falling in love with the cocteaus again.

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*caution*!! the japanese version (which has the cds in actual
jewel cases as opposed to cd-single cases) is the one u want,
but the trax are the same.

the US version was like this as well. Is there a UK version that is different? Is the box thinner?

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 1 November 2004 16:59 (8 years ago) Permalink

The two unreleased things - if memory serves - were "Dials" (from around 1990) and the instrumental version of "Oomingmak" from Victorialand which plays over the credits on the Lonely Is An Eyesore video compilation. I think these tracks were on a 10th (9th?) CD-single in that box along with "The High Monkey Monk" off the MM comp and "Crushed" from LIAE.

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:07 (8 years ago) Permalink

NB: the box set was purely the 4AD singles and EPs - some rarities didn't make it ("Millimillenary" springs to mind, from a 1985 NME single, but that's on The Pink Opaque, I guess).

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:11 (8 years ago) Permalink

the big loss is the christmas single (snow), which came out afterward and is now totally impossible to get

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:12 (8 years ago) Permalink

Is it impossible to get now? I have it.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:17 (8 years ago) Permalink

I think I might sell it. One going for $20 on eBay, I see.

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:20 (8 years ago) Permalink

it's not as rare as it once was. it got reprinted at some point

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:25 (8 years ago) Permalink

eh? what?? SNOW??!! what's that? never fckng heard of it!

you don't mean the frosty the snowman thing right?
heckfire, well i consider myself a cocteaus peak-period trainspotter
but that's foxed me. tell u what the NME COMPELTE DISCOGRAPHY from 1993, which had EVERYTHING listed on it (dates, prices, trax, cat numbers) never mentioned anything called 'SNOW'.

enlighten me please alex, kyle et al.

― piscesboy, Monday, 1 November 2004 17:49 (8 years ago) Permalink

1993 two song single. "Frosty" and "Winter Wonderland." The latter has ended up on a couple of multiartist Xmas comps, I had the former through Volume

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 1 November 2004 17:50 (8 years ago) Permalink

yeah, frost the snowman, for some reason I thought the name of the single was just "snow"

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 1 November 2004 18:20 (8 years ago) Permalink

http://www.cocteautwins.com/html/discography/discog_27.html

it was called Snow

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 1 November 2004 18:22 (8 years ago) Permalink

RE: Snow EP, you can expect to pay around $40-$50 on eBay for this one. It's really for completists only.

― jeffery (jeffery), Monday, 1 November 2004 18:22 (8 years ago) Permalink

oh riiiiight. panic over. heard that.

― piscesboy, Monday, 1 November 2004 18:25 (8 years ago) Permalink

(x-post to Kyle) I have the slimline cd box set version, which has wiggle room, so I'd guess the box is the same size. (x-post again) Why the recommendation for the JPN version? Generally better sound? More art?

― Chris Hill (Chris Hill), Monday, 1 November 2004 19:10 (8 years ago) Permalink

I think it was because the cases take up the whole box

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 1 November 2004 19:10 (8 years ago) Permalink

Wow.$40-50 bucks? Goddamn. I mean, it's okay, but I wouldn't pay that much for it (not that I'm selling it, mind you).

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 1 November 2004 19:11 (8 years ago) Permalink

I think it sold for more than that new though

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 1 November 2004 20:36 (8 years ago) Permalink

oh wait you were talking about the Snow single duh!

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 1 November 2004 20:37 (8 years ago) Permalink

I just want to add that everyone who hasn't yet should get The Moon And The Melodies. Harold Budd's instrumentals can get a bit long but the 4 tracks on which Liz Fraser sings are so perfect I think they should have been re-released as an EP. 1986 was really an amazing time for them with TMATM, Love's Easy Tears, Victorialand, and "Crushed" all coming out that year.

― Seb (Seb), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 04:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

RILKEAN HEART and S. CARTER are my wake-up songs these days. What is Liz Fraser's solo thing like?

― LeCoq (LeCoq), Tuesday, 2 November 2004 05:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

Like Ned, I pulled out The Cocteau Twins (specifically Treasure) again this afternoon in order to comfort myself in the face of two disastrous elections (in many ways the US election is like an eerie exact repeat of the Australian one from last month) - and suddenly determined that I want much more of this group's stuff. I saw Head Over Heels second hand the other day - convince me to buy it please.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 3 November 2004 10:09 (8 years ago) Permalink

S. Carruthers totally OTM about 'Treasure' upthread. That drum machine is awful. It's fine on the more metallic early stuff, but when they got more soft and layered Guthrie needed another drum sound/treatment altogether. I'm fine with it from BBN onwards.

One of the joys of the BBC album is that Guthrie didn't produce it.

― Dr. C (Dr. C), Wednesday, 3 November 2004 12:50 (8 years ago) Permalink

I saw Head Over Heels second hand the other day - convince me to buy it please.

Oh, definitely. It's still a transition album as such, and consisted only of Guthrie and Fraser, Raymonde hadn't joined yet. But it's got some absolutely crackerjack numbers, and they also do a few things throughout that they didn't try much again (the overt jazz-scat nods on "Multifoiled," for instance). Still had a lot of early hyperdourness but was channeled into different directions -- the glowering guitar and doom beats on "When Mama Was Moth" and then the explosion/cascade of the concluding "Musette and Drums," which is a monster and a half.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 3 November 2004 13:53 (8 years ago) Permalink

(And it was actually the album I was listening to last night!)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 3 November 2004 13:54 (8 years ago) Permalink

I glid down the leaf-strewn, sunsplashed avenues of this fair metropolis as if buoyed by a giggley coterie of silk-winged cherubim and robustly voluptious, flaxen-locked centaurettes. Then I overheard Beat Happening from a passing invalid's walkman and beat him up.

-- Alex in NYC (vassif...), November 1st, 2004 7:11 PM. (vassifer) (later)

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Wednesday, 3 November 2004 14:28 (8 years ago) Permalink

Damn right.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 3 November 2004 15:06 (8 years ago) Permalink

I got Head Over Heels/Sunburst & Snowblind - it's good! Though I'm surprised how comparatively conventional Liz sounds. Treasure is the earliest I've otherwise got, and her vocals are so alien there I'd assumed they had to start from some basic level of alienness which Head Over Heels falls short of. "Falls short" is wrong though; I actually like how this album sounds more like a really lush, atmospheric post-punk album rather than being totally unplaceable. The guitar is so heavy! The whole thing reminds me a lot of The Cure's Disintegration actually.

There's a big "BUT" however, which is that the sound on this pre-remaster CD is absolutely atrocious, it sounds like it was recorded using a dictaphone from three rooms down the hall. I suspect this may be a big barrier to my enjoyment, as it certainly clouds a lot of the sonic intricacies at work. My copy of Treasure sounds startingly clear by comparison.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Sunday, 7 November 2004 00:29 (8 years ago) Permalink

Huh, that's sorta funny, I have that very same pre-remaster CD and I don't mind the sound on it at all! (Or Treasure, which is similarly pre-remaster.) Then again I've been listening to it for, y'know, 15 years. ;-)

It occurred to me that a good band doing a version of "Musette and Drums" via a huge sound system would be genius.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 7 November 2004 01:30 (8 years ago) Permalink

"Twinlights" and "Otherness", taken together, would be easily the best CT album.

i almost agree, but can't completely because of the overwhelming sadness (to my ears anyway) on those eps. they are wonderful though. and quite a solid package together too. i wrote a random phone number on the case to "twinlights" and i curse that damn number everytime i look at the case.

every once in awhile i'll pull out blue bell knoll or four calendar cafe and bliss out. "spanglemaker" is my favorite though. i can't imagine treasure without those big fake drums either.

― tricky (disco stu), Sunday, 7 November 2004 01:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

"spanglemaker" is my favorite though.

The whole EP is perhaps a perfect summation of that period of the band, but yeah, the song itself...man. A friend, many years ago, said she envisioned the song almost like a green slip of material, a scarf or something silken, twirling through a dark cavern that suddenly at the end came forward and enveloped you and took you somewhere else. It was a striking and strictly visual metaphor for the song that has never left me.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 7 November 2004 02:21 (8 years ago) Permalink

3 months pass...

Getting excited now.

And there's no new album to promote so that leaves the set lists wiiiiiiide open.

http://www.nme.com/news/111427.htm

― piscesboy, Thursday, 17 February 2005 12:51 (8 years ago) Permalink

i'd like to see them. i've only recently begun to really listen.

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Thursday, 17 February 2005 12:59 (8 years ago) Permalink

The drummachine's my fav thing about "Treasure". Well, that and Simon turning up.

― Andrew Blood Thames (Andrew Thames), Thursday, 17 February 2005 13:28 (8 years ago) Permalink

it's going to be wall to wall 'treasure' on these gigs i reckon.
'ivo' and 'lorelei' = a dead cert.

― piscesboy, Thursday, 17 February 2005 13:46 (8 years ago) Permalink

Perhaps they will play in New Zealand. Perhaps not.

― A Viking of Some Note (Andrew Thames), Thursday, 17 February 2005 13:47 (8 years ago) Permalink

8 months pass...

Hmmm, Heaven or Las Vegas sounds very good tonight.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 16 November 2005 06:08 (7 years ago) Permalink

still the only cd of theirs i own. haven't listened to it in years but the title track alone would make me never want to relinquish it.

― joseph (joseph), Wednesday, 16 November 2005 06:23 (7 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

Hmmm, Heaven or Las Vegas sounds very good tonight.
-- Ned Raggett (ne...), November 16th, 2005

..and last night.

so the box set then. in february it's coming out in 2 seperate volumes (for like, a tenner each) usefully bisecting their career into 'the amazing 4ad bits 82 - 90' and 'the boring fontana biot onwards'. which is very nice.

― piscesboy, Thursday, 12 January 2006 17:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

1 year passes...

i only have heaven or las vegas and four-calendar cafe. i tend to prefer the latter despite the overwhelming critical preference for the former. the closer on f-c c is really blissful

― Charlie Howard (the sphinx), Thursday, 1 February 2007 12:24 (6 years ago) Permalink

Yes I've just fallen for them again. Listened to Treasure again last week at fiancee's prompting and even though after more than 22 years I thought I knew the record inside out, now it sounds like a completely new record.

Their music was such an important part of my old life (which is why I've been reluctant to write much about them) and for years I couldn't listen to them - it was too painful - but now, in my new life, I can.

Now that's magic.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 1 February 2007 12:29 (6 years ago) Permalink

Critical preference is almost always gonna slant toward the earlier, more vibrant Twins -- like back toward a little bit of grit and struggle in the sound, back when they're really pushing and taking off into beauty, instead of just hopping straight into the hot cozy bath -- but the more time goes by, the more that later stuff sounds great and mysterious on its own, and not just like some kind of comedown / trailoff. I mean, I still prefer the part of their career where they sound like they're in a basement trying to be beautiful (and magically succeeding) -- like Treasure and such -- but the very end-period stuff (FCC and beyond) sounds better to me every time I go back to it. (I think, at the time, that FCC was the last Cocteaus album I dug without worrying that they were going a bit milky, and actually, at the time, I think I liked its direction a lot.)

Charlie, I recommend following your Cocteau purchases in one direction or the other -- I mean, I'd push like Treasure or at least Blue Bell Knoll on you, but if you want to head in their hot-milky-bath direction, start the other way!

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 1 February 2007 13:53 (6 years ago) Permalink

still victorialand for me, you can play it at both speeds!

― Friendly Tree (688), Thursday, 1 February 2007 13:55 (6 years ago) Permalink

cheers for the advice, nabisco

having just uncovered this powerful band quite recently, i'm suddenly confronted with the delightful chore of navigating their back catalogue, and i find myself treading a little carefully so as to not overdose on all the riches at once. i think i'll go with 'treasure' next, and then take it step by step from there. :)

― Charlie Howard (the sphinx), Thursday, 1 February 2007 14:11 (6 years ago) Permalink

I find the early stuff a bit too gothy but Moon and The Melodies, Heaven or Las Vegas, Bluebell Knoll or Victorialand all get spun still fairly regularly. For some reason they always seem to be a band I listen to in the Spring or Autumn more. But that's probably abother thread in its own right.

― Treblekicker (treblekicker), Thursday, 1 February 2007 14:23 (6 years ago) Permalink

Charlie, if you want to invest in a crash course in the discography, you can always get the new four-disc EP collection, which is pretty great -- you'll get an overview of the whole career, and still have the actual albums to dip into at whatever pace you like.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 1 February 2007 14:37 (6 years ago) Permalink

I'm jealous of people who are just now discovering bands like the Cocteaus, and have that whole catalogue in front of them to dive into...I mean, how awesome would it be to have bits of your musical memory erased so that so can experience that "my god *this* is exactly what I want to hear right now!" feeling over and over again?...you know, like electroshock therapy, but without the bad stuff...

― hank (hank s), Thursday, 1 February 2007 14:42 (6 years ago) Permalink

that's an interesting idea. if you had entire bands erased from your memory, i wonder how many of those same bands you'd come across again on an intimate level.

i'll suss out that ep. collection tomorrow i think. particularly since the material is strong.

― Charlie Howard (the sphinx), Thursday, 1 February 2007 14:48 (6 years ago) Permalink

1 year passes...

i know it's been said many times many ways but my god what a band.

― piscesx, Wednesday, 20 August 2008 02:32 (4 years ago) Permalink

You betcha.

― Bimble Is Still More Goth Than You, Wednesday, 20 August 2008 04:39 (4 years ago) Permalink

damn I haven't listened to the Cocteau Twins in like a year now, time for another obsessed dive

― Curt1s Stephens, Wednesday, 20 August 2008 04:42 (4 years ago) Permalink

Skipping 15 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

yeah she might do a few CT tracks it looks like. short gig otherwise i'd wager.

― piscesx, Wednesday, 27 June 2012 23:14 (10 months ago) Permalink

Thanks for posting the Mojo piece.

My Bloody Valentine? They were just another little indie band to begin with. Lush interested me more because they could actually write songs and had ideas.

He sounds like he's too insecure to admit how good My Bloody Valentine are. Which - if the case - is sad, considering how satisfied he should be with his own body of work. It wouldn't diminish his band in any way. Then again, maybe that mix of insecurity and competitiveness helped him reach the heights he did with CT?...

The only Cocteaus records that make me cringe are the Twinlights and Otherness EPs (from 1995). Twinlights is acoustic and has violins and shite like that, and Otherness is pointless remixes.

I kind of agree with him about Twinlights; I think the instrumentation wasn't up to par. An intriguing exercise - I don't think it's a failure, by any means... But I consider the Otherness EP to be an essential final jewel in their crown. Just listen to the direction that that EP took their live set in; it was yet another breathtaking step in their evolution.

Example 1: The way it drops out at around 3:20 and resurfaces in remix form is a thing of beauty.

Example 2: Definitely NOT a pointless remix.

― azaera, Thursday, 28 June 2012 06:40 (10 months ago) Permalink

Oops, video #2 is supposed to be this:

― azaera, Thursday, 28 June 2012 06:41 (10 months ago) Permalink

Argh. Technical ineptitude. Sorry. It's supposed to be a video of Aloysius live from 1996. Definitely worth checking out if you haven't already done so.

― azaera, Thursday, 28 June 2012 06:43 (10 months ago) Permalink

He sounds like he's too insecure to admit how good My Bloody Valentine are. Which - if the case - is sad, considering how satisfied he should be with his own body of work. It wouldn't diminish his band in any way. Then again, maybe that mix of insecurity and competitiveness helped him reach the heights he did with CT?...

No, it's because RG was one of that group of people who actually remember MBV as this shambolic live band stumbling round the London scene in the mid to late 80s. As opposed to people who just heard these amazing records coming out of nowhere and presumed they were always that brilliant.

(And I say that as someone who was part of that latter group. But I know quite a few people who remember MBV as an early band, and their later success was, shall we say, unexpected.)

― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Thursday, 28 June 2012 08:33 (10 months ago) Permalink

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