Unlike the 1997 remaster, there’s no problem with compression on the new Guthrie/Bush remaster. On some songs, the 1985 CDs have slightly higher R128 numbers, while on others the 2018 remaster’s numbers are higher. Overall the 1985 CDs score either a 12 or a 13 DR, while the 2018 remaster is a 12 DR. In other words, Guthrie and Bush did an excellent job preserving the album’s original dynamic range. 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.

If I were allowed to swear, I’d say that Hounds of Love is f***ing brilliant, but me mum won’t let me.... All human life contained herein. Dramatic, moving and wildly, unashamedly, beautifully romantic. That leaves the recent 2018 remaster, which was done by Pink Floyd engineer James Guthrie in collaboration with Bush.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. While that may be true for mere mortals, the trajectory of Bush’s career between her second album and Hounds of Love was one of constant refinement and fixing mistakes, culminating in one of the best albums of the 1980s and, arguably, Bush’s greatest work. When Kate Bush decamped to her newly installed home studio in 1983 to begin recording Hounds of Love, the focus of the fourth TBVO, her career was at a crossroads. 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.” Following the disappointing reception of The Dreaming, Bush retreated from the public eye. “It took me four or five months to be able even to write again,” she told the Daily Mail in 1985. “It’s very difficult when you’ve been working for years, doing one album after another. You need fresh things to stimulate you. I decided to take a bit of the summer out and spend time with my boyfriend and with my family and friends, just relaxing. Not being Kate Bush the singer; just being myself.”

I believe she has an extremely clear impression of the atmosphere she wants to create. How she achieves that involves the experimentation, but she has an incredible, innate sense of what works for a song,” Haydn Bendall, one of the many engineers who worked on the album told Thompson. “[On Hounds Of Love] we were using Fairlight and Linn drums a lot, and they’d come out with these funny little sounds which you might think weren’t very interesting, and she’d say, ‘Isn’t that wonderful, isn’t that great?’ She’d make it great, and in a way that’s the mark of a genius, to make something fabulous out of a simple idea. She’ll just have a little kernel of an idea that would develop into a huge blossom.” 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! Interestingly, the EQ the 2018 remasters is very close to the EQ used for the 2014 Audio Fidelity vinyl release, based on a comparison of the former and a hi-res rip of the latter. 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.In her early use of the Fairlight, Bush prefigured production techniques that would become more and more common as the use of computers in music advanced. “She responded instinctively to all the sonic and cultural implications of the Fairlight,” John Walters, who helped Bush program the Fairlight, told biographer Graeme Thompson. “She was naturally ahead of her time and, of course, went on to do much more with it as the instrument developed. She made the most of it for her own idiosyncratic music.” When necessary, Har-Bal’s loudness matching option, which doesn’t affect the frequency response, was used to create clearer graphs. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t agonize over it until the last minute. Ian Cooper, who mastered all of Bush’s albums from The Dreaming to The Red Shoes, remembers the mastering of Hounds of Love taking the longest time. “I won’t say it was a nightmare, but…I have a funny feeling we were still doing it when it was released,” he told Thompson. “I remember asking her when it was coming out, and she said, ‘It’s out!’ I said, ‘Then why are we doing it?’ and she said, ‘I think we could this and that right.’ It’s tempting to surmise that nothing is ever quite finished to her satisfaction.”

As fans scooped up copies of Hounds of Love (the first Bush album released on vinyl, cassette, and CD simultaneously), the music press lavished the album with praise. In 1992, Bush remembered the release of Hounds of Love as one of the greatest moments of her career: 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. I'm not saying this negatively, I'm so incredibly happy she's getting the recognition she deserves but I fear most of it is a fad and way more about stranger things than kate bush. I really hope im wrong. Either way I'm happy cuz that means they'll make more releases of her stuff. And my vast collection is now worth double the price lol. Too bad this coulda happened a year ago so she could have gotten in the hall of fame. It's just a bit cringe that now people think everyone who likes her likes her because of stranger things(now I know what the hipsters feel like liking people before they were popular) but if even 1/10 of these people become actual fans I'm happy. She's getting the recognition she's deserved all these years.

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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. Running Up That Hill' is obviously the highlight, and I'm not basing this solely on the fact it's her most well-known single! (I wouldn't say 'Wuthering Heights' is because Running always charts, more radio-friendly, and so on!)

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: 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! 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.” 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.” 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.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.” Waking the Witch' is bloody amazing, I love the beginning dialogues, and the last minute and a half! This song is the core song of what her tour is based on! With traces of classical, operatic, tribal and twisted pop styles, Kate creates music that observes no boundaries of musical structure or inner expression…. With no plans to tour America, Kate is likely to remain obscure on this side of the Atlantic. While her eclecticism is welcomed and rewarded in her homeland her genius goes ignored here — a situation that is truly a shame for an artist so adventurous and naturally theatrical. Creatively, the struggle paid off. The Dreaming was a stunning artistic and sonic leap forward for Bush. But critical reception for the album was mixed, and the public was even less kind. While The Dreaming peaked at number three in the U.K., it stayed there only 10 weeks on the way to becoming Bush’s lowest-selling album. Sonically, it’s easy to give the 2018 remaster the TBVO crown. However, the aforementioned presence of the single mix of “The Big Sky,” rather than the original album mix, might be a deal breaker for some fans. The differences are subtle, but I prefer the single mix. However, placing it on the remaster is clearly an act of historical revisionism. Ultimately, the sonic edge of the 2018 remaster makes it worth seeking out even for those who prefer the album mix of “The Big Sky.” Just hold on to your original CD for the original mix.