#katebushlive

[blogeuporai]

Como uma criança ouvindo o box de vinil de Kate Bush ao vivo Before The Dawn... sem palavras pra descrever esse trabalho! #katebush #katebushlive #thekfellowship #beforethedawn #vinil #box #vynil (em Campinas, Sao Paulo)

[ajweiner3]

#KateBush #trifecta BeforeTheDawn #TourPoster #2014 #personalized #concertticket 🤓 #confetti. Now and forever around this time of year, I can recall the feeling of being excited to see #KateBushLive #Hammersmith #London #UK (at Eventim Apollo, Hamersmith)

[ajweiner3]

#KateBush #trifecta BeforeTheDawn #TourPoster #2014 #personalized #concertticket 🤓 #confetti. Now and forever around this time of year, I can recall the feeling of being excited to see #KateBushLive #Hammersmith #London #UK (at Eventim Apollo, Hamersmith)

[katyamusic]

KATE BUSH "BREATHING" #katebush #kate #katebushlive #katebushmusic #kroq #katya #katyamusic #katyadogsrock #katyajapantour2016 #katyarecordproducer

[katyamusic]

"FEEL IT" BY KATE BUSH #feelit #katebush #katebushhair #katebushlive #katebushmusic #katebushnight #kate #kroq #katya #katyamusic #katyadogsrock #katyajapantour2016 #katyarecordproducer

[katyamusic]

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KATE BUSH PARTY WITH FRIENDS #katebush #katebushlive #katebushmusic #katebushforever #katebushhair #katebushtribute #katebushnight #kroq #katya #katyamusic #katyadogsrock #katyajapantour2016 #katyarecordproducer

[pipfreak]

Kate Bush - Before the Dawn

As Kate Bush finished the last of her tour dates, I found myself reflecting a lot on Before the Dawn as I was lucky enough to see it more than once. Having avoided virtually all spoilers, I was unprepared for what I saw. I knew she didn’t cover the first four albums and that she would recreate the Ninth Wave, but nothing more.

It started off with a fairly standard set up of band and singer performing a set of hits and fan favourites. Lily, as the opener, was perhaps chosen deliberately to set the scene as it tells the story of a spell of protection being cast on Kate. Hounds of Love is one of my favourite ever Kate Bush singles and it launched the momentum of the concert as the second song, even more effective on my final visit where they had added the opening “It’s in the trees, it’s coming!” from one of the backing singers. The remainder of the opening segment was fantastic in itself, the vocal on Top of the City was a highlight of the concert, and whilst Kate had already recreated the emotionally intense vocal of the original on the Directors Cut album, she sung it even more beautifully live. I found Joanni one of the slower points of the concert and personally, it’s the one song of the night I might have shuffled out, but I am being extremely picky and critical, I accept.

King of the Mountain, performed live, built to a greater crescendo that the original track, starting the storm that was to become the Ninth Wave. Not really sure what can be said about the performance of the Ninth Wave, probably the cycle of songs that had the most impact on me in my teenage years. The interpretation involved video scenes of Kate afloat and lost at sea, multiple recreations of waves and water, astonishing 3D sound, creepy fish people, a seemingly underwater living room where a ghostly Kate watched her family without her and the final scenes of Kate’s rescue and rebirth into the morning. In hindsight, the imagery was fairly faithful to the music, telling the story in a literal way, but with so much surrealism and drama that it was beyond anything I’ve ever seen created on stage. Hello Earth was the standout moment for me and to follow with a celebratory acoustic version of The Morning Fog left many people around me quite emotional.

I really hadn’t prepared for the second half and whilst The Ninth Wave has always been once of my favourite pieces of music ever, it is the second that keeps haunting me. When I first saw the show, I gasped rather loudly and embarrassingly when I realised she was performing A Sky of Honey in its entirety. This act was, for me, interpreted more loosely and more abstract. The story is simpler, telling of 24 hours of a summers day and the movement of the birds and the actions of a painter. I assume the wooden puppet that appeared represented the child figure (originally voiced by Kate’s son Bertie) constantly in wonder at what was going on, well at least initially. It was also visually very simple yet effective, mainly involving various visual effects of a sky progressing through the elements of a day and the birds that flew across the video projections.

The momentum of A Sky of Honey built much more steadily than The Ninth Wave, although it was mixed up a little, with the end of the Prologue bursting into a new bridge of church bells, choral ‘Ding Dongs’ and a refrain of ‘Shake it Up!’ that reappeared much darker at a later point in the segment. What really worked in this cycle is that the band and singers were also the actors and always part of the action. The Prologue with Kate on the piano, was just a group of musicians joyously playing together whilst the backing vocalists danced around the stage singing amongst falling feathers. I love the song An Architects Dream, and the slow motion choreography added to the sense of a building momentum, brought to a high by the flamenco finish of Sunset, which brought the audience to a standing ovation.

The second act seemed to move much quicker than the first, with night falling quickly, the addition of Bertie singing of the tawny moon (a welcome addition) and then suddenly turning even darker than the first act. Nocturn, one of my favourite songs originally, was more haunting sung by torchlight with swooping birds flying past, carried by singers, reminiscent of Kate’s early mime work on the Tour of Life. There were numerous moments that linked the two acts, having opened with the ‘over here’ vocal from the Jig of Life, here the resinging of the ‘Help this blackbird’ refrain during Nocturn, and earlier they had introduced the blackbird wings during Waking the Witch whilst Kate sunk under the ice - I hadn’t quite realised the amount of references to birds across the two albums.

Aerial was something else completely, opening with flaming archers, the innocent and childlike wooden boy driven to killing and eating a white dove (I have no idea why) before Kate ventured out, growing feathers, whilst shrieking about wanting to get up on the roof. In a number of places, the concert highlighted just how prog rock Kate’s music can be, never more so that when she danced around the stage with the bone-masked guitarist, building a cacophony of noise as the band and singers also donned bird skull masks. After the first visit, my heart pounded during this song on my next visit, even more powerful when you anticipate the events; the wooden boy running away from his puppeteer, trees crashing through the ceiling and through the piano for that final moment when giant wooden doors opened to see Kate, metamorphosed into a blackbird taking off into the sky. No wonder I had feverish dreams after that level of intensity.

The encore was beautiful, Kate alone at the piano for an emotional and completely silent rendition of Among Angels and the then the uplifting crowd singalong of Cloudbusting.

It was a concert unlike any other, creating spectacle with video, props and using the band and vocal performers rather than ‘dancers’ or simple visual tricks or lighting as most current artists do (to great effect I might add - that’s not meant as a criticism).

Added to all that was a venue where you could see Kate’s face pretty much wherever you sat, a gig where no one was waving phone cameras in front of you, fantastic merchandise and an audience where the vast majority, like me, had spent many years aching to see their idol, but never believing something so good was gonna happen.

Go on Kate, tour again, please….