Kate Bush and her sky of honey

Ah, Kate Bush, the elder stateswoman of art pop. How satisfying it was two years ago to see her belatedly get to number one with "Running Up That Hill", undoubtedly one of her best songs. Sure, it needed Stranger Things, but quality is quality, and considering what else is floating around in the charts these days...

Bush worked steadily, if slowly, throughout the late 70s and 80s and into the early 90s, but then - poof - she was gone. 1993's The Red Shoes, arguably her most streamlined and conservative pop effort, including guest spots for Eric Clapton and Prince, wasn't the start of her second career phase as some sort of adult contemporary pop star. A planned one year hiatus turned into twelve, allowing Bush to start a family and otherwise drop out of the public eye entirely.

And then, without warning, she was back. Aerial, in 2005. A double album, with pretentious titles, just like in the old days. Disc 1, A Sea of Honey, was fine, a collection of art pop songs in different style. But for me the real treasure was Disc 2, A Sky Of Honey. A conceptual piece, it is designed to show 24 hours passing by. It has a narrator and recurring characters. It is, in short, Kate Bush's fully fledged prog album. But its status as, essentially, a bonus disc of sorts makes me think that A Sky Of Honey is both underappreciated and simply not heard enough. Considering its structure as a song cycle, A Sky Of Honey makes no sense as individual pieces, so I decided to edit its songs into one album-long track. I kept the parts mostly untouched, shortening and tightening up some of the track transitions, but that's about it. I want the pieces (or now, the piece) to speak for itself.

There is one (well, one and a half) notable exception: Bush's witchy voice has its raison d'être, and can and does get used effectively, but I didn't need to hear it at this long end's journey into the night, so I did bring in my scissorhands right for the end. I found some of the noisy (and, uh, witchy) excesses of "Nocturn" and "Aerial" too much. Three quarters of A Sky Of Honey are pastoral and lush, so the intrusion of a noisier sound right at the end wasn't my cup of tea. It broke the spell of what came before a little bit, so those pieces got shortened. You will still get the gist of Bush's night's end, but in a slightly gentler way.

So, I need about 36 uninterupted minutes of your time to get lost in A Sky Of Honey. Its a trip well worth taking...