Over the years, the team at Sound Effects have had the privilege for working with Kate Bush on various projects. Mostly while we were at EMI and Warner Music, but this year, with our amazing friends at Pozzoli in Milan, we got to witness the creation of The Baskerville Edition of The Hounds of Love, Kate’s revolutionary fifth album. This project marks the start of a series of illustrated editions of Kates albums.
Flashing LED, embedded into artwork.
In that vein, the Baskerville Edition features completely new artwork, created by the Glasgow-based design studio Timorous Beasties. Kate had previously worked with the studio on some of the illustrations for Before The Dawn, her incredible live residency at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2014.
These projects are all very personal to Kate, being directly involved in every single aspect of the design, development, and production of theses pieces. In constant contact with the Pozzoli + State51 project team, Kate would also attend the weekly project meetings. These pieces are her vision, we simply facilitated that vision, to carry it into physical format.
Belly band
“It’s been great fun putting together these new versions, including coloured vinyl’s for independent record stores. They’ve been designed as a ‘set’. It’s very exciting to see the resurgence of appreciation for the physical presence of albums released on vinyl. It’s how it’s always been for me, especially when I was a teenager. The whole buzz of the record store was part of the experience. Buying an album was an event. There’s a special emotional connection that happens between the possessor of an album, the music and the artwork, when it exists in the real world. It’s something we can treasure in a unique way.”
The single 180gram vinyl comes in an exceptionally finished gatefold, comprising Timorous Beasties new “hounds” illustration on the cover and presented within a bellyband that features new typography specific to this illustrated edition.
The whole of the inside of the gatefold features Timorous Beasties expansive illustrative interpretation of The Nine Wave suite from the Side 2 of the album. A reinterpretation of the albums original photograph of Kate.
Further attention to design detail is the way the illustration wraps around the edges of the sleeve to great effect. The central figure of the illustration is of course Kate, in lifejacket, cast adrift on an ocean of fantastical sea creatures. Her lifejacket features a red light, brought to life via an embedded LED pulsing slowly and referencing the “the little light shining” lyric from And Dream of Sheep.
The light is powered via a solar panel, incorporated in the back of the sleeve.
The challenges for this piece were creative, structural, and technological. In the case of the latter, the need to source an LED and solar panel that where small enough to be incorporated into what is essential a standard gatefold sleeve. In turn, produce a sleeve design that could structurally support and protect the circuitry and solar panel, seamlessly into the overall design. In the end Pozzoli worked with a partner to develop a bespoke solution for the LED.
The attention to detail on this project even extends to the shipping! An additional unique illustration was created and dedicated specifically for the shipping sticker.
The Baskerville Edition has been accompanied by a beautiful new Cloudbusting-themed video which depicts a young Peter Reich (actor Gus Turner) receiving the record and telling his story.
The Baskerville Edition is available from Kate’s newly designed Fish People website.
