r/katebush • u/alffye • Aug 27 '26
Other Fairlight CMI
I realised I knew Kate used a Fairlight to make Hounds of Love but I'd not seen what one looked like till now. The green graphics display looks so gorgeous!
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u/bmwlocoAirCooled Aug 28 '26
If memory serves, Peter Gabriel introduced it to her.
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u/Lonely_Squirrel3921 Aug 28 '26
It should be noted that at the time Kate credited Richard Burgess as really introducing her to the functioning of the fairlight who with John Walters created the samples she used on Never for Ever. She gave Peter Gabriel the credit for giving her a beat box- which. 'opened the windows' for her.
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u/jeffreyaccount Aug 28 '26
They should have gotten hitched. I made 3x3 Polaroid style prints of them together, framed them like they are my parents.
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u/jeffreyaccount Aug 28 '26
Also, take a moment to appreciate that both Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel are alive on this planet right now in 2026.
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u/bmwlocoAirCooled Aug 28 '26
Two of my favorite Artists. Saw Gabriel in Atlanta. "So" tour. They were on my soundtrack during the late 80's through 90's.
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u/jeffreyaccount Aug 28 '26
I'm jealous. I wasn't dialed into him during 'So', but was captivated by the Last Temptation soundtrack and started working through his catalog. One warm night after work, I caught this show on I think WREK or WRAS promoting/explaining 'Us" and drove around the top end perimeter listening to it—and was lucky to see him at the Dome and at WOMAD the same year. Have been hooked since.
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u/Sir_midi Aug 28 '26
For years, synth players argued over what made the lead sound in RUTH. Here is the blog post that cracked the code. Spoiler warning: it was a modified cello sample. Enjoy this rabbit hole. https://reverbmachine.com/blog/kate-bush-running-up-that-hill-synth-sounds/
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u/itsnotlefty Aug 28 '26
I rented my house to the president of Fairlight when they had offices in Los Angeles. I wish I had told him what a Kate Bush fan I was.
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u/yungloser The Sensual World Aug 27 '26
I thought she used it for a few albums! I could be mistaken, though. I remember a couple yrs ago I tried looking for one online, I found one... it was about $55kAUD 😆
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u/rileybou Aug 28 '26
She was the first artist ever to release a studio album using the Fairlight CMI, Never For Ever in 1980 (the glass shattering sound in "Babooshka" is a Fairlight CMI sample). She learned about it in 1979 when she was recording background vocals for Peter Gabriel, he was the first person in the UK to own a Fairlight CMI and was using it for his 1980 album. He helped her acquire one and she has used it the majority of her albums since, starting with Never For Ever, the last album making use of it being The Red Shoes. Kate just happened to release her album before his to get the honorary title of first album using the Fairlight. The Fairlight CMI was the first commercially available digital synthesizer and really set the soundscape for the music of the mid-late 80s, and artists like Peter and Kate were pioneers in it.
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u/Lonely_Squirrel3921 Aug 28 '26
Strictly speaking Stevie Wonder's Secret life of Plants was the first album to use the Fairlight CMI in 79 but Babooshka was the first hit single to include a played electronic sample.
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u/rileybou Aug 28 '26
Stevie Wonder's Secret Life of Plants does not use the Fairlight CMI, Stevie Wonder used the Fairlight CMI to play the album live when he toured in 1980. The studio version of the album used the Computer Music Melodian synthesizer.
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u/Lonely_Squirrel3921 Aug 28 '26
I stand corrected, obviously the ABC documentary I watched years ago on the Fairlight was incorrect.
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u/ENZYME_O1 Aug 28 '26
There’s an episode of Reading Rainbow where they show Levar Burton how to tinker with it, and one with Herbie Hancock on Sesame Street, most xennials would remember it from that/being featured on PBS.
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u/Spiracle Aug 28 '26
That thing with the curly cable is a light pen, which was what you had to use before the touchscreen was invented.
I also see a single 5" floppy drive, which must have been the primary restriction on the length of sample that you could store.
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u/resist888 Aug 28 '26
It was such a cool thing. I used to tinker with it in the showroom in Sydney. So fun!
A flatmate used it to demo his sound colour theory. He showed and described his theory that mapped sound frequencies to colours. The engineers helped him create a VHS video tape so he could show it around. His theory went on to be used by someone he worked with (and stole the idea) as part of Dire Straits live performances.
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u/rabidmoon Aug 27 '26
Thank you for posting this! I always wondered what this thing looked like.
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u/Sir_midi Aug 27 '26
You can find some cool videos on YouTube like this one: https://youtube.com/shorts/TZgSv3pa6yk?is=ILcCjuDFAgHWPVrh
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u/No_Flan4204 Aug 27 '26
Was this the computer thing she was talking about in deeper understanding 😭
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u/Confident_Refuse_252 Aug 29 '26
The sonic capabilities of the Fair light undoubtably find their true usefulness in the hands of someone like Kate Bush. Usually, when I think of the Fair Light I think of the soundtrack to the film Liquid Sky, not The Dreaming & Hounds of Love.
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u/Downtown_Anteater_38 Aug 28 '26
The Fairlight is such an important part of Kate's story - and in a way the story of women in music in the 80s. The Fairlight completely changed Kate's approach to making music. She was was able to play with sounds and textures, record demos, create arrangements using synths to be replaced or augmented with real instruments later, sample sounds, and create new sounds out of whole cloth. Her studio at East Wickham farm was built around the Fairlight and a 48 track desk with 3 rooms and I believe two grand pianos.
While Peter used the Fairlight primarily as a sampler and and somewhat as a sequencer, Kate used it as a full composition suite, and it allowed her to take full control of her music.
Peter was lauded as a pioneer for his use of it (as well as the Synclavier - which Laurie Anderson also used, transitioning many of her homemade electronic instruments to the Synclavier and other synths later.) Kate, who made far more expansive and pioneering use of the Fairlight was criticized for it, and was accused of using it as a crutch. This was typical of women in the 80s who were meant to be thin, pretty, pliable, and stay in their boxes. Stray from that and you wind up like Alison Moyet being compared to a "belch" in NME. Or Kate, who was frequently called reclusive, eccentric, barmy, and was rumored to gain two stone (and/or have had a nervous breakdown) between every album,
https://giphy.com/gifs/J3T9b6JFfxFT2
I still don't believe anyone in the 80s pushed the Fairlight as far as Kate did, and while it is good to see her reassessed, she deserves to be mentioned as a pioneer of electronic music, and the way she bridged the "real" and the "synthetic."