KATE BUSH - THE DREAMING @ 40

 

September 13th marks the 40th anniversary of Kate Bush’s fourth studio album, The Dreaming, which was released on this day in 1982. Two years in the making, it was the first album Bush produced on her own, which gave her the opportunity to push her boundaries both creatively and technologically.

With her previous album, Never For Ever, Kate had begun dabbling with a new bit of musical gear in the form of the Fairlight CMI digital sampler & synthesizer. For that album, it was essentially a novelty device and was relegated to mostly providing a few sound effects. However, The Dreaming would embrace it as a primary creative tool, making it an integral component of the compositional process. Its presence would give the production a whole new palette of sounds with which Bush could paint her sonic pictures.

In addition to the tech innovations, Bush also seems to have been influenced to a degree by some things going on in the world of “post-punk” as evidenced by her recruiting of Townhouse engineer Nick Launay to help on the album. Nick had made a name for himself while working on Public Image Ltd’s Flowers of Romance LP, for which he garnered a great deal of attention with his walloping drum sounds. They had become notorious enough to get Phil Collins to pull him into engineering for him in order to get a similar sound. Those influences ended up putting parts of the album next of kin to the likes of Siouxsie & The Banshees while also veering into traditional English folk territory, all the while maintaining a highly experimental edge.

Though producing the album on her own gave her a new creative freedom, it also put her under new pressures and stresses. The sessions for the album ended up being intermittent as Kate struggled with creative blocks, which resulted in work taking much longer than originally anticipated. This included taking extended breaks in the process in order to regroup and refocus her efforts properly.

Once the album was completed, it sold & charted respectably, but its sales were noticeably less than her previous albums. Critics and fans offered mixed reviews as they were put off by the experimentation and were, perhaps, a bit overloaded by Bush’s “maximalist” approach. However, The Dreaming has become a work which benefited from maturity. In the ensuing years since its release, both fans and critics have come to reappraise the album and appreciate its innovative edginess. It may not have the immediate appeal of some of her other works, but its strangeness has charms which work their magic through repeated exposure and familiarity. It may jar on first listen, but it works its way into the listener’s soul when you give it a chance.