Cocteau Twins

“FOR most of the time of the band, Liz [Fraser] and I were completely in our little bubble,” says Robin Guthrie. “We lived small, we didn’t do much without each other, we didn’t live in big apartments.” That hermetic atmosphere in part helped create the unique feel of the Cocteaus’ records, with Guthrie and Fraser, joined by Will Heggie and then Simon Raymonde, mostly recording in their own studios, improvising songs out of thin air as they battled to keep industry tentacles out of the control room.

“There wasn’t much career planning, we were just kids that listened to John Peel and wanted to be part of that,” says Guthrie, explaining why they signed to 4AD, currently celebrating its 40th birthday. “We wanted to be on the same label as The Birthday Party!”

Here, the guitarist and Raymonde recall the highs and lows of their 15-year journey, from the cavernous noise of debut, Garlands, and the ecstatic, life-affirming Heaven Or Las Vegas to their time on a major label that led to the end of the band. “I’ve always tried to do my best at everything,” explains Guthrie, lamenting the demands placed upon him in the ’90s. “I’m not able very easily to make a crap song, badly recorded. In my head, it had always been so fucking special…” TOMPINNOCK

GARLANDS

4AD, 1982

The noisy, post-punk debut, recorded at London’s Blackwing Studios

It was a very exciting time – here’s me, my girlfriend and my mate coming down to London on the bus from Scotland, young and naïve and innocent in many ways, to make a record. We were teenagers, I was 19 and Liz was 17, and our aim was to make a record – never a second or third record or anything. This album took six days to record