Re: This Mortal Coil/Cocteau`s/et al

[lawtonj@project4.computer-science.manchester.ac.uk (Kaleidoscope)]

In <1991Oct18.040529.7147rodent@netcom.COM> rodent@netcom.COM (Ben Discoe) writes:

>vishal@m2.csc.ti.COM (Vishal Markandey) writes:

>>fingerle@NADC.NADC.NAVY.MIL (J. Fingerle) writes:

>>> today.  And _Gala_  by Lush is on order, also.

>I was dissapointed with _Gala_.  It is not at all like the haunting,
>ethereal, abstract, morbid prettiness that occupies other 4AD bands.
>In fact, it sounds more like a conventional british girl band with
>some odd chord changes.

Vishal displays familiarity with the haunting, ethereal cathedrals of sound
of 4AD acts like Bauhaus, Birthday Party, Pixies, Pale Saints, Ultra Vivid Scene
and the rest of the 4AD roster :-)
Of all the acts on 4AD (probably 50 odd throughout the 80s) only 6 or 7 spring
to mind as typically 4AD - Cocteaus, This Mortal Coil, His Name Is Alive, Dif
Juz, Dead Can Dance, Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, Richenel...
It might be easy to presume this means that the rest of the acts will reflect
these interests but there has also been a parallel strand of noisier groups.

Lush & Pale Saints were amongst the first bands, along with Ride, to form a new
movement of bands in the UK who take a lot of their style from My Bloody
Valentine (i.e. noraml pop songs with funny chord changes and applied noise)..
Well this simplifies things a lot, but I can't be bothered to piece it all
together here.... 
Suffice to say IMHO Lush are desperately over-rated. They're pretty good but I
can think of some better acts who've been ignored, such as the Charlottes. A 
lot of Lush's success can be attributed to Miki Bereyeni's striking face & their
4AD deal. So far they're yet to better the 60% 'hit' ratio with their songs,
which a group has to do for me to consider good. But they have their moments!!!

>>[This Mortal Coil]
>>There's three albums, each by a different collection of 
>>artists:  "It"ll end in tears", "Filigree and Shadow", and "Blood".  The music
>>varies quite a bit

TMC is a collective run by Ivo, the 4AD label boss where he gets some of his
favourite artistes, 4AD or non-4AD, to record mostly cover versions of other
people songs, mixed in with his own instrumentals. The cover versions are
invariably from long deleted 70s LPs by people like Big Star, Tim Buckley,
etc that you have to pay for some Greek bootleg import copy at some extortionate
price, or tape them of someone. The problem is most of them ARE worth hearing.

>That's understating it.  "Totally mis-matched" would be more accurate.
>In other words, whatever kind of music you like, there will be several
>songs that rub you the wrong way, typically mixed in such a way as to
>wreck the mood of the CD.

Unless of course your taste is wide enough. I don't skip any tracks on the
first 2 LPs. Blood is a different case altogether.

That's punk rock for you..... (sorry, being cryptic here - Ivo, founder of 4AD
and leader of TMC was involved in the punk movement (not musically), and you
can tell - all the things like avoiding group pictures on the packaging, and
doing what you want to, annoying other people).

>> could best be described as dreamy, haunting, ethereal, 
>>beautiful, sad.

>Could also be described as melodramatic, whining, forcedly depressed
>and morbid in a most phony way.  Don't get me wrong, I like most of
>it :-)  And the first, "It'll end in tears" contains a few genuinely
>pretty and convincingly real songs. 
 
See above about cover versions.

> However, adjectives like "dreamy,
>haunting, ethereal" etc. really belong more with DCD or Cocteau Twins
>than with the odd mis-matched collection TMC.

And not on 4AD - don't forget Slowdive!!!!
Somewhere between the Cocteau Twins & The Cure's `Disintegration', with a hint
of early TMC, and in their earlier days a dose of My Bloody Valentine, they're
another one to deserve the haunting & ethereal tag.... more so than DCD actually
who can be pretty earthy with those ethnic drums at times!!

>------
>Ben
>  "I'm not a computational neurophysicist, but I play one on T.V."

Julian Lawton