Album Title: Aerial
Artist: Kate Bush
Nationality: British
Year: 2005
Subgenre: Prog related
Player(s): Way too many to list but the main ones: Kate Bush (Vocals, Piano, Keyboards), Dan McIntosh (Guitars), Gary Brooker (Hammond), Peter Erskine/Steve Elliot/Pete Sanger (Drums), Eberhard Weber/John Giblin/Del Palmer (Bass), Rolf Harris (Didgeridoo and male vocal on “The painters link”), Chris Hall (Accordion)
Familiarity: Back in the 80s and 90s she was one of my favourite artists.
Favourite track(s): Difficult as the album seems to run as two continual very long tracks but the first album does seem to identify itself as individual songs, whereas the second seems to be more of one long suite.
Why? N/A
Least favourite track(s): As I'm treating it as two long tracks it's not a overly valid.
Why? N/A
Any preconceptions prior to listening, whether good or bad? Had heard it many years ago but to be fair have problems getting into Kate Bush as a mature artist.
Factoids you'd like to share? Hardly used to tour as she found it too stressful.
End impression: If this is prog then much of her other material could be as well.
Comments: Aerial is a pretty lush sounding album driven by Kate Bush and her piano. As per usual she's used a host of various musicians and her customary sound effects and it is a good album.
Overall
Aerial is a lush and accomplished album that DOES need numerous listens to dig out it's richness. The issue for me though is that this is mature Kate Bush meaning that her earlier energy and idiosyncracies are void imo on this and her more recent work, but that's not to say that the album doesn't have an exciting vibe to it. I still find her first five albums pretty amazing stuff and they're so unique in feel and style and few artists have such a run to match these five albums.
I went off her musically with
The Sensual World as the album largely seemed to cater for the masses by presenting Kate Bush as an artist that the average music listener could appreciate and at that time she was constantly being promoted as the women's ambassador for British music, meaning that she lost some of her aura and the following
The Red Shoes was a real disappointment as an album. Kate Bush has always been about aura and mystique and on
Aerial she does capture it again to a degree, even though it doesn't have the more manical style of old.
Rating Based on this listen I'd give the below rating, but that could probably go up half a point if I had the time to listen to it again, I guess I've recently been spoilt when it comes to five star double albums as I'd just been re-listening to Can's
Tago Mago which really is a 5.0
4.0