Hounds of Love - Japan LP Promo

I know that some of these new scans are a bit patchy, especially on the album jacket, but I didn't want to brighten it up to blend out the unevenness because the obi-strip is virtually the same colour, and brightening it up would have blended the obi-strip right out.

This is the Japanese promo LP release for Hounds of Love. This is nearly identical to the first pressing release, except for a couple of key factors. If you take a look at the back of the record jacket you will see a rectangular sticker in the upper left-hand corner. Besides having a number printed there, it also has three larger Japanese characters printed further down. It's been confirmed to me that these characters translate as "Sample Version" or "Sample Goods". This sticker does not appear on the released version.

The other key thing to look at are the record labels. Just above the recording copyright on the right-hand side, there's a rectangular shape with Japanese characters inside. I've been told this translates as "Sample Release" or "Sample Version". These rectangular shapes and Japanese characters do not appear on the released version.

This also comes with a one page double-sided insert. One side has a bio in Japanese and the other side has song lyrics printed in Japanese.

Also included is the same inner sleeve featured in the UK release. The only noticeable differences are the catalogue number at the top of the first side, and the catalogue number repeated on the reversed side along with some Japanese characters along the bottom.

I believe this was the very last Japanese LP I ever bought - standard release or promo wise. The Japanese releases of Kate's later albums became less and less appealing to me due to their almost identical UK counterparts. Even the obi-strips were boring to look at.

If you're thinking about collecting Japanese LPs or 12" singles, always make sure the obi-strip is present and undamaged. A missing obi-strip will vastly affect value, and a damaged one will affect value to some degree. If you take a look at the back of this record jacket and look at the bottom portion of the obi-strip, you will see that it's sustained a little bit of damage. So yes, that does affect the value of this record.