Hello, well the summer break here is over, i really needed it as i led things spill over again. It wasn't my intention to post as much as i did these last months, no more then 10 every week was the idea when i restarted this blog.. It steadily crept up to twice that. The thing is i'm sort of loosing out as the time that rests me to enjoy new music got less and less, not to mention keeping up a social life. Add to that a lack of interaction from visitors here, something i don't understand when i look at other blogs. Its not that i'm in need of thank you's, if everyone were to say thanks my mail account would be flooded day after day. However commenting gives also a sense of community, enforcing positive feelings about spending time here with all the other global visitors at Rho-Xs.
I begin the summer season at Sundaze with a collective that was the brainchild of one man, Ivo Watts-Russell, a label manager who set his label and his artists on the musical map thru the collaborative efforts under the name of This Mortal Coil. As these things go it was the b side of a 12" single that really got the ball rolling. The dreampop with an edge came at the right time too at the time cdees became more common and scratchfree listening all the rage. The big sound became available for the masses, not just for people with the expensive equipment. 4AD made good use of these signs of the times, the music itself lacked a label which was a bonus, ambient gothic would have been nice but i admit that is from hindsight.
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
This Mortal Coil was a gothic dream pop supergroup led by Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of the British record label 4AD. Although Watts-Russell and John Fryer were technically the only two official members, the band's recorded output featured a large rotating cast of supporting artists, many who were signed to, or otherwise associated with, 4AD.About half of the songs released were cover versions, often of 1960s and 1970s psychedelic and folk acts, which displayed those two genres' place in the history and formation of dream pop. On each of the band's three LPs, at least one song would also be a cover of a 4AD artist, and most of the original songs were instrumentals.
This Mortal Coil was not a band. Nor were they a clever Shakespearian moniker for a solo artist. Rather it was a unique collaboration of musicians recording in various permutations, the brainchild of 4AD kingpin Ivo Watts-Russell. The idea was to allow artists the creative freedom to record material outside of the realm of what was expected of them; it also created the opportunity for innovative cover versions of songs personal to Ivo.
Watts-Russell had founded 4AD in 1980, and the label quickly established itself as one of the key labels in the British post-punk movement. One of the label's earliest signings was Modern English. In 1983, Watts-Russell suggested that the band re-record two of their earliest songs, "Sixteen Days" and "Gathering Dust," as a medley. At the time, the band was closing their sets with this medley, and Watts-Russell felt it was strong enough to warrant a re-recording. When the band rebuffed the idea, Watts-Russell decided to assemble a group of musicians to record the medley: Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins; Gordon Sharp of Cindytalk; and a few members of Modern English. An EP, Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust, resulted from these sessions.
Recorded as a B-side for the EP was a cover of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren", performed by Fraser and Guthrie alone. Pleased with results, Watts-Russell decided to make this the A-side of the 7" single version of the EP, and the song quickly became an underground hit, leading Watts-Russell to pursue recording a full album under the This Mortal Coil moniker.
It'll End in Tears helped crystallize 4AD's emerging signature sound, and helped win a wider audience for their stable of artists.
Fryer and Watts-Russell put together a follow-up album, a sprawling and more varied collection, Filigree & Shadow covered songs by Tim Buckley, Colin Newman, Talking Heads, Pearls Before Swine, Gene Clark, Judy Collins, and Van Morrison in between the original compositions. The Cocteau Twins' Simon Raymonde was still a significant presence, and string player/arranger Martin McCarrick took a bigger role this time around; Steven Young and Mark Cox both returned, and members of Dif Juz were also prominent.
Much of the same core cast -- Watts-Russell, Fryer, McCarrick, Appleton, Limerick, and the Rutkowskis -- was on hand for the third and final This Mortal Coil album, the tighter Blood, issued in 1991. Covers this time out included two by Big Star's Chris Bell, Rain Parade, Spirit, Syd Barrett, and Rodney Crowell, among others. Watts-Russell had announced that he would retire the This Mortal Coil name following Blood, and remained true to his word. In 1993, he issued a limited-edition CD box set, 1983-1991, which packaged all three of the group's albums, plus a bonus disc featuring original versions of many of their covers. In 1998, Watts-Russell formed a similar but somewhat sparser project dubbed the Hope Blister.
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
1984's It'll End in Tears was a surprisingly influential album in many circles, key in the reawakening of interest in artists like Alex Chilton and the late Tim Buckley by a younger generation of listeners. When released in late 1984, the album reached #38 on the UK Albums Chart. It features many of the artists on the 4AD roster at the time of issue, including Dead Can Dance, as well as key post-punk figure Howard Devoto, who sang "Holocaust", one of two covers of songs from the Third/Sister Lovers album by Big Star to appear on the album. The other Alex Chilton-penned track, the album opener "Kangaroo", was released as a single to promote the album. The simple but ravishing version of Buckley's "Song to the Siren" by Cocteau Twins Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie has since been used several times in commercials and films. Their version of Buckley's haunting original showed continued popularity in alternative record shops as it spent almost 2 years on the UK Indie Chart.
The album mark 4AD's definitive break from its origins as an artsy post-punk imprint to the development of "the 4AD sound," a heavily reverbed wash of treated guitars and atmospheric keyboards with vocals treated as another instrument in an amorphous wash of sound.
This Mortal Coil - It'll End In Tears + Gathering Dust EP ( 84 flac 351mb)
01 Kangaroo 3:31
02 Song To The Siren 3:30
03 Holocaust 3:38
04 Fyt 4:24
05 Fond Affections 3:51
06 The Last Ray 4:08
07 Another Day 2:54
08 Waves Become Wings 4:26
09 Barramundi 3:56
10 Dreams Made Flesh 3:48
11 Not Me 3:44
12 A Single Wish 2:27
13 Sixteen Days - Gathering Dust 9:00
14 Song To The Siren 3:30
15 Sixteen Days (Reprise) 4:11
xxxxx
Filigree and Shadow is the second in a line of three This Mortal Coil releases, and is considered by many to be the best. The great thing about Filigree and Shadow is how fresh it still sounds. It must have sounded like the proverbial sore thumb of the mid-1980s. It's heavy on effects and synthesizers, some tracks merely exist to establish mood and bridge gaps, and the overall mood is somber.
Filigree and Shadow distills the This Mortal Coil concept somewhat. There's more of a core group now, featuring Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins, producer John Fryer, arranger Martin McCarrick, and Watts-Russell himself, backing a variety of mostly female singers. The double album is nearly half instrumentals most of which are pleasant enough but not particularly memorable. The vocal tracks, however, continue the debut's trend of intriguing versions of fascinatingly obscure covers. The album peaked at number two in the UK Independent Music chart, spending 16 weeks in total on the chart.
This Mortal Coil – Filigree and Shadow (86 flac 415mb)
01 Velvet Belly 1:20
02 The Jeweller 3:16
03 Ivy And Neet 4:49
04 Meniscus 2:28
05 Tears 0:22
06 Tarantula 4:59
07 My Father 5:58
08 Come Here My Love 3:42
09 At First, And Then 1:59
10 Strength Of Strings 4:41
11 Morning Glory 2:57
12 Inch-Blue 1:08
13 I Want To Live 4:05
14 Mama K (1) 0:53
15 Filigree & Shadow 1:20
16 Firebrothers 3:54
17 Thaïs (1) 1:09
18 I Must Have Been Blind 3:30
19 A Heart Of Glass 3:46
20 Alone 4:14
21 Mama K (2) 0:34
22 The Horizon Bleeds And Sucks Its Thumb 2:53
23 Drugs 3:10
24 Red Rain 3:53
25 Thaïs (2) 3:13
xxxxx
The third and final album by This Mortal Coil, 1991's Blood is neither as unfocused as Filigree & Shadow or as conceptually pure as It'll End in Tears, but it's a solidly enjoyable set. Once again, nearly half the tracks are instrumentals (or tracks with minimal and often wordless female vocals) written by Ivo Watts-Russell and John Fryer, but this batch of tunes holds together much better than the much more amorphous originals on Filigree & Shadow; lengthy atmospheric explorations like "Dreams Are Like Water" sound composed and thoughtful rather than merely pretty. And as always, the covers are brilliantly chosen. The twin highlights are two songs written by Big Star's Chris Bell; "I Am the Cosmos" and a delicate acoustic version of "You and Your Sister" with wispy, unsure vocals by Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly that ranks with the first album's reinterpretation of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" as one of the group's masterpieces and managed to enter the dutch single charts. Other gems include a near-symphonic reading of Spirit's "Nature's Way" and a version of Syd Barrett's "Late Night" that strips the song down to not much more than Caroline Crawley's voice and a low-frequency hum.
This Mortal Coil – Blood ( 91 flac 408mb)
01 The Lacemaker 4:06
02 Mr. Somewhere 2:52
03 Andialu 3:03
04 With Tomorrow 2:40
05 Loose Joints 2:26
06 You And Your Sister 3:14
07 Nature's Way 3:19
08 I Come And Stand At Every Door 3:54
09 Bitter 6:25
10 Baby Ray Baby 2:13
11 Several Times 3:12
12 The Lacemaker II 1:24
13 Late Night 3:03
14 Ruddy And Wretched 3:15
15 Help Me Lift You Up 5:05
16 Carolyn's Song 3:47
17 D.D. And E. 0:47
18 'Til I Gain Control Again 4:43
19 Dreams Are Like Water 8:37
20 I Am The Cosmos 4:05
21 (Nothing But) Blood 4:04
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
I begin the summer season at Sundaze with a collective that was the brainchild of one man, Ivo Watts-Russell, a label manager who set his label and his artists on the musical map thru the collaborative efforts under the name of This Mortal Coil. As these things go it was the b side of a 12" single that really got the ball rolling. The dreampop with an edge came at the right time too at the time cdees became more common and scratchfree listening all the rage. The big sound became available for the masses, not just for people with the expensive equipment. 4AD made good use of these signs of the times, the music itself lacked a label which was a bonus, ambient gothic would have been nice but i admit that is from hindsight.
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
This Mortal Coil was a gothic dream pop supergroup led by Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of the British record label 4AD. Although Watts-Russell and John Fryer were technically the only two official members, the band's recorded output featured a large rotating cast of supporting artists, many who were signed to, or otherwise associated with, 4AD.About half of the songs released were cover versions, often of 1960s and 1970s psychedelic and folk acts, which displayed those two genres' place in the history and formation of dream pop. On each of the band's three LPs, at least one song would also be a cover of a 4AD artist, and most of the original songs were instrumentals.
This Mortal Coil was not a band. Nor were they a clever Shakespearian moniker for a solo artist. Rather it was a unique collaboration of musicians recording in various permutations, the brainchild of 4AD kingpin Ivo Watts-Russell. The idea was to allow artists the creative freedom to record material outside of the realm of what was expected of them; it also created the opportunity for innovative cover versions of songs personal to Ivo.
Watts-Russell had founded 4AD in 1980, and the label quickly established itself as one of the key labels in the British post-punk movement. One of the label's earliest signings was Modern English. In 1983, Watts-Russell suggested that the band re-record two of their earliest songs, "Sixteen Days" and "Gathering Dust," as a medley. At the time, the band was closing their sets with this medley, and Watts-Russell felt it was strong enough to warrant a re-recording. When the band rebuffed the idea, Watts-Russell decided to assemble a group of musicians to record the medley: Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins; Gordon Sharp of Cindytalk; and a few members of Modern English. An EP, Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust, resulted from these sessions.
Recorded as a B-side for the EP was a cover of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren", performed by Fraser and Guthrie alone. Pleased with results, Watts-Russell decided to make this the A-side of the 7" single version of the EP, and the song quickly became an underground hit, leading Watts-Russell to pursue recording a full album under the This Mortal Coil moniker.
It'll End in Tears helped crystallize 4AD's emerging signature sound, and helped win a wider audience for their stable of artists.
Fryer and Watts-Russell put together a follow-up album, a sprawling and more varied collection, Filigree & Shadow covered songs by Tim Buckley, Colin Newman, Talking Heads, Pearls Before Swine, Gene Clark, Judy Collins, and Van Morrison in between the original compositions. The Cocteau Twins' Simon Raymonde was still a significant presence, and string player/arranger Martin McCarrick took a bigger role this time around; Steven Young and Mark Cox both returned, and members of Dif Juz were also prominent.
Much of the same core cast -- Watts-Russell, Fryer, McCarrick, Appleton, Limerick, and the Rutkowskis -- was on hand for the third and final This Mortal Coil album, the tighter Blood, issued in 1991. Covers this time out included two by Big Star's Chris Bell, Rain Parade, Spirit, Syd Barrett, and Rodney Crowell, among others. Watts-Russell had announced that he would retire the This Mortal Coil name following Blood, and remained true to his word. In 1993, he issued a limited-edition CD box set, 1983-1991, which packaged all three of the group's albums, plus a bonus disc featuring original versions of many of their covers. In 1998, Watts-Russell formed a similar but somewhat sparser project dubbed the Hope Blister.
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
1984's It'll End in Tears was a surprisingly influential album in many circles, key in the reawakening of interest in artists like Alex Chilton and the late Tim Buckley by a younger generation of listeners. When released in late 1984, the album reached #38 on the UK Albums Chart. It features many of the artists on the 4AD roster at the time of issue, including Dead Can Dance, as well as key post-punk figure Howard Devoto, who sang "Holocaust", one of two covers of songs from the Third/Sister Lovers album by Big Star to appear on the album. The other Alex Chilton-penned track, the album opener "Kangaroo", was released as a single to promote the album. The simple but ravishing version of Buckley's "Song to the Siren" by Cocteau Twins Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie has since been used several times in commercials and films. Their version of Buckley's haunting original showed continued popularity in alternative record shops as it spent almost 2 years on the UK Indie Chart.
The album mark 4AD's definitive break from its origins as an artsy post-punk imprint to the development of "the 4AD sound," a heavily reverbed wash of treated guitars and atmospheric keyboards with vocals treated as another instrument in an amorphous wash of sound.
This Mortal Coil - It'll End In Tears + Gathering Dust EP ( 84 flac 351mb)
01 Kangaroo 3:31
02 Song To The Siren 3:30
03 Holocaust 3:38
04 Fyt 4:24
05 Fond Affections 3:51
06 The Last Ray 4:08
07 Another Day 2:54
08 Waves Become Wings 4:26
09 Barramundi 3:56
10 Dreams Made Flesh 3:48
11 Not Me 3:44
12 A Single Wish 2:27
13 Sixteen Days - Gathering Dust 9:00
14 Song To The Siren 3:30
15 Sixteen Days (Reprise) 4:11
xxxxx
Filigree and Shadow is the second in a line of three This Mortal Coil releases, and is considered by many to be the best. The great thing about Filigree and Shadow is how fresh it still sounds. It must have sounded like the proverbial sore thumb of the mid-1980s. It's heavy on effects and synthesizers, some tracks merely exist to establish mood and bridge gaps, and the overall mood is somber.
Filigree and Shadow distills the This Mortal Coil concept somewhat. There's more of a core group now, featuring Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins, producer John Fryer, arranger Martin McCarrick, and Watts-Russell himself, backing a variety of mostly female singers. The double album is nearly half instrumentals most of which are pleasant enough but not particularly memorable. The vocal tracks, however, continue the debut's trend of intriguing versions of fascinatingly obscure covers. The album peaked at number two in the UK Independent Music chart, spending 16 weeks in total on the chart.
This Mortal Coil – Filigree and Shadow (86 flac 415mb)
01 Velvet Belly 1:20
02 The Jeweller 3:16
03 Ivy And Neet 4:49
04 Meniscus 2:28
05 Tears 0:22
06 Tarantula 4:59
07 My Father 5:58
08 Come Here My Love 3:42
09 At First, And Then 1:59
10 Strength Of Strings 4:41
11 Morning Glory 2:57
12 Inch-Blue 1:08
13 I Want To Live 4:05
14 Mama K (1) 0:53
15 Filigree & Shadow 1:20
16 Firebrothers 3:54
17 Thaïs (1) 1:09
18 I Must Have Been Blind 3:30
19 A Heart Of Glass 3:46
20 Alone 4:14
21 Mama K (2) 0:34
22 The Horizon Bleeds And Sucks Its Thumb 2:53
23 Drugs 3:10
24 Red Rain 3:53
25 Thaïs (2) 3:13
xxxxx
The third and final album by This Mortal Coil, 1991's Blood is neither as unfocused as Filigree & Shadow or as conceptually pure as It'll End in Tears, but it's a solidly enjoyable set. Once again, nearly half the tracks are instrumentals (or tracks with minimal and often wordless female vocals) written by Ivo Watts-Russell and John Fryer, but this batch of tunes holds together much better than the much more amorphous originals on Filigree & Shadow; lengthy atmospheric explorations like "Dreams Are Like Water" sound composed and thoughtful rather than merely pretty. And as always, the covers are brilliantly chosen. The twin highlights are two songs written by Big Star's Chris Bell; "I Am the Cosmos" and a delicate acoustic version of "You and Your Sister" with wispy, unsure vocals by Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly that ranks with the first album's reinterpretation of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" as one of the group's masterpieces and managed to enter the dutch single charts. Other gems include a near-symphonic reading of Spirit's "Nature's Way" and a version of Syd Barrett's "Late Night" that strips the song down to not much more than Caroline Crawley's voice and a low-frequency hum.
This Mortal Coil – Blood ( 91 flac 408mb)
01 The Lacemaker 4:06
02 Mr. Somewhere 2:52
03 Andialu 3:03
04 With Tomorrow 2:40
05 Loose Joints 2:26
06 You And Your Sister 3:14
07 Nature's Way 3:19
08 I Come And Stand At Every Door 3:54
09 Bitter 6:25
10 Baby Ray Baby 2:13
11 Several Times 3:12
12 The Lacemaker II 1:24
13 Late Night 3:03
14 Ruddy And Wretched 3:15
15 Help Me Lift You Up 5:05
16 Carolyn's Song 3:47
17 D.D. And E. 0:47
18 'Til I Gain Control Again 4:43
19 Dreams Are Like Water 8:37
20 I Am The Cosmos 4:05
21 (Nothing But) Blood 4:04
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
7 comments:
welcome back mate :) As I'm not that fond of your Illuminatus series that was on autopilot, I couldn't wait till you got back and started sharing some good music.
Blood is the only one I don't have. I seem to remember it getting poorer reviews at the time. Please reup.
Andre
Thank you so much for re-upping these. I assume they are from the 2011 remastered box set to which you added the Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust EP as bonus tracks to cd1 It'll End In Tears. Wonderful share! Thank you again!
Rho, when you spoke about the original EP Sixteen Days and the members who were credited on the release, you mentioned Gordon Sharp of Cindytalk. You don't perhaps by chance have any of Gordon's work as Cindytalk, or indeed his early Edinburgh punk band The Freeze? I have rough mp3's of the Freeze's two 7" releases and Cindytalk's debut LP Camouflage Heart. Anything more would be fantastic.
thanks
Hello Andie, there will be a Cindytalk post in the future
Thanks Rho, looking forward to it.
Any chance of a re-up on the 'This Mortal Coil' albums? Thanks!
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