Cocteau Twins- Victorialand (1986) MP3 & FLAC

Because bassist Simon Raymonde was busy at the time fulfilling his 4AD "house band" duties on the second This Mortal Coil album, Filigree & Shadow, the Cocteau Twins' fourth album, Victorialand, features, as strange as it is to say, a more "stripped-down" sound in comparison to their earlier work. This doesn't mean that the songs have lost any of their trademark reverb-drenched ethereal quality, but there is a bright spaciousness to Victorialand that makes it sound, if anything, more intimate. Employing very little percussion and without Raymonde's bass, Robin Guthrie's spidery arpeggios and Elizabeth Fraser's vocal peregrinations are even more evocative and engulfing, and the more pronounced use of acoustic guitar gives the album a brittle warmth in places that is unprecedented in their earlier work. There is, perhaps, no better point of entry to the Cocteau Twins' unique sound than Victorialand.

Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd- The Moon and the Melodies (1986) MP3 & FLAC -For Issi-

The Moon and the Melodies occupies an odd place in the Cocteau Twins' discography: while it contains a few of the band's better songs (e.g. "She Will Destroy You"), it was completely overlooked by Robin Guthrie when he remastered the Cocteau Twins catalog several years back. This slight reiterates its undeserved reputation as an inessential "ambient" album. While The Moon and the Melodies is not necessarily successful as a collaborative effort, in that it seems quite tentative in integrating the Cocteau Twins' unique vocal and guitar arrangements into Harold Budd's Eno-esque ambient soundscapes and vice versa, it does contain some memorable work by everyone involved. The final track, "Ooze Out and Away, Onehow" is, in particular, not to be missed.

Cocteau Twins- Garlands (1982) MP3 & FLAC

"At the bosom or the breast, of the forehead or the fist."

Easily the darkest and most straightforwardly Post-Punk album Cocteau Twins ever recorded, Garlands has a spare, desolate, insistently minor-key sound that owes a clear debt to Joy Division; however, what keeps the proceedings from sounding derivative are Robin Guthrie's spiraling guitar textures (far more primal than on future albums) and Elizabeth Fraser's vocals, which somehow manage to evoke beauty and dread simultaneously. While the album suffers a bit from the use of a drum machine and several songs that are overly repetitious (something rarely found on their later albums), Garlands manages to create a sound that, while not indicative of where Cocteau Twins were heading next, still played an important role in defining the 4AD sound of the early 80s.

Dif Juz- Extractions (1985) MP3 & FLAC

Mining sonic territory located somewhere between The Durutti Column and This Mortal Coil, Extractions, the only full-length Dif Juz ever recorded, offers a glimpse of what Post-Rock might have sounded like 4AD-style. This strange jem, now resigned to a forgotten corner of the 4AD back catalog, was produced by Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins fame and, not coincidentally, also features a vocal turn on "Love Insane" by the other Cocteau Twin, Elisabeth Fraser. Subtle and at times haunting, Extractions deserves a listen if only for the disorienting experience of hearing Richard Thomas' fine sax work weaving in and out of 4AD's trademark gloom like a seal swimming in a sea of black satin pillows.

This Mortal Coil- Filigree & Shadow (1986) MP3 & FLAC -For Douxee-

"Notes that roll on winds with swirling wings, bring me words that are not the strength of strings."

If This Mortal Coil's first album, It'll End in Tears, felt, at times, a little too much like a 4AD talent sampler, albeit a more original approach to such a thing than the standard record label "comp" (see Lonely Is an Eyesore), the follow up album, Filigree & Shadow, avoids this by being far more ambitious musically and doing so with what had evolved into something resembling a 4AD "in-house" band. While This Mortal Coil's second album is noticeably lacking in 4AD star power (Liz Fraser, Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry had all participated on the first album but are absent on the follow-up), vocalists such as Dominic Appleton, Alison Limerick and Deirdre & Louise Rutkowski more than ably lend the cover songs a distinctive feel, often succeeding in liberating them from their original contexts. However, tying these songs together by way of moody, atmospheric interludes are 13 instrumentals that, while listenable, are more forgettable than not. The overall effect of this is both the main strength and primary weakness of the album: sonically, it comes across as remarkably cohesive (a rare feat for a double album), but you also might find yourself skipping over the instrumentals in search of the gems, such as the cover of Pearl Before Swine's "The Jeweller," which alone is worth the price of admission.

Various Artists- Lonley Is an Eyesore: 4AD Compilation (1987) MP3 & FLAC

"Have a fish nailed to a cross on my apartment wall. It sings to me with glassy eyes and quotes from Kafka."

In a certain sense, Lonley Is an Eyesore functions as a time-capsule, a snapshot of Post-Punk circa the mid-Eighties, albeit a snapshot saturated with the particular shades and tinctures of the Goth-informed Dream-Pop of the 4AD stable. As a result, there is an aesthetic cohesiveness to this album that is unusual for a compilation, which stems from that fact that, to some extent, 4AD was pushing a particular (Ivo Watts-Russell produced) sound rather than the bands themselves. This approach was taken a step further with the This Mortal Coil releases, in which various 4AD artists were thrown together in the studio (under the control of Watts-Russell) to record cover songs dressed up in 4AD-style gloom. Despite this overriding emphasis on style over substance, Lonely Is an Eyesore holds up quite well 25 years later because it contains an intriguing mix of the influential (Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Throwing Muses) and the obscure (Dif Juz, The Wolfgang Press, Clan of Xymox), all at the height of their powers. With the exception of the badly dated Colourbox contribution, this album still sounds fresh, dark, and revelatory, even if it is not quite the manifesto it was clearly conceived to be.