#Hounds of love album art full#

“Most of the songs were written on Fairlight and synth and not piano which was moving away from the earlier albums where all my material was written on a piano… Quite often I find synthetic sounds create a coldness, that if a track is lonely or sad or dark, sometimes you want that kind of coldness, that machine-like coldness, which is very specific.

#Hounds of love album art full#

Studio costs were too expensive for the experimental way Kate was working, so she got her own studio to have full creative control.Īnd it paid off… the album showcased Kate’s prolific artistic power in storytelling and production, embracing the possibilities of digital sampling using synthesizers, particularly the Fairlight - a ground-breaking synthesizer that Kate had mastered with a perfect balance between technique and exploration. I relaxed tremendously within my own environment for a start.” So we started Hounds of Love in our own studio, and I started to find out an awful lot of things that I wouldn’t have realised otherwise. But it was very important that it happened to me, because it made me think right do I really want to produce my own stuff? Do I really care about being famous? And I was very pleased with myself that no, it didn’t matter as much as making a good album. And everyone was saying ‘oh she’s really gone mad now’ you know ‘hey listen to this it’s a really weird record’. I felt the album had done very well to reach number 3 but I felt under a lot of pressure and I wanted to stay as close to my work as possible. And for the first time I felt like I was actually meeting resistance artistically. And because it had a lot of unfavourable attention from some people, I think it was felt that me producing Hounds of Love wasn’t such a good idea. “I think it was probably the most difficult stage I’ve been at so far, because The Dreaming, the album before, I’d never produced an album before that one.

And in this song, this woman is being persecuted by the witch hunter and a whole jury, although she’s committed no crime and they’re trying to push her under the water to see if she’ll sink or float.” In a way it’s very sexist behaviour and I feel that female intuition and instincts are very strong and are still put down really. “I think it’s very interesting the concept of witch hunting, and the fear of women’s power. Later in the album, Waking the Witch is inspired by Kate’s interest in witch hunting and how she believes the practice is rooted in sexism… Because in a way it’s so much more powerful asking God to make a deal with you.” And then I thought well no, why not a deal with God. “I was trying to say that really a man and a woman can’t understand each other because we are a man and a woman, and if we could actually swap each other's roles, if we could actually be in each other's place for a while, I think we’d both be very surprised and I think it would lead to a greater understanding and really the only way I could think it could be done is either, you know, a deal with the devil. I find this really horrific, these are all my own personal worst nightmares put into song.” “Now this poor sod has been in the water for hours, they’ve been witch hunted and everything and suddenly they’re at home in spirit, seeing their loved one waiting for them to get home… but there’s no way that you can actually communicate, they can’t see you, they can’t hear you. And the end of it, it’s the idea of seeing themselves under the frozen ice in the river, so we’re talking real nightmare stuff here.”Īnd in Watching You Without Me, Kate describes someone seeing their loved ones at home but not being able to communicate with them at all - when discussing the second side of the album, she says they’re her own personal nightmares put into song… “Again it’s very lonely, it’s terribly lonely, they are all alone on this frozen lake. Under Ice, as the title would suggest, is about the protagonist seeing themselves trapped in frozen water.

In true Kate Bush style, her skill for storytelling is showcased across the album to bring the nightmare themes to life - from witch hunting to being trapped underwater.