While fans of Kate Bush had long learned to expect the unexpected from the singer, 2011’s Director’s Cut was a curveball by anyone’s standards. Rather than record an album of new material to follow her fantastic 2005 comeback, Aerial, Director’s Cut saw Bush reinvent 11 songs plucked from 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes albums.
Listen to Director’s Cut here.
“I wanted to let the songs breathe more”
With hindsight, the move looks like a warm-up for Bush’s next album proper, 50 Words For Snow, which followed Director’s Cut’s in November. Revamping her old material also gave Bush the opportunity to right some creative wrongs from her past. Since originally releasing them, she’d grown dissatisfied with the production of both The Sensual World and The Red Shoes.
“I just kind of felt like there were songs on those two albums that were quite interesting but that they could really benefit from having new life breathed into them,” she told Dimitri Ehrlich for Interview magazine. “There was generally a bit of an edgy sound to it, which was mainly due to the digital equipment that we were using, which was state-of-the-art at the time – and I think everyone felt pressured to be working that way. But I still remain a huge fan of [analogue]. There were elements of the production that I felt were either a little bit dated or a bit cluttered. So, what I wanted to do was empty them out and let the songs breathe more.”
