A sound that could kill someone from a distance – Sci fi horror in Experiment 4

Horror Moments, Kate Bush Edition

‘Horror Moments’ is a running series examining horror-inflected scenes and themes in unexpected places. Each batch of ten articles explores a particular source, from Wallace & Gromit to the plays of William Shakespeare. The ‘moments’ are published weekly on Thursdays, and I share articles on the history of magic, theatre, storytelling, and more on Mondays – don’t forget to subscribe!

An elderly man clutching a leather bag walks into what looks like a shop selling instruments. He leaves his hat with a man at the desk and heads towards a door behind a crimson curtain.

Suddenly we are in a secret laboratory, populated by guards in uniform and white-coated technicians (one of whom is Dawn French and another of whom is Hugh Laurie). A voice explains, in song:

We were working secretly
For the military
Our experiment in sound
Was nearly ready to begin

We only know in theory
What we are doing:
Music made for pleasure
Music made to thrill
It was music we were making here until…

Thus begins ‘Experiment IV’, a song in which Kate Bush blends horror and science fiction to tell a cautionary tale about turning sound into a weapon.

Bush herself directed the video in which she stars as the apparition conjured by the strange experiment: at first a beautiful siren, then a monstrous banshee. The screams of this creation - signified by the piercing violin - immediately fry the brain of the unlucky test-subject, and the monster then breaks out and pursues the scientists themselves. The result was ‘too violent’ for Top of the Pops who refused to air it, which is a shame because this is essentially Kate Bush’s own mini horror film, and although it’s got a DIY B movie feel, it’s making an important point about the capacity of humans to turn things ‘made for pleasure’ into weapons capable of great harm.

This is very much a songwriter’s version of a dystopian nightmare and there’s a sense of sacrilege in the idea that the monster was composed from sampled sounds:

From the painful cry of mothers,
To the terrifying scream,
We recorded it and put it into our machine.

There are some wonderful details in the video. I love how Dawn French’s lab assistant character brings her boss a cup of tea as they prepare to record the sounds of suffering and insanity. Both she and her supervisor, the elderly man we saw at the start, (Richard Vernon) are framed as conflicted participants, like the real-world scientists who have come to regret their role in the development of new weapons. Just sip this tea, they seem to be telling each other, it’ll all be okay, won’t it?

By the end of the music video, bodies line the corridors of this secret institution. The creature is indiscriminate and kills everyone who crosses its path, military personnel, scientists and soon - it is implied - civilians.

We won’t be there to be blamed
We won’t be there to snitch
I just pray that someone there
Can hit the switch

And the public are warned to stay off

It’s a melancholy ending. As the music fades it melts into the sound of helicopters rushing to the scene and the music video gives us one final bitter joke – you’ll have to watch it to see.

Released as a single in 1986, ‘Experiment IV’ is a bit of an anomaly since it doesn’t quite belong to any particular Kate Bush album, but it was included as a bonus track on the best hits record The Whole Story the same year. It’s a strange, moody, story-driven piece, an odd thing to release as a teaser for an upcoming collection of your most popular songs.

Dubious experiments and reckless uses of technology have long inspired threats and monsters in horror films like the well-worn association between zombies and biohazards or between kaijus and nuclear war. There’s really no reason why songs shouldn’t also address these fears, nor why they shouldn’t form their own gnarled branch of the horror story tree, and this wasn’t the only time Bush explored dystopian science fiction terrors in a pop record as we will see later in this series.

Had you heard of this song before? If not, give it a listen and tell me what you think. We have very much waded away from the more accessible and familiar territory of ‘Wuthering Heights’ and are in the weeds of more obscure entries in Bush’s discography. It’s here, in my opinion, that some of her most fascinating hidden treasures lie.

Next week I talk about a song where someone undergoes a horrible transformation and starts braying like a donkey… until then, happy nightmares everyone!

Horror moments are posted every Thursday and a wide variety of articles exploring the history of magic, theatre, storytelling, and more are published on Monday afternoons.