7″ Black Gold
Kate Bush – Cloudbusting
Kate Bush – Cloudbusting
Just recently, everyone was again enthralled by the magic of “Running up that hill”, but there is another, much more haunting and complex track from that time which is “Cloudbusting”.
The song was the second single released from her fifth studio album “Hounds of Love” in 1985 and is clearly a product of its time yet timeless at its core, of course.
Taking inspiration from the 1973 Peter Reich memoir “A Book of Dreams”, which Bush found deeply moving, the song is about the very close relationship between psychiatrist and philosopher Wilhelm Reich and his young son, Peter, told from the point of view of the mature Peter. It describes the boy’s memories of his life with Reich on their family farm, called Orgonon, where the two spent time “cloudbusting”, a rain-making process that involved using a machine designed and built by Reich – a machine called a cloudbuster – to point at the sky.
The music video, directed by Julian Doyle, was conceived by Terry Gilliam and Kate Bush as a short film. The video features Donald Sutherland playing the role of Wilhelm Reich, and Bush in the role of his young son, Peter. “I still dream of Orgonon …”
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