I just ran into your site….and let me tell you. I like you. And this. Keep it up

-J

I’m glad the graphic designer hired for this album took approximately 3 minutes to create the cover in photoshop. So lame!

http://www.gigwise.com/news.asp?contentid=8891 has a brief little write up on this, interesting stuff…

Of course! “The true message will only be revealed when you buy the album.”

Have you tried speeding the sample up, so that it takes 3 seconds to play instead of 30?

It says “All your base are belong to us.”

This? Is so, so rad. Got here via Stereogum, by the by.

I don’t know anything about Bitmaps And Waves, but the cover art only shows the envelope of the sound– if it also had the pitch, it would look like a big gray zigzag, and not a solid blocky color (if that makes any sense!)

This was a fascinating and noble attempt at doing the impossible. The visual graph used in most wave editors is a representation of amplitude vs time. As your mp3 shows, the missing ingredients, frequency, timbre, etc are not represented here.

Perhaps a better approach would be to record the CD and study it for this sequence.

And doubtless, some one is gonna do that (or has already done that)

It’s Kate Bush saying “Paul is dead” backwards, now go to bed.

There is a track on the upcoming album with birdsong, bet it’s a sample of a sound file

you are awesome

A noble effort, thanks!

I’m a sound editor by profession and thus I spend a lot of time looking at waveforms and projections like these. All I can say is that you can’t decode the image back to sound, since it’s not zoomed out enough. You do not have enough information.
It’s even hard to tell weather tis is speech at all. It could as well be any instrument, like a sax. There’s also no information about the fundamental pitches, let alone the sound spectrum modulated over those.
To do a analysis, you need to be zoomed in to these waves a bit more. Then you can tell the chaotic moments like “t” and “s”, and the pitchy ones. But even then, it’s hard te understand it as speech. Speech is way to hi-res for such an image.

I enjoyed the article though. A lot.

Jesus, Kate if you read this – what a load of cranks. Please just keep writing music – you lot who do you think you are Steven Hawkins stop trying to analyse every breath Kate makes just sit back and enjoy like a fine wine. too much thinking hurts your brain!!! Love June
Ps Stop being “Heavy People “

I say let’s give the graphic designer/art director some credit. Using very simple imagery and precise composition, he/she has evoked a graphic treatise on the blurred boundary between sound and vision. Maybe that’s something Kate Bush explores on this disc? Sounds feasible given the painting/sunset/sunrise lyrical motif.

June–lighten up. Thinking isn’t such a bad thing and nobody’s getting hurt, so lay off.

Thanks a lot man. Listen, I’m a graphic designer, not for EMI or records for that matter, but I put a lot of work into ‘encoding’ my stuff. It’s about being multi-layered, and for the people out there who want to go that extra mile, there’s something around that corner for them. I won’t presume to understand Ms. Bush’s mind or motives but it seems like she applies a lot of depth to her music as well as her visuals, I’d go so far as to say I doubt it’s a random wave, and i doubt she’d put it there if she didn’t want people to perceive that it has some connxion, whether literal or just text painting. You’re not a nutte, not obsessed, it’s just like doing a crossword and my hat, for one, is off to you.

I am familiar with waveforms having used Sonic Foundry (now Sony) Sound Forge. I believe that Kate simply liked the way the waveform looked, that’s it. I don’t think there is any cryptic message although I would have to hear Aerial to know that.

It is an interesting project you took on. I say this while listening to the waveform you produced. Is it possible that maybe this waveform follows the mood from one track to the next? Great job at checking this out though.

I met Kate Bush at a party thrown for her by EMI in Canada. This was at the King Edward Hotel in Toronto. At that time they were giving her an album sales award (gold or platinum-don’t remember) for Hounds Of Love. I will predict here that Aerial will become her biggest album, sales wise, to date. Now that all her clones are gone, Kate can come back to the forefront. Go figure, Kate’s timing was just perfect. I have yet to find any tracks to hear from the album other than King Of The Mountain. No, wait, I thought I had Aerial Tal (track 13) but it’s a fake. Yes, I have ordered the cd from a UK dealer as a matter of fact; I just want to hear the album already.

Anyway, all the best to Kate. Oh, and thanks for the letter you wrote and the Hounds Of Love album cover you signed for me Kate. I still believe that other than Joni Mitchell, there has been no better female singer ever than Kate.

Cat’s out of the bag! Adam is Kate Bush!

Hey!
I really enjoyed it and I appreciated all the work you put into this.
I read some comments here, and all I can say to the ‘critical voices’ is this: Kate Bush has always been a pioneer, especially in the field of sound sampling and the use of vocals. Just listen to The Dreaming – Leave It Open – where she is flangering her voice into a deep, cool hollow. Pretty spaced-out for a 24-year-old lass!

I played the clip of the wavefile you created and it told me to go sell my car, divorce my wife and have a sex change! It’s an encrypted mind control device you have unleashed on the world – AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Hi great work! but thanks to a post by dannis on thee homeground forum
there is a photo ov thee back cover ov Aerial showing two more waveforms
could you combine these three waveforms?

photo here http://www.streetsonline.co.uk/default/templates/catalog/dvd_cover.jhtml?prod_id=50486367&op=large_image&image=IMGBC

I have a copy of the record and the soundwaves are also part of the booklet. On the last page it says these are the sounds of various species of birds. Kate loves birds, as you know. The album is spectacular and gets better on each listen.

‘Aerial’ is what you Americans call an antenna – turn the cover on its side and what do you see?.

Doh!

I am listening to Aerial right now for about the 15th time. I will go on record here as saying this is one of the 100 best rock/alternative or whatever albums ever produced. It is as good as Hounds Of Love and The Dreaming. I can just see the public response to this album being great as we get to hear very little real talent. Kate is one of a kind; so is this album.

Aerial is release Nov 6th in Europe, Nov 7th in North America. Go buy it because an album this important has not been released for over 20 years

just opened track 6 side 2 – the one where kate sings with the bird song- with wavelab and the shapes of those bits look very similar to the cover , thus probability is it is birdsong, perhaps not even used in the album, if I can be arsed I’ll search the album for isolated snippets and check em out

Download this teaser file and all will be revealed. http://www.suspended-in-gaffa.com/kate/KateBushpreview.wmv

I read all these posts with interest! I love the way people are seeing this puzzle from various angles. There might possibly bee something that you’re all missing though. Keep looking….

hi there-

i’m guessing others have probably figured this out by now, but i haven’t done a comprehensive search on the web… anyway, i located the aerial cover waveform on the album itself. it’s at 37:28 in CD2 (or 3:18 into track 9). it is, of course, a birdsong. here’s a screen grab:

http://www.operazero.org/peamisc/bushbird.jpg

now, in this pic it doesn’t look 100% like what you see on the cover, because the waveform as shown on the cover is just the birdsong solo’d, so you see the entire waveform in sharper detail. on the album itself it has other sounds around it, so the finer details at the beginning and then end of the waveform are obscured. but when you listen to the actual sound, you can hear those finer details and sonically they match up with the visual waveform as it appears on the album cover.

anyway, just thought you’d like to know!

pea

Great stuff – fantastic to read the article and then all the comments and actually be rewarded with hearing the waveform and having the puzzle solved, thanks to Marc, three posts above.

And I’m not convinced by the aerial – antenna theory. Aerial as in ‘from the air’ seems more in keeping with the album’s themes.

I love the album. Who else will sing, in earnest, the words ‘washing machine’?

Joe

You should play it faster. I tuned it up little bit, sounded more like a bird.

fascinating stuff guys, I’m a big Kate fan and agree ‘aerial’ has connotations for a lot more than just an antenna. Read somewhere bout it being based on some old text – my mind is very foggy so sorry for the lack of clarity. Anyhoo great stuff, ya just gotta love her.
C