Actually The Moon And The Melodies is not a Cocteau Twins production proper. As the front sleeve indicates clearly, it is rather the result of a cooperation between all three members of the Cocteau Twins as individuals together with Harold Budd.

Closer inspection of the material though shows that although the four musicians involved may well have profited from the exchange of ideas, the resulting eight tracks can easily be split in two groups. Tracks one, four, five and eight all show a clear Cocteau Twins signature. On the other hand tracks two, three, six and seven show no obvious relation to the other four, and therefore one must assume they are mainly the product of Harold Budd.

The differences between the two styles are obvious. For a start Liz only sings on the four Cocteau-like tracks, whereas the other four are instrumental efforts. The sound of these four Harold Budd tracks is very different from the other four: it may be described by such terms as ectoplasmic or viscose, but none of these quite succeed in catching the true character. Suffice it to say that their sound would never be mistaken for that of a real Cocteau Twins song. Less obvious yet very distinctive is the fact that all four Cocteau-like tracks are in three time, and all the others in regular four time.

Thus it seems that although this album was created by four people they never quite succeeded in uniting their talents into a single creative style. Instead we are presented with four Cocteau tracks influenced by Harold Budd and vice versa. This gives the album a bit of a hybrid character. Not a bad effort, but one feels the release can not be marked a total success, if only because many listeners will find only half the compositions of real interest. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.