Brand new you're retro: Kate Bush

I’m going to occasionally use this newsletter to share older pieces of my writing of which I’m fond (under the title “Brand New You’re Retro,” after the great Tricky song), and in this year of the Kate Bush revival, it seems fitting to share something I wrote for the Stylus column Seconds back in 2007, about Bush’s “Experiment IV.”

In this streaming era of “Essential _____” and “This Is _____” playlists, greatest hits albums seem to have largely disappeared - or, in some cases, been disappeared. Which is distressing, because we’ve thus moved from an artist-curated compilation to one curated by a streaming service - or worse, an algorithm. (Also, those 50-song Spotify “This Is” playlists are too damned long.)

Nowadays, newly-compiled hits records barely exist - there’s not as much (perceived) need. But there was a time when these records served a very real purpose, as an introduction to an artist, curated in a very specific, non-shuffle play way. Some such records even became defining items in artists’ discographies, (nearly) as significant as studio albums themselves.

I’m not thinking of things like Eagles Greatest Hits, which really does play like a random compilation. Primarily I’m thinking specifically of a handful of ‘80s college rock comps that served as the finest possible intros to an artist’s oeuvre, and play just as well as a traditional full-length: Bush’s The Whole Story, the Cure’s Standing on a Beach/Staring at the Sea - The Singles, and New Order’s Substance - the last of these 35 years old this past summer.

Substance, which largely used 12” versions in the place of single edits or album versions, and on cassette and CD included a whole other album’s worth of b-sides, is streaming. But the other two aren’t, which is a real shame. There are other Cure comps, but what I really loved about Beach was, besides its perfect, chronological track listing, the fact that if you purchased it on cassette, and only cassette, you also got Sea, an all-b-sides comp. Yes, many of those ended up on the Join the Dots box set, but not in this selection, in this order. And that was how I learned early Cure; my intro to them was 1985’s The Head on the Door, and Beach was the next thing they released, so of course I gravitated towards it.

Then there’s The Whole Story, which was not only the only Bush comp ever released, but which featured a new song, “Experiment IV” - one of my favorites of her entire catalog. And since the album isn’t streaming, neither is that song; it’s as if it never existed. Fortunately its video is on YouTube (see above), and frankly one is best appreciated with the other. But again, the formative album that introduced me to an artist’s ouevre is gone, seemingly forever (unless one purchases an out-of-print copy on a physical format).

[A note: while Seconds was, as the intro below notes, supposed to be about a few seconds of a song, the entries I contributed were almost always about a single itself. I’m not great with rules.]

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Stylus Magazine's Seconds column examines those magic moments that arise when listening to a piece of music that strikes that special chord inside. That pounding drum intro; a clanging guitar built-up to an anthemic chorus; that strange glitchy noise you've never quite been able to figure out; that first kiss or heartbreak; a well-turned rhyme that reminds you of something in your own past so much, it seems like it was written for you—all of those little things that make people love music. Every music lover has a collection of these Seconds in his or her head; these are some of ours. 

Horrifying. 

That’s always the first word that comes to mind when I think of Kate Bush’s astounding “Experiment IV.” The song, a then-new track added to her 1986 compilation The Whole Story, shouldn’t be such a stand-out; it’s entirely Kate-of-its-time, all programmed drums (including a very militaristic snare tattoo), swaying strings, and Kate doing her patented vocal tricks. It’s a mid-‘80s-UK-chart warm bath, which only heightens its effect: sound and subject matter clash to frightening effect, a nice irony. “Experiment IV,” after all, concerns the creation of “a sound that could kill someone.” 

“We only know in theory what we are doing…” 

The song’s narrative is straight out of Orwell’s 1984: a lab of white-coated scientists (as visualized by its excellent video, which stars among others Dawn French and Hugh Laurie) set to work constructing the most horrific sound possible, one that can cause immediate death: “From the painful cries of mothers, to the terrifying screams / We recorded it and put it into our machine,” Kate sings desperately. What could be scarier? 

“It’s a mistake in the making…” 

The true brilliance of “Experiment IV,” however—and thus, further evidence of the true brilliance of Kate Bush—is the way she produces the song. As long as she’s been self-producing, she’s always made little symphonies of sound, but on few of her songs has the production been as necessarily spot-on as it is here. The drums, for example, are simple Linns metronomically keeping time—until the chorus, when Kate sends them into their snare paces, adding a military element so perfect you can’t imagine the song without it. 

Similarly, the song’s swelling strings sound nearly romantic for much of the proceedings, but then on the second chorus start ominously sawing away. On the subsequent bridge, they creep back into the mix so deviously and eerily, it’s as if they came straight from Orwell’s resting place themselves. 

“We won’t be there to be blamed, we won’t be there to snitch

I just pray that someone there can hit the switch.” 

The sum of these parts is entirely unsettling—as one can only assume it’s meant to be. “Experiment IV” is a fine example of an artist seeing her vision completely through, and nailing it. As opposed to much of Kate’s oeuvre, this is cold and clinical, and guaranteed to provide nightmares. God, she’s good.