Robin Guthrie – Emeralds

So here it is, Emeralds, Robin’s 2011 release: ten short instrumental pieces centred around Robin's singular musical vision, based on his layered guitar technique, warm keyboards and in most cases percussion. Songs emerge out of the silence, take on brief structures and evaporate away. Oftentimes the effect of these soundscapes is to conjure an enveloping watery space, and the listener, at home in this environment, surrenders to its waxing and waning. Some spaces are temples, others, such as Radiola, echo the Cocteau's dreampop of times gone by, and as such seem to be awaiting a voice, galleries of exquisite art empty of people and needing somebody to witness them. Some tracks inspire bliss and others melancholy. My favourites are Turn Together, Burn Together and Emeralds, the latter though, rather like the album as an entirety, has gone before I am ready (and perhaps some of the power comes from this). Fans of Robin Guthrie and the Cocteau Twins will be familiar with all the spells that he casts here. This familiarity could be seen as a boon or a flaw; it is for you to decide. My sense is that for Emeralds Robin stayed completely within his comfort zone, it is him doing what he does best. And the best tracks here are quite gorgeous.

Continental Guthrie

As long as Robin Guthrie is active, he's going to deal with one persistent issue. If he sounds like himself, he'll please a certain portion of his fans who want to be continually reminded of why they got into Cocteau Twins, while others will urge him to move on. It's the price he pays for shaping a specific sound that has been imitated by many. If he had started out sounding like a bunch of other bands, and continued to do something similar to that, album after album, he wouldn't catch nearly as much heat. Continental, his second solo album, is all-instrumental but not nearly as ambient as 2003's Imperial. Several tracks rise and crash with the help of programmed rhythms and leave enough room for the presence of vocals, while a couple others simply shift around and cascade. Unless you're a gear head and can tell exactly what was used to record this album, you might think it to be made of outtakes from recordings made in 1985 and 1986, when the Cocteau’s released the Tiny Dynamine and Echoes in a Shallow Bay EPs, as well as the Victorialand album; the songs induce that peculiar mixture of isolation and ecstasy. In addition to fitting safely in the context of Guthrie's past work, the album also recalls the sandstorms of Scenic's Acquatica and the restful moments of Manual's Ascend, two albums that were undoubtedly informed in part by Guthrie's past. Depending on how much Robin Guthrie you want in your life, Continental is either redundant or another reason to love him. It's certainly a strong album.

The Moon and the Melodies

The Moon and the Melodies is a collaboration between the Cocteau Twins and keyboardist/composer Harold Budd that fits soundly between the stylistic signatures of the two, both of whom make organic music that relies heavily on electronics. Budd's use of spacious treated piano and keyboard sounds (influenced by a previous collaborator, Brian Eno) combines with the Cocteau Twins' shimmering waves of guitars and Elizabeth Fraser's layered wordless vocals to create what amounts to a soundtrack to a dream about sleeping, with saxophones courtesy of Richard Thomas (of the now defunct Dif Juz) breathing further life into the music. Too bland to be the best introduction to the music of either, but a welcome addition to the collections of fans of both.

The Moon and the Melodies is actually credited to Harold Budd, Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie, Simon Raymonde, the album is nothing like I had ever heard before, or indeed have heard since. The record features eight songs: each side starting and ended with a ‘vocal’ track (i.e. the full band, plus Harold Budd), with two instrumentals in the middle. The album’s opening track, ‘Sea, Swallow Me’, for my money is the greatest track the band ever recorded. It begins with Budd’s otherworldly piano on its own and is soon joined by Guthrie’s beautiful guitar, Raymonde’s bass and Fraser’s unique vocal. Like many Cocteau’s tracks, the lyrics appear to consist of an unfamiliar, invented language, with words chosen for their sounds rather than their meanings. It is a cliché, but the vocals act as another instrument in their own right. The second track, ‘Memory Gongs’ is led by Budd’s ebbing and flowing piano work, coupled with ambient Cocteau’s sounds in what could be the most intoxicating track I have ever heard. To listen to it, even after many hundreds of times, is to disappear to another place. Where the first track could, minus Budd’s piano, arguably have fitted nicely onto another Cocteau’s album, the second totally belongs to this one. ‘Why Do You Love Me?’ has a similar make-up and also does not sound of this earth, while ‘Eyes Are Mosaics’ returns Fraser to the fold and would not have sounded out of place on the previous Autumn’s Tiny Dynamite or Echoes in a Shallow Bay E.P.s. It is a fine track, but the one on the album where Budd is least evident.

Onto Side Two and Richard Thomas from Dif Juz makes an appearance (on saxophone) on the first two tracks, ‘She Will Destroy You’ and ‘The Ghost Has No Home’. While the former includes a subtle contribution on the outro, on the latter (another epic instrumental) the saxophone shares pretty much equal billing with Budd’s piano. It doesn’t sound like it would work. It does. Perfectly.

‘Bloody and Blunt’ is the album’s final voiceless track and is also the shortest, based around a circular dreamy guitar riff from Guthrie, while ‘Ooze Out And Away, Onehow’ brings back Fraser’s remarkable voice one last time, building up and up until the drums unexpectedly kick in for the last minute of the album to bring it to a euphoric climax.