Cocteau Twins

'Other wordly'. Cocteau Twins are by far one of the most unique bands. Just listen to the elements that compose its sound, Liz Fraser's voice with its unmistakable swirls and warmth, and the peculiarity of the lyrics, which are sometimes made up of random words and even some 'inexistent' ones, the guitars add up an atmosphere of heavenly dreamy fanciness.
They had a dark period which was much faster (early 80s) and later they developed their characteristic ethereal landscapes (late 80s-early 90s).

Favorite Albums:
Garlands
Blue Bell Knoll
Treasure
Victorialand
Heaven or Las Vegas

Favorite Songs: Cocteau Twins – LoreleiCocteau Twins – Garlands
Feather-Or-Blades
Cocteau Twins – Carolyn's Fingers
Cocteau Twins – Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops


Garlands (1982)
Garlands is the 1982 debut album of Cocteau Twins. The result is an album, and a guitar sound, with a strangled, constricted range and a dark ambience. In the post-punk world of the early 1980s the influence of Siouxsie and the Banshees and other proto-goths is clear, but the beginning of the trademark ethereal Twins sound is also here, especially in Elizabeth Fraser's curiously addictive and largely indecipherable vocals.

The songs are simple, repetitive and haunting, with guitar, vocals, bass and the lo-fi drum machine usually entering separately and building to a climax.
The album made a huge impression at the time with its distinctive sound, a still embryonic sound which the band would continue to develop over the succeeding albums and other releases. Garlands ended the year as one of the best-selling 'indy' albums, helped by the fact that band was championed by BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel. With the nurturing of label boss Ivo Watts-Russell, who also co-produced the album, and the band's participation in the successful first This Mortal Coil album, the Cocteau Twins soon became the iconic 4AD band.

With her often opaque textured singing style, Elizabeth's Fraser's lyrics were a source of debate from the start, though Garlands is one of the few Cocteau Twins releases to feature any printed lyrics.




Cocteau Twins - Lorelei (Live 198?)


Cocteau Twins - Carolyn's Fingers (1988)

Swans

Swans only sound like Swans. Their sound has changed dramatically from their early era in the 80s to their later in the 90s. From being a brutal and visceral combo with intense and obscure performances to achieving more atmospheric textures and even heavenly melodies. They can be tagged noise, industrial, ambient, folk, experimental, post-punk, no wave, metal and even post rock. My beloved Swans, I will always have a shelter under their music, either if i am feeling hopeless or hopeful.

Favorite Albums:
Filth
Greed
Children of God

The Great Annihilator
The Burning World

Favorite Songs:
Big Strong Boss
Swans – Saved
Swans – I Am the Sun
Beautiful Child
Swans – Money Is Flesh

Filth (1983)
Another exciting piece of history from one of The Big Apple's meanest, creepiest and uncompromising bands ever. Swans could only have come from New York, no other city other than Berlin could have produced such a glorious cacophony of unrelenting brutality. For me Swans rests somewhere between real industrial (not 90s industrial metal) and noise-rock. Their only peers would have been Glenn Branca, The Butthole Surfers, early Sonic Youth (who were more song based) and Einsturzende Neubauten. On 'Filth' they use repetition to exhilarating effect slowing everything down to a virtual crawl. It's difficult to describe this album but know one thing: nothing produced before or after it can match it in the brutality stakes. Like a wrecking ball it demolishes your weak mind while never overstaying it's welcome. 'Filth' is as the title would suggest an ugly beast of an album that will beat you and leave you paralysed on floor simply because it can.


Warning: This is really intense!

Swans - Beautiful Child (Live 1987)




And this one is from their 'melodious' period. A documentary covering 1995-1997

Cesar Vallejo

'The Universal Poet'

His poems are forever in my heart. He was Peruvian (March 16, 1892 - April 15, 1938)

So under appreciated in its own land, but glorified in the rest of the world.

Although during his lifetime he published only three books of poetry, he is nonetheless considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century. Always a step ahead of the literary currents, each of his books was distinct from the others and, in its own sense, revolutionary.

Five talking points about Cesar Vallejo.

1) There's the inexplicable mystery of how and why he realized that he could be Cesar Vallejo. That is, speak with such an unmistakably individual voice. What gave him that courage? (Normally I hate to apply the word courage to writing in a particular style; it seems fake and inappropriate to say that it is courageous for me to write in a particular way. For Vallejo, though, this is entirely approrpriate.)

2) He had a complete poetic language, ranging from the colloquial to the erudite, the Quechua-inflected Spanish that he grew up speaking to the avant-garde cosmopolitan discourse of Europe.

3) He had a unique way of bridging the individual and the collective voice. "Yo no siento este dolor como Cesar Vallejo." Yet it took "Cesar Vallejo" to articulate this insight.

4) He passed through the historical avant-gardes and forged a style of political poetry totally inflected by the freedom given to him by this avant-garde. He never practiced a sort of "generic" avant-garde style. . .

5) His appeal is immediate and direct. You know that it's great before you even understand what it's all about. Further study only deepens our appreciation.

(from nobloodforhubris.blogspot.com)

Cesar Vallejo Tribute
Mariela Dreyfus reads "Quedeme a Calentar la Tinta en que me Ahogo" while Anne Waldman reads the translation, "I Stayed on to Warm Up the Ink in which I Drown"

Translation: "I Stayed on to Warm Up the Ink in which I Drown"

I stayed on to warm up the ink in which I drown
and to listen to my alternative cavern,
tactile nights, abstracted days.

The unknown shuddered in my tonsil
and I creaked from an annual melancholy,
solar nights, lunar nights, Parisian sunsets.

And still, this very day, at dusk,
I digest the most sacred certainties,
maternal nights, great-granddaughter days,
bicolored, voluptuous, urgent, lovely.

And yet
I arrive, I reach myself in a two-seated plane
under the domestic morning and the mist
which emerged eternally from an instant.

And still,
even now,
at the tail of the comet in which I have earned
my happy and doctoral bacillus,
behold that warm, listener, male earth, sun and male moon,
incognito I cross the cemetery,
head off to the left, splitting
the grass with a pair of hendecasyllables,
tombal years, infinite liters,
ink, pen, bricks and forgiveness.