Music : The Moon and the Melodies

Rating: - less than the sum of its parts
Well, I think the Cocteau Twins were a great band and as for Harold Budd, I could listen to his lullaby piano for the rest of my life. However, I've never really thought of this, a one-off collaboration from 1986, as a successful meeting of minds. The problem is that what you have here, effectively, are two separate mini-albums spliced together. Half the tracks sound like pretty much everything else the Cocteau Twins were doing in the mid-eighties, except that if you listen carefully you can just about hear a piano desperately trying to make itself heard above the noise; and the other half of the album sounds, basically, like Harold Budd's solo work from the same period.

For me, the album works best on the tracks where the instrumentation is stripped down to just Budd's atmospheric piano over the top of Robin Guthrie's guitar treatments. Guthrie's eerie guitar works very well here when the true ambience of the music is allowed to breathe; the effect is similar to the synth wash sounds on Budd's solo album Lovely Thunder, released around the same time as this album. (In fact, Track 2, 'Memory Gongs', is actually no more than a slightly altered version of 'Flowered Knife Shadows' from Lovely Thunder.)

It would have been great to have heard Liz Fraser's wonderful voice over the top of that ethereal soup. Unfortunately, though, she only sings on the numbers with the full band -- the Budd-driven tracks are all instrumentals. There is a partial exception to this in the first few minutes of the final song, the memorably-titled 'Ooze Out and Away, Onehow'; here, the drum machine is silenced and the atmospheric guitar and keyboard parts finally get a chance to shine underneath a characteristic Liz Fraser vocal.. This, for me, is the only time on the album that the various elements really gel together. But then after a few minutes the drum kicks in and the effect is spoiled rather as the album thumps to a predictable conclusion.

While I like most of the music on this album, listening to it as a whole there is a general lack of coherence: the effect of moving continually from one style to the other is jarring. It's an interesting curiosity for fans of either (or both) sides of the collaboration; if you're new to the work of either Budd or the Cocteau Twins, however, it would be better to start elsewhere.

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Rating: - Oozing out and away
I sip my wine. Slip this CD into the player. A shimmering piano carrys me off into a distant echoey guitar. A soft melodic bassline drifts gently over a spacey drum beat and that voice, oh that voice whispering to me tales of nostalgia, yearning, heaven and abstract possibilities, all in a language I don't understand. The emphasis changes very slightly, very logically as the CD takes me through a dream. Sometimes the soundtrack is that shimmery piano, sometimes the harmonies between the bass and guitar that aren't actually there but at the same time are, create my own melodies. All the while that beautiful angelic vocal drifts in and out of focus.
This is splendid stuff.
If you love your ambient music or just want something completley different or in a world of its own buy it now.

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Rating: - A sprinkle of Cocteau magic
This is the Cocteau Twins plus Harold Budd, and in many ways it shares the same textures and softly sparkling sounds as Victorialand, so if you like that, you'll like this too. There's a lot more piano in this than the Cocteau's usual guitar-based music, but the pianos are heavily altered and it all fits together nicely. Wheras Victorialand was ethereal and uplifting, Moon & Melodies is Ethereal and somehow sad, but both can take you far away from the troubles of the ordinary world. Bloody & Blunt, despite its title, is one of the loveliest melodies I've ever heard.

Not their best, but worth a listen for sure!

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Rating: - Solid 4AD


For those of you not familiar with Cocteau twins or 4ad(the label on which they recorded) you are more or less guaranteed a formula of where new age hits chill-out. Very much in the school of Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream etc but of the 80s not 70s; a 21st equivalent is probably Goldfrapp and others of the ambient genre. Ok there are exceptions such as the Pixies and Throwing Muses. Each track of tbis cd is beset with a minimalist undertone, the simplicity of which helps (with the help of a good brandy or other substance) to transcend you into to another plane of mellowness - easy on the ear to you and me. The slight downside of this album and this music in general is that it is a bit spot the difference and you wonder how they came up with the titles of the tracks. But all in all a pleasant cd to own from a much underrated genre of music which has a defintite place in the 21st century and 15 or so years on makes the likes of Goldfrapp etc very unoriginal.

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Rating: - Ambient Extraordinaire
When I bought this at 18, on vinyl, I appreciated the vocal tracks, but the rest evaded me. Now, at 36, with 4 children, I fully understand the purpose this album holds. It's pure escape (not that I wish my life different, but you need time out). Low lights, headphones on, eyes closed and you can almost reach the world the Cocteaux inhabited. The aqueous piano of Harold Budd was an addenum to the atmosphere. 'Sea, swallow me' is the opener, and the only track I could fully recall, prior to CD re-purchase. But it still sounded as uplifting in my 2003 existence as it did in my 1986 one. As I let the tracks roll, they all came back to me. 'Memory Gongs' is pure self indulgence, while 'Why do you love me?' is aural water music. 'She will destroy you' has to rank along side the likes of 'Aikea-Guinea' in terms of brilliance, with an excellent vocal score by Liz. 'Bloody and blunt' is beautiful, but just doesn't last anywhere near long enough.
What I've found is that you have to give yourself entirely when listening to this album. Half measures will do it no justice.
Turn on, tune in, chill out.