FEATURE:
My Fairlight CMI and I
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport Photography
Kate Bush’s The Dreaming at Forty-One
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IN my final one or two…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush and the Fairlight CMI
features, I might rank the songs that appear on The Dreaming. I have shifted opinion since I last did that: some songs that were placed quite low and now high, and vice versa. Bush’s fourth studio album turns forty-one on 13th September. For this piece about The Dreaming, I want to talk about an invaluable tool at Kate Bush’s disposal. As solo producer, Bush had free reign when it came to what sounds she wanted on her album. Although her band have a wide range of duties and sounds, their brilliant input sits alongside a piece of technology that took Bush’s music to a new plain. If her first couple of albums were more piano-driven; Never for Ever hinted at what the Fairlight CMI would offer. She discovered that later into the recording process, so you hear it appear here and there. Most notably, it adds texture and sounds to All We Ever Look For. Seemingly impressive and maybe obsessed with the capabilities of this new piece of tech - she was introduced to it by Peter Gabriel when she was recording with him; there is a photo of the two of them out Fairlight CMI shopping -, it is used quite liberally through The Dreaming. That is not to say that it is defining elements and dominant sound through the album. Bush’s songwriting is magnificent. Her production is sensational. Her vocals are at their peak. Because of the fact she was now independent producing and had little interference from EMI or anyone outside her inner circle, she required some kit that could realise many of the sounds and sensations in her head. In addition to being able to produce instrumental sounds, sound effects – the gun cock on Never for Ever’s Army Dreamers was sampled through the Fairlight CMI -, there was this whole library to be explored.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush alongside Peter Gabriel (right) at a Fairlight CMI demonstration
Many might be interested knowing the background of the Fairlight CMI – well, tough, you’re stuck with me -, and how Bush used it through The Dreaming. Thanks to this excellent Reverb article, they show how it was used across Never for Ever, The Dreaming and, perhaps most memorable, Hounds of Love:
“Origin Stories
Appropriately enough, the story begins Down Under in Sydney, 1975: recent high school graduates Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie had recently discovered Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos, that 1968 classic of early synthesizer music in which Bach inventions and fugues are performed on a Moog. As Vogel tells it on his personal website, "Kim was very keen to develop a better synthesizer, and knowing my interest in electronics, he suggested we join forces… it was obvious that combining digital technology with music synthesis was the way to go."
The pair would soon start a home business to manufacture synthesizers, naming it after the Fairlight ferry that passed on the Sydney Harbor which the home of Ryrie's grandmother overlooked. The following year, they would join forces with the engineer and Motorola consultant Tony Furse, who introduced them to microprocessor technology.
After months of trial-and-error experiments, Vogel made a breakthrough in 1978 as he studied the harmonics of acoustic instruments. He recorded a split-second of piano from a radio broadcast, and discovered that playing said recording back at different pitches delivered a realism that differed from the piano presets of that era's synthesizers. Soon after, sampling as we know today was born.
"After four years of working around the clock," Vogel wrote, "we had the first working prototype of what was to revolutionize the music industry." That product would be the Fairlight CMI, introduced in 1979: an early sampling synthesizer and DAW complete with computer display, a QWERTY-style keyboard, floppy disk functionality, and a "light pen" stylus.
That summer, Vogel found himself in England demonstrating the machine for Peter Gabriel while he was at work on his third self-titled solo album at his home near Bath. Much like the cover of that 1980 record, it was a facemelting experience for everyone in the studio that day. "The idea of recording a sound into solid-state memory and having real-time pitch control over it appeared incredibly exciting," said Gabriel's cousin Stephen Paine, who was in the room. "Peter was completely thrilled, and instantly put the machine to use during the week that Peter Vogel stayed at his house."
Indeed, Gabriel would use a microphone plugged into the Fairlight's sampler to capture everyday sounds such as glass bottles breaking that would end up on the record—by the end of Vogel's visit, he convinced the former Genesis frontman not only to buy the first CMI, but to also act as UK's de facto importer and distributor for Fairlight”.
The Dreaming
While Never for Ever was a collaborative production with Jon Kelly—who would later go on to produce work for other seminal synth-focused British bands like Prefab Sprout and Deacon Blue—Kate decided over the course of The Dreaming's demo process to go it alone behind the boards this time. Perhaps this newfound sense of freedom was catalyzed by further familiarity with her workstation of choice.
Though the Fairlight is capable of modifying waveforms on top of sampling at separate frequencies, Kate more often than not deferred to working with the natural envelope to emulate other instruments. "Quite often there's very little that needs doing to it," Kate admitted in an interview with Electronic Soundmaker in 1983. "Occasionally I quite like reversing [the samples]."
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush (accompanied by Del Palmer) at a Fairlight CMI demonstration
She cited the production of the title track of The Dreaming as an example: "I wanted a didgeridoo, and as the Fairlight is an Australian instrument, it happened to have a didgeridoo as one of its present samples." Kate turned said preset into a loop which lingers throughout.
Kate was also fascinated by the instrument's computer display, which allowed users to view waveforms while they worked. "That's something that's very useful: you can actually see a sound. Incredibly ugly sounds can look really beautiful. It's really like another dimension: visual interpretation of the world rather than audial."
Though The Dreaming was met with divided critical reception at the time of its release in 1982, it developed a reputation as Bush's most daring and experimental release, influencing a wide range of disciples from Björk to Big Boi. This is surely partly to do with what Bush referred to as the "human element" of the Fairlight: "I'm very into natural sounds—particularly taking them out of their range. I suppose I like the distortion of natural things”.
It is clear that Kate Bush wanted to utilise the effects and huge range that The Fairlight CMI offered. Rather than it being like 1986 when there was synth sounds on everything and Pop music became quite homogenised, there was not a tonne of music with the Fairlight CMI in 1982. Before moving on, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia provides a couple of interview segment where Bush explained why she bonded with the Fairlight CMI:
“Kate about the Fairlight CMI
As we have a Fairlight, it tends to negate us getting in other sampling gear. We're pretty well covered with the Fairlight and the DX7 for keyboard and the quality of the Fairlight is much better, though so difficult to use. Everyone says that. I used to programme it myself, but since the new software... I can't keep up. They keep changing it as soon as I learn to programme it. (What Katie did next. International Musician, 1989)
I'm not sure it really made me more in control, but it introduced a whole new library of sounds that I was able to access. And the Fairlight had a very specific quality to its sound which I really liked, so it was very much a sort of atmospheric tool for me. (Kate Bush Speaks. The Fader, 23 November 2016)”.
I want to get to Classic Pop and a feature from 2022. They discussed Bush making the album and how, with this new technology at her fingertips, new fruits and unusual sounds with born. It is interesting thinking about balance. If you do discover technology that allows for so much diversity and expansion of your sound, that will push you as a songwriter. That also means you might be spending more time playing around and living in different worlds. Inhabiting different characters and sonic lakes, it must have been quite confusing and exhausting for Bush! How did she adapt to the real world and detach from this seemingly alluring and demanding mistress? The album was something she threw herself into. The Fairlight CMI was a definite advantage, but maybe it became too much of a crutch. If you can feel it in a lighter and airy sense on Hounds of Love, there is something jittery, darker and more haunted on The Dreaming:
“Two works-in-progress, The Dreaming’s title track and Houdini were ideas she’d had on Never For Ever. The new approach was to go “all the way”; be more “experimental and cinematic” than before.
This cutting-edge technology would rub shoulders with the arcane and ethnic, hinted at by the folk and world music she’d played on Paul Gambaccini’s BBC radio show. Another selection, Lennon’s No.9 Dream, reflected a growing Beatles influence. Broadcast December 1980, the month of Lennon’s assassination, much of Bush’s new music seemed cast in the tragedy’s shadow.
She opted to self-produce, (Tony Visconti, who’d written her a Lionheart-inspired fan letter during Bowie’s Lodger, was briefly considered). In a Denmark Street demo studio, drummer Preston Heyman was introduced to Bush’s new methods. Sat In Your Lap’s piano riff reminded him of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, he played along accordingly. She then removed his cymbals, then his snare.
It morphed into a tom-tom pattern more akin to the Warrior Drums of Burundi (used on Joni Mitchell’s The Hissing Of Summer Lawns). Eager to get the tribal, drum-heavy sound onto tape she headed to Townhouse Studios, specifically it’s ‘stone’ room. This was where engineer Hugh Padgham had created the colossal ‘gated reverb’ drums on PG3 with drummer Phil Collins.
Bush had been equally impressed with In The Air Tonight (a ‘masterpiece’). Padgham worked on Sat In Your Lap, Leave It Open and Get Out Of My House, giving Bush the rhythmic oomph she required, aided by the studio’s Solid State Logic console with its gates and compressors.
A hard, driving core aside (Rainbow’s Jimmy Bain played bass), these tracks weren’t ‘rock’ or ‘normal’ and Padgham was bewildered by Bush’s unorthodoxy. For Heyman, though, it was exactly this “weirdness that we rejoiced in”. For Sat In Your Lap, the drummer and brother Paddy Bush stood ten feet apart, swooshing bamboo sticks (a cracked one stayed in the mix too).
Space was found for one Chinese opera cymbal suspended from a rope, “throttled” periodically by Heyman. Struggling to replicate the demo’s CS80 parts, Buggles’ Geoff Downes supplied a Fairlight brass section (he was busy working at Townhouse on Asia’s debut).
In June 1981 Sat In Your Lap hit the shelves, unveiling Bush’s new direction in a white sleeve, ballet-dunce Bush glancing quizzically at a globe. Inside was a torrent of avant-garde pop; rumbling rhythms, philosophical head-scratching and a startling vocal ferocity.
Bush fretted, initial feedback was dumbstruck silence. But critics raved (“a superb blast of energy”), as did BBC’s Roundtable guest reviewers, Linx’s David Grant, and Rick Wakeman. It climbed to No.11, a year later it sat atop Trevor Horn’s all-time top ten, one of three Bush selections.
Meanwhile, The Dreaming’s sessions had steamed ahead. The in-demand Padgham left for Genesis’ Abacab, replaced by Nick Launay. His CV, including PIL’s The Flowers Of Romance, aligned the young engineer with Bush’s new almost post-punk edge.
With a seemingly limitless budget and new gadgetry, he was a more willing accomplice in what he calls the ‘toy shop’ of Bush’s experiments. Corrugated iron wrapped around drums became ‘canons firing across a valley’ for Leave It Open’s climax. Bass player and then-boyfriend Del Palmer sampled aerosols to replace those forbidden cymbals.
If a song suggested a “flood imagery to be painted in”, everything was attempted. To bring the Australian outback to life on the title track there were smashed marble, crowd noises from the Gosfield Goers, and Percy Edwards’ wildlife impressions.
Supplying the didgeridoo’s circular drone was Rolf Harris, whose 1960 Sun Arise had been The Dreaming’s inspiration. Amid the Fairlight skids and thuds there were real accidents too; Paddy Bush’s bullroarer broke, frantically spun wood dislodged from cord, hitting the studio’s soundproof screen. Bush’s next location was Abbey Road, with engineer Haydn Bendall.
Taking up all three studios for Night Of The Swallow, Stuart Elliot’s drums fed from one to the next. For the chorus, a ceilidh band was required. Bill Whelan provided the searing Irish folk arrangement, played by members of his band Planxty and The Chieftans, captured in an all-night Bush-attended Guiness-soaked session at Dublin’s Windmill Lane.
At some point, Bush says “the spontaneity evaporated”. Studio-hopping with an ever-expanding cast, while the songs “kept changing shape” became “hard work”. The endless mind-voyaging from the Outback to the East Asian jungle for Pull Out The Pin required searching for right sonic mise-en-scene.
Bush’s role-playing was intensely demanding, becoming a bank robber, a Vietcong soldier, Mrs. Houdini. Often switching character within one song, her vocals (usually recorded at night), needed an array of effects to distinguish them. She was like an actor-director placing huge demands on herself from either side of the camera.
Conjuring “distorted emotional states” left her drained, even frightened. And through the masks, autobiography flickered, the music’s mad ambition offset by nagging self-doubt, as in There Goes A Tenner: “the sense of adventure is changing to danger”.
If the Fairlight CMI did almost shackle Bush to a sense of ambition and a wide sonic palette, it was definitely a real boon for her. Something that was a highlight on Never for Ever was not very much a driving force on The Dreaming. Even though Bush and her incredible musicians did a lot of excellent work, the Fairlight CMI separated Bush from this notion her songs were piano-led. Maybe wanting to be seen more as a serious artist who was as experimental and bold as her peers, this first solo producing experience was exceptional but draining. Feeling exhausted and in need of a break, she did holiday in Barbados. She hated it there because it was too quite and tranquil. That sense of the silence being deafening! Going between different studio, working with a large array of musicians and spending most of her day immersed in these songs, the psychological impact of stepping away and trying to relax was impossible – lessons learned that meant Hounds of Love was a healthier and more independent album (in the sense she had her own studio and was not especially limited in terms of budget and time). I am making it sounds negative, yet I did want to discuss the Fairlight CMI and bring together articles that explored it. A key ingredient in the strange and beautiful brew of The Dreaming. In the next one or two features about the album, I am going to look more at the songs; maybe nod and highlight Kate Bush’s exceptional production. If Never for Ever gave a taste and tease of what the Fairlight CMI could do, it is opened wide and running throughout The Dreaming. Seduced by its charms, power and possibilities, it was clear that there was…
NO going back.