Kate Bush

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<b>100 Best Albums</b> If Kate Bush’s first two albums were steeped in the art-rock of the ’70s (florid piano melodie, thrumming Hammond organ, a <i>Spiders from Mars</i>-grade rhythm section), then 1985’s <i>Hounds of Love</i>, the British singer-songwriter’s fifth LP, didn’t just reflect its era—it helped define it. Few songs are more evocative of the sound of mid-’80s pop than “Running Up That Hill,” with its gated drum, quasi-dance beat, eerie vocal effect, and instantly recognizable synthesizer melody. Likewise, few albums did more to take the ambition of progressive rock and port it into the digital era. Split across two side-length suites—the five-song <i>Hounds of Love</i> and the seven-song <i>The Ninth Wave</i>—the album grapples with big themes: the gulf between men and women, the fierceness of a mother’s love, the nature of dream. Bush’s voice is an instrument of breathtaking power, capable of both tenderness and force, yet Bush herself is everywhere and nowhere: Particularly in the second suite, her songwriting gives shape to a kind of fragmented consciousne, a shifting array of thought, voice, and perspective. Cryptic metaphors and allusions give the songs an unmistakably metaphysical aura, and the production follows suit. Bush recorded the album at home, in the 48-track studio she installed in a barn behind her house just outside of London, in a lengthy process of demoing, overdubbing, and layering. Availing herself of a state-of-the-art Fairlight CMI sampling synthesizer, one of the first of its kind, she peppered the album with sound effects: church bell, breaking gla, bits of film dialogue, and the snippets of Georgian folk music that give “Hello Earth” its otherworldly power. .

via Apple Music

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