Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd - The Moon And The Melodies

Cocteau Twins: The Moon and the Melodies

Reissued on vinyl for the first time!

Remastered from the original tapes by Robin Guthrie himself!

The Moon and the Melodies is a singular record within the Cocteau Twins' catalogue — unusually ethereal, even by their standards, and largely instrumental, guided by the free-form improvisations of Harold Budd, an ambient pioneer who had drifted into their orbit as if by divine intervention.

Building on the atmospheric bliss of Victorialand, released earlier the same year, it signaled a possible future for the trio, yet it was a path the Cocteau Twins would never take again. Now, 38 years after it was first released, it has been reissued for the first time — remastered, from the original tapes, by Robin Guthrie himself.

The album was never actually meant to happen; no one can even recall exactly how it came about in the first place. As both Guthrie and Simon Raymonde remember it, the independent television station Channel 4 approached 4AD about a film project pairing musicians from different genres.

In interviews in the 1980s, however, Budd, who passed away in 2020, believed that his music publisher had linked him with the Cocteaus after the group had expressed interest in covering one of his songs. In any case, the film never happened.

"But we'd spoken to Harold, and we were all quite excited about it — in a very sort of downbeat Cocteau Twins way, where we were rarely excited about anything," Raymonde recalls. "We're like, well, let's carry on and do it anyway — you've already booked your flight, let's just hang out in the studio and see what happens."

A curious thing about the album-the fact that it was credited to all four players under their individual names-followed the same intuitive logic as everything else that went into the record. "It's because it wasn't a Cocteau Twins album," Guthrie says. Raymonde concurs: "It was simple. All four of us have gone into the studio and done something, but it isn't a Cocteau Twins album."

Despite all its quirks, The Moon and the Melodies has attracted a passionate fan base over the years. Its most atmospheric tracks routinely turn up in ambient DJ sets. "Sea, Swallow Me" is one of the Cocteau Twins' most streamed songs on Spotify, second only to "Heaven" or Las Vegas' "Cherry-coloured Funk"; it has also found new life on TikTok, where it serves as the soundtrack to innumerable expressions of hard-to-express melancholy.

For such a low-key affair, the album casts a long shadow — but Raymonde believes the record's uniqueness stems directly from its humble, unpremeditated origins.

"It's always about making something that's pleasurable," he says, "capturing a moment in time between friends that are enjoying making music together. Really, that's the essence of it — the music was just a reflection of how nice a time we were having in the studio."

1. Sea, Swallow Me

2. Memory Gongs

3. Why Do You Love Me?

4. Eyes are Mosaics

5. She Will Destroy You

6. The Ghost Has No Home

7. Bloody and Blunt

8. Ooze Out and Away, Onehow

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