Kate Bush's Hounds Of Love publishes November 14, and is available for pre-order now.



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 broke away from the pop conventions of the era, with 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.

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. Track-by-track commentaries focus on the experience of the album from the listener’s point of view, drawing attention to the art and craft of Bush’s 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 artist’s importance as a barrier-smashing, template-defying, business-smart, record-breaking, never-compromising role model for artists everywhere.


Contents:

Track Listing
Acknowledgements
Introduction

The first woman
Still dreaming
I put this moment… here
Hounds Of Love
The Ninth Wave
A ritual in six steps
Before The Dawn
Blackbirds
Wave after wave

Notes
Selected Bibliography
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Finally! The last two instalments covering David Bowie'sThe Next Day & The Next Day Extra, from a series of fun conversations I had with Arsalan Mohammad for the very excellent AlbumToAlbum podcast. What a journey, eh! He also asked me to whip up some opening and closing music for the pod, and I was very glad to oblige. Anyone who has now listened to all four of these certainly deserves a gold star.





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Thrilling to see this review of the Stylophone Orchestra's recent Live to Tape at Visconti Studio release on Spun Out of Control records. Big thanks to Bob Fischer for always getting what the group is about. <3

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Back in March, the Kingston University Stylophone Orchestra performed a short gig in Visconti Studio that was recorded live to tape. We didn't plan for it to be released officially, but here we are! Thanks to Gavin at Spun Out of Control records, who was in attendance on the day (and took the above photo), we have this lovely document of the event! Available now on limited edition cassette, and digitally via Bandcamp. [SOS cat number 061]




Image: Gavin Stoker-----

It’s here - part 2 of the rambling AlbumToAlbum pod chat about David Bowie's dense 2013 opus The Next Day!
Making this was such a laugh - many thanks to Arsalan for asking me to do it! (Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and the other usual places)


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The Kingston Uni Stylophone Orchestra has a new music video! Our very own sci-fi odyssey 'Akoustiki', filmed in the dangerous galactic realms of Visconti Studio.



Directed by Kasia Kaczmarek
Cinematography by Hsien Yu Niu
Production Design by Lola Flemming
Costume Design by Cristiano Casimiro
Edited by April Mitchell-White
VFX Supervisor Javi Sanchéz-Blanco
VFX Artist Pablo Miranda
Colourist Karolina Matela

Featuring members of the Stylo Orch 2022 cohort. Starring Zuzanna Wężyk.
'Akoustiki' was written by Zuzanna Wężyk, arranged by me, lead voice by Arte Spyropoulou. It's from our debut album STYLOPHONIKA.

And as a bonus, Mari Dangerfield created a behind the scenes video blog about the shooting of the music video. Thanks so much for doing this Mari, you're a star!

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I'm feeling chuffed to have been asked to take part in the David Bowie World Fan Convention in Liverpool next year. Look at that lineup! Ava Cherry! George Murray! Also excited at the prospect of finally meeting one of my writer heroes David Buckley!

The plan for my involvement is to help out as a moderator, and maybe host some side discussions and musical dissections of Bowie's groundbreaking 1974 album Diamond Dogs. Looking forward to seeing and hanging out with my people x

It's happening July 26 – 28, 2024, spread across a number of venues around Liverpool (UK).

Tickets available here

Check out my playlist for Sound and Music's The Sampler Mixtape #53, as heard on Resonance FM on Friday 9 June 2023 at noon (it will be repeated on Monday 12 June 2023 at 9am).

Featuring tracks by Andrew Poppy, Mica Levi, Kai Whiston, Fire-Toolz, Zubin Kanga, Fragile Self, Mira Calix, Ben Carey, Gunnar Gunnsteinsson, Neil Gaiman + FourPlay and more.

Looking forward to chatting with author Simon Goddard about the latest edition of his BOWIE ODYSSEY series, looking at Bowie's life and career in 1973 - a year jam packed with drama, debauchery, triumph, confusion, exhaustion and much more.
The event is hosted by the Walthamstow Rock n Roll Book Club, and will be happening on Tues 23 May at Walthamstow Trades Hall, E17 4RQ.

After the talk there'll be a book signing, and then a "proper Bowie/Roxy disco" with DJ Steve Proctor. Tickets are available here.


UPDATE: What fun! Top quality Bowie chats were had. Big thanks to Omnibus and the Walthamstow Rock n Roll Book Club for inviting me (I nicked the below photo from the E17 rock book club's Facebook - cheers Mark).

I felt very lucky to be asked to contribute some voice-based sound design for Elizabeth Price's new video installation Underfoot. This version of the work (which had previously been shown in Glasgow in a different iteration) will be premiered at Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt (23 March–29 May) alongside other large-scale video installations by the Turner prize-winning artist.

Information about the show can be found here: https://www.schirn.de/en/exhibitions/2023/elizabeth_price/
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Really happy to share that my proposal to write a 33 1/3 book about Kate Bush's Hounds of Love was accepted in the publisher's most recent open call.

Kate Bush is one of my favourite artists and Hounds of Love is a dream record to write about. I'm so excited to begin!

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As per tradition, The Wire editor Derek Walmsley sent an email to all of the magazine's contributors asking for our 'best of the year' lists, and our personal reflections on how 2022 went. I was quick to respond with my lists:

top ten Releases of the Year
1 Alice Cohen Moonrising (Styles Upon Styles)
2 Björk Fossora (One Little Independent)
3 Brian Eno FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE
4 Helms Alee Keep This Be The Way (Sargent House)
5 Éliane Radigue/Frédéric Blondy Occam XXV (Organ Reframed)
6 Kai Whiston Quiet As Kept, FOG (Lux)
7 Weyes Blood And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow (SUB POP)
8 Nadja Labyrinthine (Broken Spine/Cruel Nature)
9 Coby Sey Conduit (AD93)
10 Die Wilde Jagd Atem (Bureau B)

top ten Archive Releases of the Year
1 Cheri Knight American Rituals (Freedom to Spend)
2 Iannis Xenakis Electroacoustic Works (Karlrecords)
3 Funkadelic Maggot Brain (Westbound)
4 John Tilbury Keyboard Studies (Another Timbre)
5 Denis Dufour Complete Acoustic Works Vol 1 (Kairos)
6 David Bowie Brilliant Adventure (1992–2001) (Parlophone)
7 Sun Ra Arkestra Nothing Is… Completed & Revisited (Ezzthetics)
8 William S Burroughs Ali’s Smile (Paradigm Discs)
9 Scritti Politti Anomie & Bonhomie (Rough Trade)
10 Paul McCartney McCartney I II III (Capitol)

But the deadline for the personal reflection came and went, I just didn't relish the thought of tracing back over what has been a strange, at times extremely shit but occasionally great, year. Then Derek emailed to ask again, and so I responded in the moment from the heart.


Finally, it was so surprising and so so pleasing to see Blackstar Theory listed third in the top ten books of the year. Feeling validated as a writer is a rare sensation, so I'm celebrating this one!
What a time it's been. Everyone I know has been going through something tough this year. Roll on 2023!




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I'm feeling excited about attending my first ever Dublin Bowie Festival in January! Anyone who knows me knows I love a Bowie party, and I've heard the Irish Bowie parties are the best in the game.

I'll be giving a free talk/presentation/thing about Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie at 3:30pm on Sunday the 15th January at Whelans.

I'll also be part of the Aladdin Sane Listening Party on Saturday (14th) at 3pm, on a panel with Gerry Leonard and BP Fallon.

It's going to be a fun time! Tickets available here: https://www.dublinbowiefestival.ie/



Update: That was a lot of fun! Here's a video of my talk from the Saturday:

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