Released on 26/10/05
Label: EMI

Oh, how we love our rock'n'roll recluses. Yahoo Music's favourite has got to be Brian Wilson, who emerged so rarely from his bedroom in the mid-70s that he began to use his beard as an auxiliary duvet and only thought it reasonable to leave his pit to offer teenage daughter Carnie some hardcore drug action (allegedly). There's been no such spurious rumours of this nature about Kate Bush, although it has been claimed during her absence of some ten years that she might be a witch.

Well, there's scant evidence of that on "King Of The Mountain", but this is very far from a disappointment. Built around a revolving, processed xylophone mantra and some spaced-out guitar FX, Bush's enigmatic entrance from the fog is initially so vague and indecipherable as to conclude that she surely hasn't been frantically scribbling lyrics for the past decade. However, the track soon shifts powerfully into billowing clarity in a thunder crack of atmospheric, elemental power, whispers of "the snow in Rosebud" and claims that we may in fact be talking about Elvis Presley here.

While not exactly "Wuthering Heights" - but then, nothing is - "King Of The Mountain" marks the absurdly long-awaited return of a singular force.

    by Ben Gilbert