FEATURE:
In Search of the Kangchenjunga Demon
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2011
Kate Bush’s Wild Man at Twelve
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ON 21st November, 2011 …
Kate Bush released her tenth (and most current) studio album, 50 Words for Snow. Instantly ranking alongside her very best stuff, the one and only single officially released from the album came out on 11th October, 2011. At 7:16, Wild Man is one of the shortest track on the album. At over sixty-five minutes across eight tracks, 50 Words for Snow is an epic album where you get these suites and huge pieces, as opposed to traditional songs. Wild Man premiered on BBC Radio 2 on Monday, 10th October, 2011. The 7:16-minute version was played on The Ken Bruce Show. A 4:16-minute ‘radio edit’ was made available for streaming on Kate Bush's official YouTube channel after the radio premiere. One of the standout songs from 50 Words for Snow, it was a perfect choice of single! Perhaps Bush would have favoured the closing track, Among Angels, but that song is the only one that has nothing to do with snow – it is the shortest song too, so choosing Wild Man seemed like a good alternative. There is a 2-minute-33-second animated segment for Wild Man that was posted on the Kate Bush official site and on YouTube. It was created by Finn and Patrick at Brandt Animation. I will get to some reviews of Wild Man soon enough. I will finish with a section from a particular interesting interview from 2011. Let’s actually start out with Billboard’s assessment on the beautiful and mysterious Wild Man:
“The weird and whimsical “Wild Man” serves as the first new single from British art-rock craftswoman Kate Bush in a whopping six years (not including the re-tooled tracks from this year’s “Director’s Cut”). A word of advice to first-time listeners: be sure to have an atlas and thesaurus handy. “From the Sherpas of Annapurna to the Rinpoche of Qinghai / Shepherds from Mount Kailash to Himachal Pradesh,” sings Bush in her breathy lisp, somehow sounding erotic while randomly referencing Indian provinces and Buddhist principles. For all of its impenetrable wordplay,”Wild Man” makes for a wicked headphone atmosphere, with Dan McIntosh’s expressionistic digital guitar curlicues wandering around a crisp Steve Gadd kit and John Giblin bass. As an announcement of Bush’s return, “Wild Man” is a tad off-kilter. But then again, when has the ever-singular Bush been anything but?”.
Of course, there is something special about Wild Man. Bush released Aerial’s King of the Mountain in 2005. After that, she released the track, Lyra, in 2007. That was for the film, The Golden Compass. Earlier in 2011, to promote Director’s Cut – where Bush re-recorded songs from The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993) -, she released a new version of Deeper Understanding (from The Sensual World). I think of Wild Man as her first original single since King of the Mountain. The two songs share similarities. King of the Mountain paints pictures of wild weather and mountaintop hideaway (“The wind is whistling/The wind is whistling/Through the house/Elvis, are you out there somewhere/Looking like a happy man?/In the snow with Rosebud/And king of the mountain/The wind, it blows/The wind, it blows the door closed”). The lyrics are a bit different on Wild Man. A more precise geographical examination of the surroundings and this fabled creature. This ‘wild man’ that may be a Yeti. Maybe not. Like King of the Mountain, you are transported somewhere more isolated and windswept (“They call you an animal, the Kangchenjunga Demon, Wild Man, Metoh-Kangmi/Lying in my tent, I can hear your cry echoing round the mountainside/You sound lonely/While crossing the Lhakpa-La something jumped down from the rocks/In the remote Garo Hills by Dipu Marak we found footprints in the snow/The schoolmaster of Darjeeling said he saw you by the Tengboche Monastery”). I want to bring in what Digital Spy had to say about the beguiling and beautiful Wild Man:
“They're like buses, Kate Bush albums. You wait years and years, and then, er, an old one with a flashy paint job comes along, quickly followed by a brand-spanking new one moments later! Hot on the heels of reworks project Director's Cut, Bush has driven up with 50 Words for Snow. 'Wild Man' trails the first proper new album in six years from one of England's most cherished songwriters, and in an internet age where 12 months out of the spotlight has people casually flinging around words like "comeback", Bush doesn't do herself any favours when it comes to damping down expectations. The truth is though, she doesn't really need to.
'Wild Man' starts with an insistent riff, simple-as-can-be click-drums, and Bush's understated, breathy, half-spoken vocals before her words twist and turn into a double-tracked self-harmony and off-the-rails chorus. The vivid lyrics are denser than most English A-Level texts ("The schoolmaster of Darjeeling said/ We saw you by the Tengboche monastery/ You were playing in the snow/ You were banging on the doors") and demand closer attention. It's nothing groundbreaking or world-changing, but the four-minute odd radio edit is a lush slice of beauty that the charts have been gagging for. The full seven minutes add a bit more atmosphere and, on this showing, 50 Words of Snow is threatening an avalanche of long-overdue loveliness”.
Even though Wild Man only got to number seventy-three in the U.K., it is by no means a disappointment. 50 Words for Snow reached five in the U.K. album chart. All of Bush’s studio albums have made the top ten here. Bush won an award for the album too. It is testament to her enduring relevance and brilliance. It is the players in the mix that help bring those remarkable and strange lyrics to life. Andy Fairweather Low provides vocal support. Dan McIntosh’s guitar and John Giblin’s bass beautiful work with Steve Gadd’s legendary drumming. Together, they produce this wonderfully exotic and almost mythical sound! Something that lures you in and puts you in a trance. To promote 50 Words for Snow, Kate Bush gave quite a few interviews. Generous with her time, I do like to read and hear what she said. Chatting with John Doran for The Quietus, the subject of (and subjects around) Wild Man came up:
“So obviously looking at the artwork, the track listing, the title, and the lead single ‘Wild Man’ from your new album 50 Words For Snow, it's pretty clear what the theme is. Now culturally snow is really interesting stuff. It can symbolise birth, purity, old age, death, sterility… I was wondering what it means to you.
KB: [laughs derisively] Well, I’ve never heard of it in terms of old age or death… [laughs] That’s quite an opening line. Well, I think it’s really magical stuff. It’s a very unusual, evocative substance and I had really great fun making this record because I love snow.
What are your memories of snow like from childhood? Was playing in the snow something you really looked forward to?
KB: Well… yeah. Do you know any children who don’t look forward to playing in the snow?
I know what you’re saying but there are some who like it more than others…
KB: …
Er…
KB: … Are you knackered?
Yeah.
KB: Have you been up all night?
Yeah, I have.
KB: [laughs uproariously and good naturedly] Well John do you like snow? Don’t you think snow is a thing of wonder and beauty?
I think that if I lived outside of London, maybe in the countryside where it doesn’t turn to a mixture of slush and hazardous black ice, I might like it more. Also, I’m very tall and for whatever reason I just fall over when it’s icy, I always have done. It’s very dangerous I think.
KB: [laughs] Are you a kind of glass half empty kind of guy?
My glass used to be completely dry. Now it’s half empty but I’m working on making it half full… No, I’m joking, of course I like snow, it’s simply marvelous stuff. But obviously there’s been a great thematic shift between Aerial and this album.
KB: Yeah.
So Aerial is full of images of clear skies, still water, warm days and it’s full of the bustle of family life and an easy domesticity. 50 Words For Snow is a similarly beautiful album but there is a chill to it - it lacks the warmth of its predecessor. I wondered if it represented another switch from an autobiographical to a narrative song writing approach?
KB: Yeah, I think it’s much more a kind of narrative story-telling piece. I think one of the things I was playing with on the first three tracks was trying to allow the song structure to evolve the story telling process itself; so that it’s not just squashed into three or four minutes, so I could just let the story unfold.
I’ve only heard the album today so I can’t say I’m completely aware of every nuance but I have picked out a few narrative strands. Would it be fair enough to say that it starts with a birth and ends with a death?
KB: No, not at all. Not to my mind anyway. It may start with a birth but it’s the birth of a snowflake which takes its journey from the clouds to the ground or to this person’s hand. But it’s not really a conceptual piece; it’s more that the songs are loosely held together with this thread of snow.
Fair play. Now some of your fans may have been dismayed to read that there were only seven songs on the album but they should be reassured at this point that the album is 65 minutes long, which makes for fairly long tracks. How long did it take you to write these songs and in the course of writing them did you discard a lot of material?
KB: This has been quite an easy record to make actually and it’s been quite a quick process. And it’s been a lot of fun to make because the process was uninterrupted. What was really nice for me was I did it straight off the back of Director’s Cut, which was a really intense record to make. When I finished it I went straight into making this so I was very much still in that focussed space; still in that kind of studio mentality. And also there was a sense of elation that suddenly I was working from scratch and writing songs from scratch and the freedom that comes with that.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 50 Words for Snow/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from his book, KATE: Inside the Rainbow)
Had you always wanted to do 50 Words For Snow or were you just on a roll after Director’s Cut?
KB: No, they were both records that I’d wanted to do for some time. But obviously I had to get Director’s Cut done before I could start this one... Well, I guess I could have waited until next year but this record had to come out at this time of year, it isn’t the sort of thing I could have put it out in the summer obviously.
Did the snow theme come from an epiphany or a particular grain or idea? Was there one particular day when you happened to be in the snow…
KB: No. I don’t think there was much snow going on through the writing of this… it was more to do with my memories of snow I suppose and the exploration of the images that come with it”.
Oh, it will be. Possibly even three quarters of the way full. Now I’m on firmer ground with ‘Wild Man’. Kangchenjunga is a Himalayan mountain; the third tallest peak in the world.
KB: Well, I’m impressed! And the Kangchenjunga Demon is another word for Yeti.
If I tell you an interesting story about that mountain will you tell me about the song?
KB: It would be my pleasure John!
Ok, the closest anyone got to conquering Kangchenjunga before the successful ascent, was an attempt led by occult writer Aleister Crowley. Now, at about 22,000 feet four of his party died in an avalanche. Their Sherpa said that the deaths had satisfied the demon and if they carried on they would get safely to the top. And Crowley said, 'Nah, you’re alright mate. I think we’ll just be off home now.'
KB: What a wimp! Well, the first verse of the song is just quickly going through some of the terms that the Yeti is known by and one of those names is the Kangchenjunga Demon. He’s also known as Wild Man and Abominable Snowman.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 50 Words for Snow/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from his book, KATE: Inside the Rainbow)
Have you worked with Andy Fairweather Low before, the [Amen Corner] vocalist who presumably plays the role of the hirsute gentleman of the mountains?
KB: [laughing] Hirsute? Well, no, Andy doesn’t play the hirsute beastie, he’s one of the people on the expedition into the Himalayas. But I think that Andy just has one of the greatest voices. I just love his voice. When I wrote the song I just thought, ‘I’ve got to get Andy to sing on this song because he sounds great.’ Which I think he does. He’s just got a fantastic voice.
This is a slight digression but my favourite non-fiction book is called Straw Dogs by John Gray. And in a nutshell he’s saying that all of man’s fundamental problems come from the fact that he sees himself as being somehow separate from the animals, superior to them and in control of his own destiny, when he's no more in control of his destiny than a polar bear or a squirrel. Do you see the Yeti as being like a man or an animal or is that really the same thing?
KB: Well, I don’t refer to the Yeti as a man in the song. But it is meant to be an empathetic view of a creature of great mystery really. And I suppose it’s the idea really that mankind wants to grab hold of something [like the Yeti] and stick it in a cage or a box and make money out of it. And to go back to your question, I think we’re very arrogant in our separation from the animal kingdom and generally as a species we are enormously arrogant and aggressive. Look at the way we treat the planet and animals and it’s pretty terrible isn’t it?
Well, I think you can learn a lot about a person or a group of people by looking at how they treat both children and animals. So, yes, I agree with that. Do you think of yourself as being ecologically concerned?
KB: Well, I wouldn’t put it that way but I do have a great love of nature and I do think it’s an incredibly beautiful planet if you get chance to go and see the good bits. And I think it’s very positive that there are such a lot people looking at the whole issue and trying to do something about it even though it’s perhaps got a bit of a fashion banner attached to it and it’s pretty late in the day. Let’s hope it’s not too late that something can’t be done”.
I am going to wrap it up there. It will be twelve years on 11th October since Kate Bush released a studio album single. If she does release any new music, I doubt it will be exactly like 50 Words for Snow - though there are going to be some similarities. Wild Man provided once more that Bush is one of the most innovative and surprising artists ever. Never repeating herself, this gem of a song deserves more air play and love (though its long running time hinders it in that sense!). If you have not played Wild Man for a while, then do so now…and be taking somewhere extraordinary. I have heard the song so many times now, yet it is something that…
MOVES me every time.