NEW material from Kate Bush comes marginally more frequently than sightings of pink unicorns. So one can only imagine how excited thousands of Bush devotees were to hear of the release of a new album.

Mostly male and approaching, if not slightly eclipsing their half century, this committed fan base will devour and analyse at length any fragment of music bearing the Kate Bush trademark.

However, many would have been most bemused to read the Director’s Cut track listing, which consists only of familiar titles from 1989’s The Sensual World and The Red Shoes from 1993. With the exception of Aerial and a tiny handful of outside projects, these were Kate’s most recent albums.

There is an initial sense of disappointment – it is a letdown that 22 years of waiting results in a remix project – but being born of Ms Bush, Director’s Cut turns out to be a meaty and worthy project.

Substantially reworked productions of Deeper Understanding and Rubberband Girl have a warmer, more accessible sound than the originals, and The Sensual World, now renamed Flower Of The Mountain contains the once embargoed passage of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from James Joyce’s novel Ulysses.

Probably the least successful reworking is This Woman’s Work, which is for many Kate Bush’s finest moment, but then how could anyone ever improve on perfection?