Cocteau Twins
BBC Sessions

THE REVIEW

There are very few bands from the 80s that have been able to mark and define new musical territories, laying the foundations to venture into ambient, electronic, psychedelia, and the much-maligned new-wave which has gifted us with so many "hidden gems". One of these was the band Cocteau Twins, which has had a significant impact on the collective imagination of the new rock that has evolved up to the present day.

The ethereal yet unsettling singing of Elizabeth Frazier and the simultaneously dark and angelic arpeggios of Robin Guthrie animated the new wave movement of the early Eighties and have remained absolutely relevant and even more fascinating today. An album perpetually in unstable balance between dark, ambient, and new-wave atmospheres that intertwines patterns woven with electronic and psychedelic threads of rare suggestion. Elizabeth's "sacred" voice climbs fragilely in hypnotic and circular scales supported only by unique and unmistakable delicate harmonic structures, a real "trademark" that has made this duo a reference standard for lovers of the genre.

An imaginary soundtrack for a hypothetical Tim Burton noir film for the nocturnal and "insane" atmospheres it evokes, the double album instead collects the efforts of recordings made between 1982 and 1996 and desired by the great John Peel, who wanted them in the BBC studios on several occasions. The result is this stunning double album with dark and magical versions of their famous hits such as "Ivo," "Feathers-Oar-Blades," "Beatrix," and the magical cover of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit." A magnetic, at times irresistible album. The only flaw, if we really want to nitpick, is the somewhat too monotonous and "granitic" production: almost a live performance with little attention to sound and arrangements which, if crafted and refined in the best way, would have created an "unassailable" product over time. A small flaw that dissolves like magic when the first notes of "Waxe and Vane" from disc 1 start... spine-chilling!