Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd: The Moon & The Melodies

The Moon and the Melodies is a unique album in the Cocteau Twins' catalog - unusually ethereal, even by their standards, and largely instrumental, led by the free-form improvisations of Harold Budd, an ambient pioneer who had fallen into their orbit as if by divine intervention. Building on the atmospheric bliss of Victorialand, released the same year, it signaled a possible future for the trio, but it was a path they would never take again. In the years that followed, The Moon and the Melodies has attracted a passionate following. The most atmospheric tracks regularly appear in ambient DJ sets. Sea, Swallow Me" is one of the Cocteau Twins' most streamed songs on Spotify, which has found a new life on TikTok, where it serves as a soundtrack for countless expressions of hard-to-express melancholy. For such an understated affair, the album casts a long shadow - but Raymonde believes the album's uniqueness stems directly from its humble, unprepared origins. "It captured a moment between friends having fun making music together. That's really the essence of it." "I don't know if it really worked, but working with Harold is great. I think it became more like four songs that sounded like us and four songs that sounded like him, which wasn't really the plan. We met him and he just seemed like a nice guy. I don't care about the music he makes as much as I care about the music the people I work with make, because a lot of times you meet them and you like them and that's why you want to make something. I like Harold because of his very relaxed nature." (Robin Guthrie) "As a musician, I found them immensely interesting to work with. And despite my tendency to work alone, it's great to go into the studio with someone else and bang each other's heads - very satisfying." (Harold Budd)