All entries for Monday 21 November 2005

November 21, 2005

Aerial by Kate Bush, a Deleuzian review by k–punk

Follow-up to Music Review: Aerial by Kate Bush from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

Always interesting blogger k-punk has posted a review of Aerial, the new Kate Bush double CD. His message is the same as mine: this is a really fascinating and complex record, coming from a writer with a special perspective on life, creativity and the world.

I like this description:

Deleuzian MOR: a numinous, luminous twitterscape of women-animal becomings, a hymn to light, and lightness.

Of course we don't need to suppose that she actually reads Deleuze (although I wouldn't rule it out). More importantly, she seems to have a deep insight into how artistic creativity works (and sometimes doesn't). Obviously that comes from being a compulsive and quite ambitious composer of soundscapes and words. But Aerial goes further, showing a reflective and very clever mind extending that understanding out from music and narrative to light, colour and the inhuman (animal). It's the relationship between these aesthetic planes that gives A Sky of Honey, which k-punk describes as "her most painterly record", its power and fascination. This is aesthetics as carried out reflectively by an artist. And she knows it – her interviews, including the recent Mark Radcliffe interview, contain indications of this.

And what does this mean for Deleuzians? If you actually listen to what artists have to say about how they work and the material of their work, you will hear Deleuzianisms. That's not because they are necessarily Deleuzian, but rather, as in this case, that Deleuze and Guattari really understood art and aesthetic creativity.

Deleuzian Kate? Perhaps Bushian Deleuze.

k-punk's review is also worth reading for the artworks with which he illustrates it


Robert O'Toole : 21 Nov 2005 20:24 |  Tags:      |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem