Fantasy Deluxe #20: Hounds Of Love

As outlined in A Love Deluxe, the past year or so has seen me become just a little bit addicted to creating “fantasy” deluxe editions. You take an album, and use whatever extra material is available (B-sides, Single Edits, 12″ Remixes, Demos, Out-takes, non-album 45s) to piece together a multi-disc celebration of it. 

When it comes to Kate Bush and her back catalogue, the concept of a Fantasy Deluxe edition has to collide with the harsh reality that some things – okay, a lot of things…basically anything beyond the existing studio material available – will forever be out of reach. We will, as they say, just have to deal. And not with God!

In the 37 years since Hounds Of Love arrived in this world as a fully-formed instant classic, the album has been reissued a handful of times on CD. In 1997, EMI celebrated their centenary by issuing special editions of some key releases from their repertoire; of course, the 1997 idea of deluxe was a pretty card outer slipcase and half a dozen extra tracks….

The EMI 100 edition….”Digitally Remastered”! “Now Features 6 Bonus Tracks”! Little did we know that this would probably be as good as it would ever get….

Those half-dozen bonus tracks had already been included on 1990’s boxset This Woman’s Work, along with more 12″ mixes (presumably EMI didn’t want to feature all the extended versions and B-sides on a separate CD and were therefore constrained by the “limitations of the compact disc format” and had to keep the running time under 80 minutes).

Incredible to think it, but in 1990 you had as much to work with (excuse the pun) in terms of putting a Hounds Of Love deluxe together, than you did in every year thereafter until 2018. That was when, as part of a two-volume boxset retrospective, Remastered Part I and Remastered Part II (see what they did there?), a 4-disc collection of non-album “rarities” entitled The Other Sides was included in the second of the boxes.

Now, a 4CD collection of tracks not on the main albums might at first glance sound like a genuinely amazing thing. Kate being Kate, however, meant that one CD had a grand total of five tracks on it, two others ran to the limit-busting number of nine songs, and one included ten. Phew, go easy on cramming too much music onto those discs…

In the final reckoning, those in search of further Hounds Of Love-era goodies would emerge with the grand total of one previously-unavailable track. One! The 2012 remix of Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God). And not even all of the Hounds… B-sides made it this time, so we’ve actually gone backwards as we go forwards.

To add insult to injury, the current/latest edition of the main album is still marred by an insistence on using the “Single Mix” of The Big Sky in place of the original LP mix. This jarring insertion first reared its Fish-shaped head in 2011 when the KB catalogue was re-issued through the lady’s own Fish People imprint, and the exact same version of Hounds.. was included in Remastered Part I.

So the only way to currently hear the album as originally released, on Compact Disc, is to buy one of the pre-1997 EMI versions second-hand….

Hounds Of Love, as the artist originally intended it before they inexplicably changed their mind 25 years later…

Clearly, SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE (as some tragic old CD obsessive once said).

Okay, so we have one of those original EMI pressings with the 12 tracks, untroubled by Fish-y business. We have the (marginally) expanded EMI 100 remaster (albeit without the swanky card case). And, courtesy of Remastered Part I, we also have the edition with The Big Sky 7″ sounding horribly out of place as track 3. Let’s not forget the B-Sides and alternate mixes/versions contained on the 1990 boxset either, or the 2012 remix of Running Up That Hill from The Other Sides. Maybe we’re getting somewhere.

Since the Hounds.. era flowed seamlessly into The Whole Story, her 1986 (and only) concession to the Greatest Hits market, there is also scope to have Experiment IV (its token brand new song at the time and a Top 30 single) as well as its B-side Wuthering Heights (New Vocal) which was not really just a new vocal over the old backing track at all, but a complete remix. Experiment IV also had a 12″ mix, and it’s on both This Woman’s Work and The Other Sides.

Hmm, what else – some out-takes or demos, perchance? This is Kate Bush, don’t be ridiculous!

A DVD with the wonderful promo videos for the 4 singles (5 if Experiment IV counts, which it does)? Get out of my house! We haven’t even had a DVD compilation of The Whole Story yet. Get real.

Okay, what about Before The Dawn, the live spectacular based on The Ninth Wave (side two of Hounds Of Love) which the “K Fellowship” staged for a memorable residency in North London during the autumn of 2014….surely there’s a visual document of that we could feature? Um, no. Despite claims to have filmed the show(s) in HD, the idea was scrapped (due to being “quite naff”, said Kate) and no official footage has ever been released. We can’t even include that as something new and a bit special. Oh well.

If I only could….

Sorry folks, the door has been closed on any chance of Before The Dawn on DVD or Blu-Ray….

We best stick to what we do have. Three masterings of the album, and a disc’s worth of B-sides, extended mixes, alternate versions and non-album singles. I’ll make a nice new sleeve for it all too. Hang in there!

Disc One
Hounds Of Love [Original 1985 Version]
Produced and Written by Kate Bush
Mixed by Brian Tench and Julian Mendelsohn
Mastered by Ian Cooper

Hounds Of Love
01 Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) 5.03
02 Hounds Of Love 3.03
03 The Big Sky 4.41
04 Mother Stands For Comfort 3.08
05 Cloudbusting 5.10

The Ninth Wave
06 And Dream Of Sheep 2.45
07 Under Ice 2.21
08 Waking The Witch 4.18
09 Watching You Without Me 4.07
10 Jig Of Life 4.05
11 Hello Earth 6.13
12 The Morning Fog 2.34

The original. Taken from one of the earliest UK EMI discs. No extra tracks. No meddling.

Disc Two
Hounds Of Love [1997 Digital Remaster]
Remastered by Chris Blair

The EMI 100 edition, without the extra tracks. The Big Sky is still in its original incarnation.

Disc Three
Hounds Of Love [2011 Fish People Reissue]
Produced by Kate Bush
As above, except :

03 The Big Sky Single Mix 4.38

Yes, there it is! As an added bonus, you have the Fish People logo plastered everywhere too.

Disc Four
Hounds Of Love
B-Sides and Remixes

01 Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) 12″ Mix 5.49
02 Cloudbusting Organon Mix 6.33
03 Hounds Of Love Alternate Mix 3.49
04 The Big Sky Meterological Mix 7.46
05 Experiment IV 4.49
06 Under The Ivy 2.10
07 Burning Bridge 4.38
08 My Lagan Love 2.30
09 The Handsome Cabin Boy 3.14
10 Not This Time 6.13
11 Wuthering Heights New Vocal 5.05
12 Cloudbusting Video Mix 6.57
13 Experiment IV 12″ Mix 6.45
14 Running Up That Hill 2012 Mix 5.36

With the exception of RUTH 2012, all of these have been available on CD since 1990. Some only on This Woman’s Work, a few also on the 1997 EMI 100 reissue, and two (Wuthering Heights New Vocal and Experiment IV) as far back as November 1986 on The Whole Story. (We really ought to have seen the future ahead for us when an incomplete, slightly re-imagined compilation was presented as the WHOLE story and then never updated or given a sequel).

At some point I also must have decided against the inclusion of Don’t Give Up, her wonderful duet with Peter Gabriel from his So album released in May 1986. Or perhaps I ran out of space. Yes, let’s blame it on the “limitations of the compact disc”. Good idea!

For the artwork, I played around with the usual iconography of the Hounds period, the various poses with her canine friends, some of the promotional shots of the time, and even variations of the Ninth Wave image from the inner/rear sleeve of the LP. That, in fact, became the first version of my fantasy deluxe sleeve design:

It might be better than the one I replaced it with, I’m not sure. So I thought I’d post both and let you decide. Maybe I’ll make a deal with the man (or woman) upstairs and get them to swap their places.

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