo studio has evolved into a sophisticated private recording facility.
Located in barns adjacent to the Bush country home, today's studio is equipped with a 48-channel SSL 4000E console with G-Series computer, two Sony 3324A digital machines, a Studer A80 half-inch, and a couple of U-Matic video recorders.
Del takes up the story: "During early 1990, Kate said 'I want to do something, I want to go in the studio and work.' During the early stages I can set up a sound for her, set up some keyboards, show her what to do on the console, and leave her to it. She'll work for days until she's got something, then we'll get the musicians in and carry on from there."
As both producer and artist, Kate Bush is extremely focused and knows exactly what she wants. So when Del comes up with a particular sound, she wastes no time in telling him whether or not it's what she's looking for.
"There have been lots of times when I've had quite heated arguments with her — I'd say something wouldn't work, to which her response has been, 'Indulge me... Just do it.' For example, on the Hounds of Love album, there's a part that goes, 'Help me, baby, help me, baby,' which cuts in and out very quickly, which she wanted to do by turning the tape over and cutting in and out with the record switch. I said it would just be a mess, but she said, 'Look, just do it, will you?' So I did it and of course it worked, and I had to eat humble pie. I've eaten so much humble pie over the years that I'm putting on weight!"
Kate is apparently not averse to placing her own fingers on the faders, especially in relation to the vocals as well as much of the instrumentation. "I was able to just set her up with a sound, and she'd take care of it herself," explains Palmer. "She'd record all the vocals, then phone me up and say, "Let's put it all together."
These days, Kate Bush tends to write about 90% of her material as part of the overall recording process in the studio, largely because of the difficulty of trying to recreate the spontaneity and the feel of the demos.
The trademark Kate Bush sound that has been developed over the course of the past four albums owes a lot not only to the pulsating, highly atmospheric, slightly discordant noises that seem to emanate from every direction, but also her own unique vocal style, with its breathy delivery and haunting presence.
"I can't take any credit for Kate's vocal sound," admits Palmer, "because it was originally shown to me by an engineer called Paul Arden who taught me so much. He would explain anything that I asked him about. One day he couldn't make a session, so he said, 'Why don't you do it?' So I did, and he showed me how to get the sound which they had started using on The Dreaming. Kate loved it, and ever since then we've been using it.
"Basically, it's all down to an overdose of compression, and the fact that she really knows how to work with it. We set her up with a Neumann U47 in the live part of the studio — brick floor and stone walls — so it's very, very live — and then there's loads and loads of compression on the mic. The SSL desk's compression is very violent and works very well for this. So, what's happening is that every time she breathes in, you can hear it, so she has to be very specific in the way that she deals with this. She's backing off from the microphone all the time, really working it. We use a small amount of gating so you'll get the sound of the room and then it cuts off — a bit like the Phil Collins drum sound.
"If Kate's singing really loud she backs off from the mike and then she comes right in close for the quiet stuff, but when she breathes in, she does this to the side. I have to say that from a purely technical standpoint, it's really badly done, there's just so much compression on everything. But I'm not interested in being technical, I want it to sound good, and if it does, then what's the point in changing it?
With Kate's stuff, where you do have a lot of level changes, there's a constant fight between noise levels and signal levels, but with digital you don't have that. You can put the quietest thing on tape and you won't get any background noise. At the same time, whereas with analogue you may say, "I'm going to put some 10k in here because I know I'm going to lose a bit," with the digital machines I found that I was using far less EQ right across the board."
As things turned out, since the decision to switch to digital was made relatively early during the Red Shoes sessions, much of the analogue material was later replaced. Only the performances by the Trio Bulgarka, as well as Nigel Kennedy on 'Top Of The City', remain from the analogue.
"With digital, a lot of doors opened up to us which we previously had no idea about, and the result was that Kate was off and running," says Palmer. "She had so many good ideas to try out, generally to do with editing. For example, if there was a piece of vocal here, rather than sampling it and flying it back in, we could actually offset the machine and put it in various strange places. Sometimes this wouldn't work, but a lot of the time it did, such as the track with Prince ('Why Should I Love You?') on which we had to offset lots of things, and some of the guitar parts now appear in the weirdest places. I'd say, "Wait a minute!" and she'd say, "No, no, it works, leave it! Put that down, it works."
"Her overview of everything is alarmingly interesting. I really find it fascinating how she can hold all these things in her head at the same time. She's very au fait with studio work. I'm sure a lot of people think, 'Well, she gets the producer credit but I bet she doesn't do much,' yet that's really not true. She knows what she wants to do and, being technically minded, she knows how to do it."
As to the future, Del Palmer feels that there's a lot of new studio gear on the market which he must check out before re-equipping Kate's recording environment. "One of the things I'm now looking to do is to make the studio a little bit more conducive to her, with everything plumbed in permanently," he says. "So all she'll have to do is push a button and the Fairlight or whatever will be up and running. And I'll find her a few more little goodies to play with...".
Tomorrow (1st), The Red Shoes is twenty-eight. It was the last album Bush recorded before she took an extended period out. She would return with 2005’s Aerial. It must have been exciting stepping into the studio to record The Red Shoes. Although it is not as acclaimed and celebrated as other Kate Bush album, you only need to listen through to the album once to realise that there is…
SO much to explore.