Thursday, October 10, 2002
a vow: I will not use the word "ethereal" at any time during the following piece.
I've had the cocteau twins on my mind all day. started the workday spinning my favorite cocteaus album, blue bell knoll, twice. I've often both wondered, and been asked, why/how it is I love them so much whilst loathing people like enya. let me attempt to expound upon that. and let me clear my throat.
4ad was important back when record labels stood for, nay, meant something (and don't even waste your time blathering to me about vagrant or whatever "punk"-cum-"hardcore" label you currently love, please). in the '80s, there was not only 4ad, there was wax trax! and sst and twin/tone and rough trade and I could go on - but my point is that if you were a fan of multiple artists on one of those labels, you could safely buy a record by an unknown artist on the same label and feel fairly safe that you'd like it. for me, the two labels which were the prime example of this ethos were 4ad and wax trax! I actually tested that theory more than once (wax trax! records chicago, you are still missed), and it worked like a charm; I know I wasn't the only one. I loved cocteau twins, and I loved colourbox and this mortal coil, too.
I probably heard cocteau twins for the first time on my local college radio station when I was still in highschool, and was immediately enraptured. [I may get a bit teenage-swoony here, so bear with me.] here was music without words, but not instrumental, which said something, somehow. [ok, I'm about to get far too "a john hughes film starring molly ringwald" here, so either abandon ship or suck it up.] their music was a balm to my teenage soul, the tortured kid I was at the time. the missing link between bauhaus and lush, the cocteaus made this delicate, complex buffet of sound. I think picking various things out of their records prepared me in some way for my future love of artists like underworld - helped me "get" techno, as it were. even stripped down (notably on their earliest albums, garlands and treasure), their music was lush (that's an adjective). dark yet strangely uplifting. and then on top of it all was elizabeth fraser's voice. especially back then, if she'd been singing words she might've just sounded insufferably twee (her instrument's matured over time - see her vocalizing on massive attack's mezzanine). but singing in this bizarrely gorgeous made-up language of sounds and breaths, it was stunning. dreampop before we knew there was such a thing, everyone from lush to sigur ros owes them a huge debt. cocteau twins are probably one of my five favorite artists ever, at least based on their first six albums (after '93's four-calendar cafe, they started mucking around ill-advisedly with electronica; it wasn't so pretty). start with blue bell knoll and its followup, the just-as-good heaven or las vegas, and go on from there (4ad, via capitol in the u.s., has recently reissued and remastered their catalog).
I've had the cocteau twins on my mind all day. started the workday spinning my favorite cocteaus album, blue bell knoll, twice. I've often both wondered, and been asked, why/how it is I love them so much whilst loathing people like enya. let me attempt to expound upon that. and let me clear my throat.
4ad was important back when record labels stood for, nay, meant something (and don't even waste your time blathering to me about vagrant or whatever "punk"-cum-"hardcore" label you currently love, please). in the '80s, there was not only 4ad, there was wax trax! and sst and twin/tone and rough trade and I could go on - but my point is that if you were a fan of multiple artists on one of those labels, you could safely buy a record by an unknown artist on the same label and feel fairly safe that you'd like it. for me, the two labels which were the prime example of this ethos were 4ad and wax trax! I actually tested that theory more than once (wax trax! records chicago, you are still missed), and it worked like a charm; I know I wasn't the only one. I loved cocteau twins, and I loved colourbox and this mortal coil, too.
I probably heard cocteau twins for the first time on my local college radio station when I was still in highschool, and was immediately enraptured. [I may get a bit teenage-swoony here, so bear with me.] here was music without words, but not instrumental, which said something, somehow. [ok, I'm about to get far too "a john hughes film starring molly ringwald" here, so either abandon ship or suck it up.] their music was a balm to my teenage soul, the tortured kid I was at the time. the missing link between bauhaus and lush, the cocteaus made this delicate, complex buffet of sound. I think picking various things out of their records prepared me in some way for my future love of artists like underworld - helped me "get" techno, as it were. even stripped down (notably on their earliest albums, garlands and treasure), their music was lush (that's an adjective). dark yet strangely uplifting. and then on top of it all was elizabeth fraser's voice. especially back then, if she'd been singing words she might've just sounded insufferably twee (her instrument's matured over time - see her vocalizing on massive attack's mezzanine). but singing in this bizarrely gorgeous made-up language of sounds and breaths, it was stunning. dreampop before we knew there was such a thing, everyone from lush to sigur ros owes them a huge debt. cocteau twins are probably one of my five favorite artists ever, at least based on their first six albums (after '93's four-calendar cafe, they started mucking around ill-advisedly with electronica; it wasn't so pretty). start with blue bell knoll and its followup, the just-as-good heaven or las vegas, and go on from there (4ad, via capitol in the u.s., has recently reissued and remastered their catalog).
# posted by Thomas : 4:13 PM
