“‘Check this out,’ Dave said, at which point something way outside my frame of musical reference started churning the atmosphere in the cab of Dave’s truck into some creeping, swirling, diamond-flecked juggernaut of an existential crisis, too subtle to catch before it was too late. Nothing in my fifteen years had prepared me for this. I wanted to jump out of the truck. It was that thing: ‘the unbearable lightness of being.’ Being itself revealed somehow in all its weighted beauty—all the significance one holds at a distance instinctively so as not to be crushed by it, suddenly crashing in. ‘What is this?’ I asked. ‘Cocteau Twins,’ Dave answered evenly. ‘Aikea-Guinea,’ as it turned out.” Matthew Kelley
The First Time I Heard… Cocteau Twins
- By Scott Heim
- Rosecliff Press
- 2012
Available formats
- Digital
Synopsis
The First Time I Heard… Cocteau Twins is the second part in an ongoing series where musicians and writers tell their stories of first hearing the music of an iconic artist or band. In this second volume, forty different musicians and writers remember their initial experiences hearing the seminal dreampop / post-punk band Cocteau Twins, a standout group from the legendary 4AD Records and favorite of radio personality John Peel.
Contributors to the Cocteau Twins edition include musicians such as David Narcizo (Throwing Muses); Ian Masters (Pale Saints); pianist and Cocteau Twins collaborator Harold Budd; band collaborator and live guitarist Lincoln Fong; Pete Fijalkowski (Adorable); Anka Wolbert (Clan of Xymox); Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak (Mercury Rev); Meredith Meyer; Mark Van Hoen (Locust, Seefeel); Paul Anderson (Tram); Paul Elam (Fieldhead); Rebecca Coseboom (Halou, Stripmall Architecture); Michael Cottone (The Green Kingdom); Sarah Jaffe; Antony Ryan (Isan); Dean Garcia (Curve); Kurt Feldman (The Pains of Being Pure at Heart); Erik Blood; Annie Barker; John Loring (Fleeting Joys); Guy Fixsen (Laika and co-engineer for My Bloody Valentine); Emily Elhaj (Implodes); Carlo Van Putten (The Convent, White Rose Transmission); Eric Quach (thisquietarmy); Ryan Policky (A Shoreline Dream); Matthew Kelly (The Autumns); Steve Elkins (The Autumns); Ryan Lum (Lovespirals); Michael Savage (The Fauns); Amman Abbasi (The Abbasi Brothers); Eric Loveland Heath; Ben Mullins (Midwest Product); Keith Canisius; Michael McCabe and David Read (Coldharbourstores); and writers like Emily Franklin, Craig Laurance Gidney, Alistair McCartney; Tony Leuzzi; and Sommer Browning.
About the author: Scott Heim is an award-winning author of four novels, including Mysterious Skin, which was adapted to film by Gregg Araki in 2004, with a score composed by Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd. His essays, articles, and stories have been widely published.