Spinning out from the sweet orbit of Victorialand and a few years before the glorious high watermark of Blue Bell Knoll came this chance meeting with ambient legend Harold Budd and the Cocteau Twins.
A curious addition to the Twins catalogue that I bought on release day — a frosty November if I remember correctly — and the music still holds itself to that season so well, even if the dunescape sands of the artwork suggest otherwise.
Spiralling breath sonically sycamored; some songs feel more Cocteaus, others more Budd, with a few blurring the boundaries between each. His melancholic piano gloves that Cocteau glisten rather well. A lonely ambience full of rainy-day reflection, the malign beauty that stalks some of us more than others. The comforting echo of his Pearl collaboration with Brian Eno here somehow more skeletal in its haunting, comfortably offset by the other’s opulence.
Budd’s distinctive piano announces the album, soon to be shallowed by Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde’s textural spread. That delirious kick from the machined drums a slowly roasted splash, chased over by the kite-like angelics of Elizabeth Fraser‘s voice. Her spooky undulating rhythms, Titania-tinselled in some stirring idyllic. A beautiful and potent fragrance swirling into the inquiring interjections of the next.The first of the many ambient tracks here throws your attention to Budd’s moody masterfulness. Glassy accents of pointed piano that meltwater in subtle reflectives and scalloped erosion. A lustred forlorn, butterflying complexities that sound can often underline better than any words. The comforting tidal ebb’n’flow of those rolling piano chords on “Why Do You Love Me”, its swan-like glide chewing at the void, suspended in that yearning stretchability of harmony that continuity cascades.
“Eye Of Mosaics” is in direct opposition-glitters, Liz’s vocals bright and sprightly dance child-like within the splashy diffusions of ambered atmospherics. The autumnal accents of “She Will Destroy You” a hazy siren swaying waltz-like, sparrow-footed in lullabied somersaults. Regal and gilded, her voice spires beautifully, swoops and curves that arching jangle, those splintering piano jabs, that fold around her like a light dusting of snow. Something I don’t think I’ll ever tire of experiencing, no matter how familiar they’ve become.
This diffused languid air continuously pulling, lifting you into its gravitational sweep, finally relaying things to a whispery promise. The curiously entitled “Ooze Out And Away, Onehow” finding Liz orbited by delayed multiples and swallow-tailed darts, suddenly slamming into a lovely phoenix-like raise of momentum, powdery with booming drums. An intoxicating finale where her voice soars , doubles up and chorus dips in heady arabesques.
The Moon And The Melodies is an overlooked classic that’s just waiting to be rediscovered.-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
