For Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie, It’s All About the Journey
- By Katherine Yeske Taylor
- Flood Magazine
- 17-Nov 2024
The groundbreaking dream-pop trio’s co-founder reflects on his storied career leading up to his recent solo EP Atlas.
When Robin Guthrie was still a teenager he co-founded Cocteau Twins, one of the most beloved bands to ever emerge from Scotland. His highly melodic and ethereal guitar playing was a crucial element in the band’s dreamy, atmospheric sound, providing the perfect counterpoint to vocalist Elizabeth Fraser’s soaring soprano. Cocteau Twins released eight studio albums before calling it quits in 1997, but they’re still revered as one of the most influential and innovative dream-pop bands of all time.
Post–Cocteau Twins, Guthrie has continued working as a solo artist, as well as producing and collaborating with numerous other musicians. His latest release, this past July’s Atlas EP, contains four atmospheric instrumental tracks that are a kind of sonic travelog as they track Guthrie’s frequent journeys around the world. In August, he also offered up a nod to his past by reissuing The Moon and the Melodies, Cocteau Twins’ 1986 full-length studio collaboration with the poet and avant-garde/jazz musician Harold Budd. For this release, Guthrie remastered the original tapes, giving the beautiful songs an even more brilliant sheen. He and Budd would continue to work together on more music—the two were completing 2020’s Another Flower when Budd passed away from COVID-19 that same year.
During a recent video chat from his recording studio in France, Guthrie tells me what inspired these particular works, and takes a look back across his groundbreaking career.
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