FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for Hounds of Love’s second side, The Ninth Wave/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Nine: Under Ice
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MOVING through Hounds of Love…
as we look ahead to its fortieth anniversary on 16th September, I am not in The Ninth Wave. Discussing the tracks in order, I am not to Under Ice. After And Dream of Sheep and its yearning for sleep. A woman adrift at sea after going overboard on a boat/ship, from the dreams of sleep and counting sheep, she is now struggling under ice. Maybe pulled under in the cold water, it is one of the most terrifying songs on the album. Up there with Waking the Witch. Suspenseful and tense, there is not a lot written about it. I will come to, as I am with all songs on the album, Leah Kardos’s fantastic 33 1/3 Hounds of Love book. At 2:21, it is the shortest song on the album. Before getting to Leah Kardos’s words – I think her section on Under Ice is the shortest when it comes to the songs -, there is a little bit of background. Another crucial track, from the potential struggle and terror of And Dream of Sheep, this is a very real and urgent song where the heroine might have fallen asleep or has been dragged beneath the water. However, there is not that sense of manic in the music. Not like Waking the Witch. Multitracked vocals (from Kate Bush) imploring the woman to get out of the cold and to safety, there are not a lot of musical components. It is the vocals that particular resonate. I will comes to the lyrics of the song, as they are especially standout. Kate Bush performed this song – as part of The Ninth Wave – during her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. I have included the audio for that at the end of the feature.
However, I will come to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia and their interview archive, where Kate Bush spoke about one of The Ninth Wave’s most important songs. If you have not heard the song then you really need to now. It is so powerful and spinetingling:
“It was very much the idea of going from very cold water, it’s getting dark, you’re alone, the only way out is to go to sleep, no responsibilities, and forget about everything; but if you go to sleep, the chances are you could rool over in the water and drown. So you’re trying to fight sleep, but you can’t help it, and you hit the dream. The idea of the dream being really cold, and really the visual expectancy of total loneliness, and for me that was a completely frozen river, no-one around, everything completely covered with snow and icicles, and it’s that person all alone in this absolute cold wilderness of white, and seeing themselves under the ice, drowning, to which they wake up and find themselves under the water.
Kate Bush in an Interview by Tony Myatt at the 1985 Kate Bush Convention
This was all kinda coming together by itself, I didn’t have much to do with this, I just sat down and wrote this little tune on the Fairlight with the cello sound. And it sounded very operatic and I thought “well, great” because it, you know, it conjured up the image of ice and was really simple to record. I mean we did the whole thing in a day, I guess. (…) Again it’s very lonely, it’s terribly lonely, they’re all alone on like this frozen lake. And at the end of it, it’s the idea of seeing themselves under the ice in the river, so I mean we’re talking real nightmare stuff here. And at this point, when they say, you know, “my god, it’s me,” you know, “it’s me under the ice. Ahhhh” [laughs]
Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992”.
I like how her brother Paddy Bush is on harmonic vocals. It is this familial voice maybe urging his sister to be safe. Bush’s family does feature throughout The Ninth Wave. Under Ice is a track that many people do not know. I am going to source almost all of what Leah Kardos writes about this song. We head down to the “cold atmosphere of A minor”. I hear this song and think of her 2011 album, 50 Words for Snow. That is an album all about the cold and wintery vibes. If Mother Stands for Comfort is the standout on the first side of Hounds of Love because it is cold and skeletal compared to the much warmer and fuller songs around it, Under Ice might be its companion piece on The Ninth Wave. Leah Kardos observes, interestingly, how Under Ice’s “lean arrangement…consists of three layers of Fairlight (all using the TRAMCHLO present that featured all over side A). One layer is a bass octave, poking rhythmically on the root notes; above it, a nervy staccato theme on parallel 5ths and behind it, a Fairlight pad that holds an A (sus2) shape throughout”. I was fascinated to learn (and I did not know this) that Under Ice might be unique because it is a thought-composed song. Meaning there are no repeating parts. The track is “one continuous unfolding movement from start to end”. The strings that stab and are a staccato joy – composed on the Fairlight and not real players – have similarities with those on Cloudbusting. Parallels and connections between songs on side A and The Ninth Wave. “Bush sings in sync with the parallel 5th Fairlight part, with accented rhythms in groups of three and two (‘won-der-ful’ … ‘ev- ‘ry-where … ‘so-o’ … ‘whi-ite’). Under Ice has this sense of disorientation and something almost witch-like. A spirit coming to the heroine. Maybe something lurking under the water!
Leah Kardos remarks on the lyrics. Noting how the lyrics paint something wonderful and safe, “but the music and sound design tell us different, with the bleak texture backdropped by the vague sounds of threatening wind and weather Bush’s voice is deep, tremulous and severe. Then a different voice – gentle, elongated, untethered from the stabbing Fairlight motif – describes the scene; a frozen river, no one else around, they’re skating fast across the ice”. Whereas one might listen to Under Ice and think that this sound and figure under the ice is a spirit or vision, she actually realises it is her. “As she cries, It’s meee! Ohh!’, her voice reaches up high, only to slide slowly down as the pulse slackens to a stop, leaving the Fairlight pad shivering in the wind”. Kardos commends Bush’s production skill and instinct because Under Ice is terrifying and immersive without loading layers of instruments and ideas. The “Incidental sonic flourishes heighten the cinematic effect”, as she writes. Paddy Bush’s harmonic vocals are on the final drone. Sampled in the Fairlight. Under Ice has fewer words than nearly any other Kate Bush song. Split into that almost positive and hopeful section, before we get to the second section, where Bush/the heroine realises what is trapped under the ice is her. I love the first section: “It’s wonderful/Everywhere, so white/The/river has frozen over/Not a soul on the ice/Only me skating fast/I’m speeding past trees/Leaving little lines in the ice/Splitting, splitting sound/Silver heels spitting, spitting snow”. The second of seven songs on The Ninth Wave, it is the first moment when you fear the woman on the ocean is genuinely in danger of dying. Waking the Witch is the extension and companion piece. It is voices of her friends and family trying to wake her. Whether exhausted from her icy struggle or actually dying, these are her final dreams, the song is busier and faster. An urgency that you do not get from Under Ice. A remarkable song that creates genuine chills and shivers with very few elements and words, Under Ice is…
A mini masterpiece.