Hounds of Love (2018

Product Information

For the objective bit: used Musicscope to analyse, here is a comparison of the 1985 Japan disc of Hounds with the CD box set of Hounds, 2018 remaster.

Upon close listening, it’s apparent that the 2018 remaster has a greater degree of depth and clarity than the 1985 CDs. 5 The sound stage on the Guthrie/Bush remaster is deeper, and the remaster evinces greater micro detail than the 1985 mastering, despite not being EQ’d to be brighter. Likely, this greater resolution is the result of a better transfer using more recent analog-to-digital conversion technology. While fans have spotted a few minor errors elsewhere in the 2018 remasters, the Hounds of Love remaster done by Bush and Guthrie is spotless. I now listen to the likes of Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie (Lady Gaga inspired this choice mostly), and so on, due to this album! Following Gabriel’s lead, Bush banned the use of cymbals and hi-hats on Never for Ever. “I always felt there was this slightly sort of MOR quality to hi-hats,” she explained. “It just sounded a bit passé. So that was one of the key things, make sure there’s no hi-hats.” Instead, Bush sampled aerosol can sprays with the Fairlight to deploy in the sonic space usually occupied by hi-hats.

Release

God)" has become her first Top Forty single in the U.S. (in the U.K., Kate rules as Madonna does here), but it's not more melodic than some of the other songs ("And Dream of Sheep" could be a huge, if bizarre, hit for Barry Manilow), just less complex. Making full use of her four-octave soprano and brother Paddy's ethnomusicological abilities (he plays dijeridu, balalaika and fujare on the LP), the Mistress of Mysticism has woven another album that both dazzles and bores.

I am a Lady Gaga fan, and our music tastes are very varied compare to some fanbases! I see Kate Bush in Lady Gaga a lot (not the other way round, obviously)...the theatrics, how certain songs are sung! Similar women, except one excels, and I'm not afraid to admit that as a Lady Gaga fan!! I never was so pleased to finish anything if my life. There were times I never thought it would be finished. It was just such a lot of work, all of it was so much work, you know, the lyrics, trying to piece the thing together. But I did love it, I did enjoy it and everyone that worked on the album was wonderful. And it was really, in some ways, I think, the happiest I’ve been when I’d been writing and making an album. And I know there’s a big theory that goes ‘round that you must suffer for your art — you know, “It’s not real art unless you suffer.” And I don’t believe this, because I think in some ways this is the most complete work that I’ve done, in some ways it is the best and I was the happiest that I’d been compared to making other albums. This by far beats out any Madonna or Lady Gaga album (I'm a fan of Madonna's music, not her, but I am a 17-year-old dedicated Little Monster of Queen Gaga!) Or just about any female album! For those interested, I did compare several original vinyl rips to the 1985 CDs, and both formats seem to share the same Cooper mastering. Released in August 1985, “Running Up That Hill” reached number three on the U.K. singles chart and number 30 on the U.S. Hot 100, Bush’s highest U.S. chart position since 1978. The single’s success gave the album a boost when it was released a month later, reaching number one on the U.K. charts and number 30 on the Billboard 200. It was also a success in Canada and across Europe, selling over a million albums worldwide.

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In 1992, Bush remembered the release of Hounds of Love as one of the greatest moments of her career: With Hounds of Love, Bush had taken full artistic control and made the most of it. “I’d seen other artists self-produce and more often than not, it doesn’t come out very well,” Killing Joke bassist Youth, who played on Hounds of Love, told Van Heye. “Occasionally, you can get a masterpiece, and I think Hounds Of Love is one.” Hear, hear! Disjunctive, idiosyncratic and so very, very inventive, Kate Bush's 1985 magnum opus, "Hounds of Love", was the intentionally streamlined yet defiant response to complaints regarding her efficiency in the studio and detractors of the lyrical and structural esotericism inherent in her work. Greatly emboldened by the advances of the digital age, the ever-experimental Bush went one further, building a home studio and developing her latest new material to her satisfaction, subsequently dividing the end product into two distinctive sections. Even under contemporaneous scrutiny, both parts, replete with layered electronic instrumentation, sound effects, and expressive yet refined vocal acrobatics, successfully cohere, and, if persevered with, the full measure still holds up and works incredibly well despite its ambitious structure. But by the time she released Hound of Love seven years later, at the ripe old age of 26, Bush was portrayed by the press as a washed-up relic.

Despite its sonic limitations and clunky interface, Bush used the Fairlight to transform her already highly idiosyncratic take on piano-based singer-songwriting into something wholly unique and largely indescribable. “Discovering the Fairlight gave me a whole new writing tool, as well as an arranging tool…,” Bush explained in 1990, “With a Fairlight you’ve got everything, a tremendous range of things. It completely opened me up to sounds and textures, and I could experiment with these in a way I could never have done without it.” Gilmour, who had the unique experience of producing Bush’s earliest demos and working with her after she’d achieved stardom, saw how the Fairlight helped Bush achieve sonic ambitions that had previously been out of reach. “She can see and hear exactly what she wants to get and then she has to struggle to try and achieve it,” he told Mojo in 2018. “I think she found that the Fairlight gave her much more control and helped her to achieve her vision.” It’s heady stuff for a pop song. But in Bush’s hands, it becomes a universal hymn to the mystery of childhood (“You’re like my yo-yo, that glowed in the dark / What made it special, made it dangerous”) and love for a parent. As Thompson explained in his biography: Another great article Josh and one of my longest favourite pop artists ever in Kate Bush, and her best album. In 1986, I bought Hounds as well as The Dreaming on the same day, "See the light, ram through the gaps in the land" very accurate Australian landscape in the early mornings through trees... anyway. Both CDs are made in Japan but featured only English booklets and covers. Hounds of Love" set the tone for Bush's extraordinary career, demarcating her as a true visionary. And though it may be her watershed moment, the album, its classic singles and accompanying videos are part of a conceptual cycle that would continue with her later, more underrated records, presenting further autobiographical subject matter, romantic imagery and studio wizardry.Unfortunately, the 1997 is a victim of the “ Loudness War.” Whether measured by crest factor DR score or R128 dynamic range, Blair’s 1997 CD is markedly less dynamic than the 1985 Cooper CDs. A comparison of “Running Up that Hill” waveforms in Audacity bears out this fact: In the years since, The Dreaming has received a critical reevaluation and come to be regarded as a underrated classic. At the time, however, it was seen as a dagger through Bush’s commercial viability. As Thompson summarized in his excellent biography: “[ The Dreaming] had cost her a fortune, way beyond the advance she received, took her a year of almost solid recording, hopping around studios and between engineers, and it had pushed her to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. The company hated it and it killed her as a singles artists for four years.” Rhythm took center stage on Hounds of Love. “When I was initially coming up with the songs…I would actually get Del to manifest in the rhythm box the pattern that I wanted,” Bush explained at a 1985 fan club convention. “As a bass player I think he has a very natural understanding of rhythms and working with drums, and he could also get the patterns that I could hear in my head and that I wanted. It’s…through him that we started off with the rhythmic basis that was then built upon.” O]ur Kate’s a genius, the rarest solo artist this country’s ever produced. She makes sceptics dance to her tune. The company’s daughter has truly screwed the system and produced the best album of the year doing it.