Hounds of Love

In the summer of 1983, Bush began laying the groundwork for Hounds of Love at her home recording onto 8-track equipment, using a LinnDrum, Fairlight and piano. Wanting to retain the feel and atmosphere of these early recordings, she had them transferred to 24-track to build the final versions around once recording sessions officially began in November 1983. The Ninth Wave uses a great many textures to express the story: in the style of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Arthurian poems, Bush pursues a vision quest, taking the listener through a death and rebirth. The warmth of familiar sleep is cut by dangerous speed, ice and frigid water, an otherworldly trial and judgement, an out-of-body limbo, and finally a vigorous emergence and grounding in life energy. ==Release and promotion==

(pictured in 2006). On 5 August 1985, Bush performed the new single "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)" on Terry Wogan's BBC1 television chat show Wogan. The single entered the UK Singles Chart at number nine and ultimately peaked at number three, becoming Bush's second-highest-charting single after her chart-topping debut single "Wuthering Heights". The song is Bush's only US top 40 hit, reaching number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 during its original chart run in 1985. The album launch party was held at the London Planetarium on 5 September 1985. The invited guests were treated to a playback of the entire album while watching a laser show inside the Planetarium. Hounds of Love was released on 16 September 1985 by EMI Records on vinyl, XDR cassette and compact disc formats. It entered the UK Albums Chart at number one, knocking Madonna's Like a Virgin (1984) from the top position. On 16 June 1997, a remastered version of the album was issued on CD as part of EMI's "First Centenary" reissue series. The "EMI First Centenary" edition included six bonus tracks: 12″ mixes of "The Big Sky" and "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)", and the B-sides "Under the Ivy", "Burning Bridge", "My Lagan Love", and "Be Kind to My Mistakes", the last of which was written for Nicolas Roeg's 1986 film Castaway and plays during the opening scene. In 2010, Audio Fidelity reissued Hounds of Love on vinyl with new remastering by Steve Hoffman. A 10" pink vinyl record with four songs taken from the album ("The Big Sky", "Cloudbusting", "Watching You Without Me" and "Jig of Life") was released by Audio Fidelity (catalogue number AFZEP 001) on 16 April 2011 for Record Store Day 2011, limited to 1000 copies worldwide. During her 2014 Before the Dawn concerts, Bush performed almost the entire album live for the first time, with the exceptions of "The Big Sky" and "Mother Stands for Comfort". "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)" had previously been performed live in 1987 with David Gilmour of Pink Floyd at the Secret Policeman's Third Ball. In November 2018, Bush released box sets of remasters of her studio albums, including Hounds of Love. ==Reception==

Hounds of Love contemporarily received positive reviews in the UK. Sounds journalist Ronnie Randall hailed the album as "dramatic, moving and wildly, unashamedly, beautifully romantic", It ranked at number 10 on the magazine's list of the best albums of 1985. A more reserved review came from Melody Makers Colin Irwin, who found that Bush had "learned you can have control without sacrificing passion" despite "some overly fussy arrangements that get the better of her", although the Ninth Wave suite "is too confused and the execution too laborious and stilted to carry real weight as a complete entity." In the US, reaction to the record at the time was mixed. "With traces of classical, operatic, tribal, and twisted pop styles," raved Steve Matteo in Spin, "Kate creates music that observes no boundaries of musical structure or inner expression... While her eclecticism is welcomed and rewarded in her homeland her genius is still ignored here – a situation that is truly a shame for an artist so adventurous and naturally theatrical." In The New York Times, John Rockwell characterised the album's music as "slightly precious, calculated female art rock" and said that Bush had become "a real master of instrumental textures". Rolling Stone, in their first review of a Kate Bush record, was unimpressed: critic Rob Tannenbaum wrote that Hounds of Love "both dazzles and bores" and felt that while Bush's "orchestrations swell to the limits of technology", she "often overdecorates her songs with exotica... There's no arguing that Bush is extraordinarily talented, but as with Jonathan Richman, rock's other eternal kid, her vision will seem silly to those who believe children should be seen and not heard." In a retrospective piece for The Independent, Nick Coleman described Hounds of Love as Bush's "acknowledged masterpiece... a prog-pop masque of an album built with the cold instrumentation of a neophiliac age". Spin called it an "art-pop classic", and Barry Walters of Pitchfork noted that the album draws from synth-pop and progressive rock whilst remaining wholly distinct from either style. == Legacy ==

Accolades In 1998, Q magazine readers voted Hounds of Love the 48th-greatest album of all time, In 2006, Q placed the album at number four in its list of "40 Best Albums of the '80s". In January 2006, NME named it the 41st-best British album of all time. The 19th edition of British Hit Singles & Albums, published by Guinness in May 2006, included a list of the Top 100 albums of all time, as voted by readers of the book and NME readers, which placed Hounds of Love at number 70. In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at number 10 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s". In 2013, NME placed Hounds of Love 48th on its "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. In a 2018 poll of the public conducted by NPR, Hounds of Love was voted in fourth place in its list of 150 greatest albums ever made by female artists. Also in 2018, Pitchfork included the album at number four on their list of "The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s". In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Hounds of Love at number 68 on its list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2024, Apple Music placed the album at number 50 on its "Apple Music 100 Best Albums" list. Influence Hounds of Love was described as "one of the big inspirations" for Alison Goldfrapp of Goldfrapp. Suede lead singer Brett Anderson said of Hounds of Love: "I love the way it's a record of two halves, and the second half is a concept record about fear of drowning. It's an amazing record to listen to really late at night, unsettling and really jarring". Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac named Hounds of Love as one of her favourite albums. Kele Okereke of Bloc Party said of the title track: "The first time I heard it I was sitting in a reclining sofa. As the beat started I was transported somewhere else. Her voice, the imagery, the huge drum sound: it seemed to capture everything for me. As a songwriter you're constantly chasing that feeling". ==Track listing==

Notes: • "Hounds of Love" contains a sample of Maurice Denham's voice from Jacques Tourneur's horror film Night of the Demon (1957). • "Hello Earth" contains an interpolation of the Georgian folk song "Tsintskaro" (""), as performed by the Richard Hickox Singers. • The original 1985 cassette release included the 12″ single version of "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)" at the end of side one. • The 2011 Fish People re-release and the 2018 remastered album substitute the "Special Single Mix" version of "The Big Sky", rather than the original album version. == Personnel ==

Credits are adapted from the Hounds of Love liner notes. • Kate Bush – vocals, Fairlight synthesizer, Yamaha CS-80, acoustic piano, keyboards • Kevin McAlea – synthesizer sequencing (8), synthesizers (12) • Alan Murphy – guitars (1, 3, 8) • John Williams – guitars (12) • Dónal Lunny – bouzouki (6, 10, 11), bodhrán (10) • Del Palmer – LinnDrum programming, bass guitar (1, 10, 12), handclaps (3), backing vocals (5), Fairlight bass (8) • Martin Glover – bass guitar (3) • Eberhard Weber – double bass (4, 11) • Danny Thompson – double bass (9) • Stuart Elliott – drums (1, 2, 4, 5, 9–11) • Charlie Morgan – drums (2, 3, 5, 8, 10), handclaps (3) • Morris Pert – percussion (3) • Paddy Bush – balalaika (1), didgeridoo (3), backing vocals (5), harmony vocals (7), fujara (12), violins (12) • Jonathan Williams – cello (2) • John Sheahan – whistles (6, 10), fiddles (10) • Liam O'Flynn – Uilleann pipes (10, 11) • Michael Kamen – orchestral arrangements • Bill Whelan – Irish arrangements • The Medici Sextet – strings (5) • Dave Lawson – string arrangements (5) • Brian Bath – backing vocals (5), guitars (11) • John Carder Bush – backing vocals (5), narration (10) • The Richard Hickox Singers – choir (11) • Richard Hickox – choir master (11) • Michael Berkeley – vocal arrangements (11) Production • Kate Bush – producer • Brian Tench – engineer, mixing (1, 3, 5–12) • Del Palmer – engineer • Haydn Bendall – engineer • Paul Hardiman – engineer • Nigel Walker – engineer • James Guthrie – engineer • Bill Somerville-Large – engineer at Windmill Lane Studios • Pearce Dunne – assistant engineer • Julian Mendelsohn – mixing (2, 4) • Ian Cooper – cutting engineer • Chris Blair – digital remastering • Photography for the sleeve was by Kate's brother, John Carder Bush, and the sleeve design was by Bill Smith Studio and Kate Bush. ==Charts==

Weekly charts Year-end charts ==Certifications and sales==