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.
