Kate Bush is making a new record. I've been watching a lot of videos lately and being reminded that she's the Ultimate Arty Girl. Big Boi of Outkast is a fan too...

News comes today, from the lips of Peter Gabriel to the Toronto Sun to Zoilus to you, that Kate Bush is casually at work on her first album in 11 years - though when Mojo magazine recently asked how long it will be till it appears, Bush's business manager replied, "How long is a piece of string?"

I maintain an unshakeable adoration of Bush's 80s-era music, a near-guilty level of pleasure in how at once sensual and wigged-out it was, not-quite-prog-rock sometimes built around pop-classical piano chording and sometimes around oneiric sample collages, full of multiple-personality character transformations, literary allusions, British whimsy and sex. From The Kick Inside through Hounds of Love, and particularly on The Dreaming, Bush cultivated a feminine musical vocabulary that was second to no man in wild individualism but didn't feel the need to prove she could rock out like a guy. Sure, she can be blamed (along with 70s-style "womyn's music") for nurturing the Lilith Fair subgenre of woodnymph balladry (Tori Amos is like a decadent emo retread of Bush, Sarah McLachlan is an obvious fan), but she also deserves credit for clearing a path for Bjork, Cat Power or PJ Harvey.

And she's also been named a favourite by Outkast - and by Big Boi, not Andre! - a non-intuitive link, but when you think about it you can hear a Kate-like touch in the textures and catercorners of Outkast's music. Says Big Boi, ""She was so bugged out man! But I felt what she was talking about in the songs. ... I just found out that she was producing all that shit herself! She's so fucking dope and so underrated and off the radar."

"Kate had a son and lost her mom and I think that kept her [occupied]," Gabriel told the Sun. "I spoke to her quite recently in fact and she's just about finished on a new record. It is exciting. She's being a mom and loving it. So, if you like, music's gone from being full-time to being part-time, so that slows you down." Gabriel collaborated with Bush several times, their voices meshing luxuriantly, as on his hit Don't Give Up, a fact immortalized by The French (ex-Hefner) in 2003's maybe-single-of-the-year Gabriel In The Airport: "Don't you wish that you could stay/ Don't you wish that you could say/ You never thought of Kate Bush in a dirty way?"

There are few hints what the new album will sound like whenever it does arrive - will it have the Gurdieff-manic spark of 1980s Kate, or the over-perfumed limpness that came to mar her early-90s efforts? Bassist Mick Karn (ex-Japan) reportedly plays on a track titled How To Be Invisible, percussionist Peter Erskine (Diana Krall, Joni Mitchell, Weather Report, etc.) is on others, and the London Metropolitan Orchestra came out to party too. She began to muck about with it some five years ago.

Kind of sorry we didn't do The Dreaming in the book, now.

Speaking of the book, Amazon awaits the first reader reviews...

Plus Nice review at The Rock and Roll Report

And a good write up at Rock Critics Daily blogspot, by Ted Cogswell. (Scroll down to the bottom, 11/1/04).

Hayden, did you get the whale info I sent? (Music connections: Laurie Anderson & Stanley Crouch. Oh yeah, almost forgot: John Bonham, too.)

And on a completely non-musical note (except for that figure of speech), election recount update. For those of you who haven't been following, the Ohio vote was certified today by its Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, who in his spare time served as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign in Ohio in 2004. Or maybe he multitasked.

Cool news about Kate Bush, Hec.

Kind of sorry we didn't do The Dreaming in the book, now.

My introduction to Kate, and still my favorite by virtue of it being her weirdest.

That's very cool about Kate Bush. Even though The Red Shoes did not rock my socks off after the five year wait.

ETA: I agree that The Dreaming would have been great for the book. Hounds of Love blows my mind, but The Dreaming was always unsung, even though it's beautiful and more than a little freaky and dark.

That's very cool about Kate Bush. Even though The REd Shoes did not rock my socks off after the five year wait.

Yeah, I have all her stuff. Love the early albums even though it was probably Running up that Hill that grabbed me and shook me about and made me go back.

Frankly it was listening to her stuff while really high that made me appreciate it the most.

Hounds of Love has some dark stuff too, like "Waking the Witch." My doctor ex-gf was a huge fan and explained that whole album to me.

"Waking the Witch."

The whole "Ninth Wave" part of the album is just intense. And sonically it's pretty amazing. It's a real trip.

However, the whole Kate Bush oeuvre is very tied to a particular time, place and people in my life, and I can't listen to it without those associations. I would love to listen to it with fresh ears again.

Joe, I got the word on the whale book, but I've been too busy to think of a smart reply. I'll send out notice when the synapses start firing.