All entries for Wednesday 02 February 2005

February 02, 2005

Barking mad for Kate Bush

Exciting Welsh guitar band The Futureheads have released a cover version of Kate's Hounds of Love, the original of which was itself beyond enthralling. In an interview with the NME they identify the highly innovative structure of the song as being one of the characteristics that drew them to it. And that to me is a very interesting point.

It is a song with which I am very familiar, and still enjoy listening to regularly. But that does not mean that I find this new version to detract from my relation to the song. It really does add to it in surprising ways. Effectively what has happened is this. They have taken the song, its structure and elements of its sound, deterritoritorialized or abstracted those elements, and passed them through their own complex musical machine, their own textures, rhythms and group dynamics – applying a different 'slice of chaos' or set of selective forces to it.

The song is so strong that it passes through chaos, a zone of indiscernibility between Kate and the Futureheads, and emerges on the other side intact, with its habits and distributions of intensity recurring – added to positively. What a creative synthesis!