Kate Bush's Hounds Of Love

(Paperback)

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Description

This book charts the emergence of Kate Bush in the early-to-mid-1980s as a courageous experimentalist, a singularly expressive recording artist and a visionary music producer. Hounds Of Love invites you to not only listen, but to cross the boundaries of sensory experience into the realms of imagination and possibility. Side A spawned four Top 40 hit singles in the UK, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Cloudbusting, Hounds of Love and The Big Sky, some of the best loved and most enduring compositions in the Bush catalogue. On side B, a hallucinatory seven-part song cycle called The Ninth Wave breaks away from the pop conventions of the era, leaning into strange and vivid production techniques that plunge the listener into the psychological centre of a near-death experience. Poised and accessible, yet still experimental and complex, with Hounds Of Love Bush mastered the art of her studio-based songcraft, finally achieving full control of her creative process. When it came out in 1985, she was only 27 years old. Track-by-track commentaries focus on the experience of the album from the listeners point of view, drawing attention to the art and craft of Bushs songwriting and sound design. It considers the vast impact and influence that Hounds Of Love has had on music cultures and creative practices through the years, underlining the artists importance as a barrier-smashing, template-defying, business-smart, record-breaking, never-compromising role model for artists everywhere.

Author Bio

Leah Kardos is a senior lecturer in music at Kingston University London, UK, where she co-founded the Visconti Studio with music producer Tony Visconti. She is the author of Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie (Bloomsbury, 2022), included as one of The Wire's "Best Books of 2022."