Free music roundup – stream stuff from Kate Bush, James Blake, Blondes and Theo Parrish

Loads of great music kicking around the internet, including Kate Bush's new versions of old songs album 'Director's Cut' to stream, a new version of a James Blake song, a mix by Blondes and a great Theo Parrish remix.

NPR: are streaming Kate Bush’s new album of Kate Bush covers and remixes, if that makes sense. Here’s how they told the story:

Four years after Hounds of Love, Bush released The Sensual World, on which the uncompromising singer did something out of character: She compromised. The album’s title track was conceived as a distilled version of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses. (If you’re like me and just couldn’t make it to the end of Ulysses, you may remember the passage from Sally Kellerman’s impassioned reading in the Rodney Dangerfield movie Back to School.) When Bush approached the Joyce estate about using actual passages from the book, the estate declined, leaving Bush to paraphrase the text as best she could. (So Dangerfield got the thumbs up, and Bush didn’t? Who says the man didn’t get any respect?)

In the eyes of fans, The Sensual World hardly suffered from the limitation, but “good enough” never sat right with Bush. So, more than 20 years later, she asked again — and this time got the answer she was looking for.

The opportunity to remake the song motivated Bush to tinker with other entries in her discography. The result is Director’s Cut, a collection of 11 revamped songs that made their first appearances on The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes. With new words and vocals, “The Sensual World” has been re-christened “Flower of the Mountain.” Bush re-recorded all of her vocals and the drums, but left most of the other instrumentation untouched, including Eric Clapton’s guitar in “And So Is Love.” (Okay, so she’s made a few mistakes here and there.)

Head over to NPR now to see what it’s like.

Another “new version of music by a good artist” is James Blake’s Give A Man A Rod, courtesy of Boiler Room.

James Blake – Give A Man A Rod (Second Version) by BOILER ROOM

Fact have the premiere of Theo Parrish’s remix of About Group (you know, Alexis Taylor’s improv thing).

Self-Titled gave us the heads up to Blondes’ ‘Purple Glazed’ mix. Click there to download, and have a look at the tracklisting below.

Blondes, ‘Purple-Glazed’ Mix
1. Hermeto Pascoal – Sinfonia do Alto Ribeira
2. Leisure Muffin and Charles Cohen //// Tangerine Dream
3. Dorothea Raukes – Auf Engelsflugeln
4. Ryuichi Sakamoto and Thomas Dolby – Field Work (Blondes Screwed Edit)
5. Mr Fingers – Stars (Remix)
6. Throbbing Gristle – Hot on the Heels of Love (Ratcliffe Remix)
7. CCHG – Chinaman Papa
8. Lucky Dragons //// Lady Gaga
9. Taken off Italo mix, don’t know
10. Lasos – Eleusia Performance
11. Chez Damier – Can You Feel It (New York Dub)
12. Johannes Heil – Aum
13. Teengirl Fantasy – New Image Every Day
14. Mims – This is Why I’m Hot (Blondes Edit)
15. Ray Mang – Look Into My Eyes
16. Phil Logan – Focus on the Weekend
17. Martin Rev – Venise
18. Stevie Nicks – Wild Heart (Backstage Warmup Version)

And that’s your lot for today, happy listening!