Kate Bush has said she has “lots of ideas” she wants to pursue now she is ready to create new material.
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The ‘Hounds of Love’ musician has famously shied away from the spotlight, but recently appeared in a rare interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme ahead of the release of Little Shrew, a new short film she wrote and directed.
Set to her 2011 track ‘Snowflake’ – taken from her last full length release ‘50 Words for Snow’ – the black-and-white animation aims to raise money for the charity War Child. Out today on Bush’s website, it is free to watch, but encourages viewers to support organisations helping children affected by conflict.
“I started working on it [with illustrator Jim Kay] a couple of years ago, it was not long after the Ukrainian war broke out, and I think it was such a shock for all of us,” Bush said.
“It’s been such a long period of peace we’d all been living through. And I just felt I wanted to make a little animation that would feature, originally, a little girl. It was really the idea of children caught up in war. I wanted to draw attention to how horrific it is for children.
She continued to say war was “horrific for everyone”, but for it was “unimaginable” how frightening it must be for children. “I think we’ve all been through very difficult times. These are dark times that we’re living in and I think, to a certain extent, everyone is just worn out.
“We went through the pandemic, that was a huge shock, and I think we felt that, once that was over, that we would be able to get on with some kind of normal life. But in fact it just seems to be going from one situation to another, and more wars seem to be breaking out all the time.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Bush broached making new material, although clarified it wasn’t something she was currently doing. “I’ve been caught up doing a lot of archive work over the last few years, redesigning our website, putting a lyric book together,” she explained.
“And I’m very keen to start working on a new album when I’ve got this finished. I’ve got lots of ideas and I’m really looking forward to getting back into that creative space, it’s been a long time.”
Asked if it was something she had been hoping to do for a while, Bush replied: “Yes it is, really. Particularly the last year, I’ve felt really ready to start doing something new.”
Nodding to a recent interview David Gilmour gave, in which the Pink Floyd musician said he’d tried to persuade her to perform live again, she joked: “I’m not there yet.”
Bush last performed live in 2014, when, after a 35 year hiatus from the stage, she announced ‘Before the Dawn’, a 22-night residency in London.
As NME reported on the first night of the mammoth run: “Tickets for the 22 dates at the Hammersmith Apollo sold out in less than 15 minutes and, once extra dates were announced, they totalled 100,00.
“At the moment seats are going on eBay for over £1,000. Fans have flown from all over the world to witness pop’s greatest auteur perform. Indeed, the lobby of the Hammersmith venue was a babel of languages and accents from Sydney to Brooklyn, Denmark to Japan.”
