FEATURE:
Hello, I Know That You've Been Feeling Tired
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for Director’s Cut/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Kate Bush’s Director’s Cut Version of Deeper Understanding at Ten
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I have been so busy thinking about…
50 Words for Snow turning ten in November that I forgot about Director’s Cut! The album, came out on 16th May, 2011, so it is important to look ahead to that anniversary. This is an album where Bush reworked songs from The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993) that she felt could be stripped back and improved. I guess there is a fuller and, at times, cluttered production sounds on those album. One can understand why Bush wanted to re-approach these tracks and give them a new spin. Before I get to the single from Director’s Cut that is about to turn ten, I want to do a complete detour and mention a news story regarding one of 50 Words for Snow’s tracks that is being included in primary school music curriculum in England. The Kate Bush News website provides more details:
“In England, an expert panel of musical specialists have chosen Wild Man, Kate’s lead single from her 2011 50 Words for Snow album, to be included in a new list of 37 musical works that every primary school child (ages 5-11) should listen to. Ed Watkins, director of music at the West London Free School, who sat on the panel, said: “The list we have ended up with has music from the major world traditions, traces the history of popular music and celebrates British and European art music.” As well as works from ‘the Western Classical tradition’ – including Mozart’s Rondo all Turca, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Mussorgsky’s Night on a Bare Mountain, the list also features music from major world traditions including Brazilian Samba, Bhangra from Punjab and Argentinian Tango, as well as English folk sea shanties.
The Model Music Curriculum document explains how the song can be explored in the classroom: “From Bush’s acclaimed 50 Words for Snow, Wild Man tells of the sightings of the mythical Yeti in the Himalayas and of efforts to hide and protect him. The use of sound effects, riffs and spoken words will all be points to bring out as well as getting to grips with the words and imagery before/while listening to the music”.
It is pretty cool that a late-career recording is being taught at schools. It goes to show that Bush’s music is as striking on her current album as it was on her earliest albums. I want to concentrate on a song whose reimagining split people. Deeper Understand appeared originally on The Sensual World and, in 1989, it was precinct and powerful that Bush was talking about computers taking over lives. I may have quoted this before, but here is an interview exert where Bush talked about the original track:
“It's like today, a lot of people relate to machines, not to human beings, like they hear telephone [Makes ringing noise] and think "Is that for me?" I guess it playing with the idea of how people get more and more isolated from humans and spend a lot more time with machines. I suppose America's a really good example where there are some people who never go out, they watch television all day, they're surrounded by machines, they shop through television, they speak to people on the phone; it's just distant contact. The idea of the computer buffs who end up going through divorce cases because their wives can't cope with the attention the computer gets. They have an obsessive effect on people, and this track's about one of those types.
I was playing with the juxtaposition of high tech and spirituality. I suppose one inspiration was a program I saw last year about a scientist called Stephen Hawking who for years had been studying the universe, and his concepts are like the closest we've ever come to understanding the answer. But unfortunately he has a wasting-away disease, and the only way he can talk is through voice process. It was one of the most moving things I've ever heard. He was so close to the answers to everything, and yet his body was going on him - in some ways it was the closest I'd ever come to hearing God speak! The things he was saying were so spiritual, it was like he'd gone straight through science and come out the other end. It was like he'd gone beyond words, and I do think that there is this possibility with computers that we really could learn about ourselves on levels that could take us into much deeper areas. With my music, I like to combine both the old and the new, the high tech and the compassion from the human element, the combination of synths and acoustic instruments.(Will Johnson, 'A Slowly Blooming English Rose'. Pulse, December 1989)”.
I like the original very much so, on 5th April 2011, I had the chance to hear this fantastic track updated. The original song has been celebrated and ranked high by the media when it comes to Bush’s best songs. I think the combination of it being so relevant and eye-opening and its incredible production made it stand out. I am not sure whether Deeper Understanding is one of those songs that sounded too edgy or needed improvements. It has a warm sound and, when you listen to the chorus, you are blown away by the richness of the vocals and how you get this sort of voice coming from a computer.
By 2011, the grip and reliance on technology was even more pronounced. Although some critics feel the new recording sounds less important and it doesn’t have the same quality and impact as the original, it is a wonderful song that is clearly important to Bush. She spoke about the 2011 update to The Irish Times when promoting Director’s Cut:
“When we finally speak, Bush is late, and profusely apologetic. Her day has been taken up with a short film she has directed for Deeper Understanding. It’s the first single to be taken from Director’s Cut, a new album of reworked songs culled from The Sensual Worldand The Red Shoes. Six years after the release of her last album, Aerial, Bush had multiple motivations in going back to these songs. Technological and production limitations were a factor, but artistic doubt also lingered in the back of her mind.
“I’ve wanted to do this for a while, and I think some of my more interesting songs are on those two albums. You look back on your work and often feel there’s something wrong with all of it, but that’s just part of being a human being as much as an artist. I tried to make some of those songs sound like I’d want them to sound now, but this time I wanted it to be more about the songs than the production. I also approached them in a lower key, because my voice is lower now.”
Ah yes, that voice. The multiple octaves of childlike coos and sibilant sensuality that can go from gothic whisper to oscillating scream. In 1977, when Wuthering Heightsmade her the first woman to reach No 1 in the UK charts with a self-written song, audiences didn’t know what to make of her. She had been singing and – crucially – writing her own songs since she was 13. EMI snapped her up”.
Bush has also been quite prophetic in her attitude to technology, from being one of the first musicians to use a Fairlight digital synthesiser to foreseeing (in 1989’s Deeper Understanding) the central role computers would play in our lives. It’s also the first single from Director’s Cut, and one of the most radically reimagined.
“I was trying to get across the idea of a computerised voice,” says the singer, “so back then, even with a Vocoder used as part of a group of voices, it was difficult to hear. I also wanted a single voice to convey that the computer is a single entity. We just couldn’t get the effect, but nowadays it’s so easy to computerise a voice.”
The voice in question on the song is that of Albert, aka Bertie, her 12-year-old son. Bush is famously guarded of her private life, but is effusive when speaking about him. “I thought it was more poignant to have a child as this bringer of compassion in a cold technological world. I asked him if he would sing on it, and he thought it was great fun”.
“ Director’s Cut took a long time. It’s funny, every time I start a new album I say to myself ‘this one’s going to be really quick’, and of course it ends up going on and on. But it was great to go straight into the new songs, while I was still in focused, studio mentality. With Aerialand this new album I feel there’s a greater space. They’re a bit different to my other work, but then I feel that about everything when I start it, and I don’t want to keep making the same album all the time. It’s hard to talk about work when it’s in progress, because it’s always an evolving process”.
To mark ten years since Bush re-released Deeper Understanding, I wanted to mark the anniversary and dive deep into the Director’s Cut single. Whether you prefer the original version from The Sensual World or appreciate what she did On Director’s Cut, it is a song that, to me, seems more relevant than ever. I would say that, since 2011, we rely on technology even more. She could almost record the song again but, on Director’s Cut, I think Deeper Understanding sounds great. At a time when we have been speaking to people through computers and have not been able to have that human touch, Deeper Understanding has…
A whole new meaning and importance.