The Dreaming

Released on 13 September 1982 on EMI, with UK catalogue number EMC 3419, it is the first record she produced alone. It was recorded over two years. The first demo of Sat in Your Lap was made in September 1980 after she saw a Stevie Wonder concert. Backing tracks were cut at Townhouse Studios, where Hugh Padgham engineered for a few weeks before Nick Launay took over. Summer 1981 brought work at Abbey Road and Odyssey and sessions in Dublin with Irish musicians, there was a break in late 1981, and overdubs and mixing at Advision ran from January to May 1982. Paul Hardiman recorded at Advision and Odyssey and mixed the album, and Haydn Bendall engineered at Abbey Road. The Fairlight CMI is heavily used, alongside a Yamaha CS-80 and a Synclavier.

Everything is written, arranged and produced by Bush, except the pipes and strings on Night of the Swallow, arranged by Bill Whelan, and strings on Houdini, by Dave Lawson and Andrew Powell. The subjects range from old crime films (There Goes a Tenner) to a Vietnam documentary (Pull Out the Pin), the plight of Indigenous Australians (The Dreaming), the death of Houdini and Stephen King's The Shining (Get Out of My House). The sleeve shows a scene from Houdini, with Bush as Bess Houdini and a key in her mouth.

Reception

It reached number three in the UK, spent ten weeks on the chart and was certified silver, which made it her lowest seller. It was her first album on the US Billboard 200, at number 157. Bush said it was ironic for an uncommercial record to go straight in at number three, and in 1993 called it her "She's gone mad" album. Smash Hits thought she was trying to become less commercial, and Melody Maker found it bewildering at first. Billboard called it quirky and fascinating, Robert Christgau singled out the dense, demanding music, and Trouser Press called it a triumph of inventive songwriting.

Opinion has warmed since. Simon Reynolds in 2014 described it as her wholly unfettered mistress-piece, Slant placed it 71st among the albums of the 1980s, and NPR's public poll ranked it 24th among albums by women. Bjork, Big Boi and Steven Wilson have named it a favorite, and Wilson's 2015 album Hand. Cannot. Erase. was influenced by it.