“Soundscapes, Gender and Technology in the Music of the Cocteau Twins”

Chris McDonald, York University

IASPM Canada, 2004

Few rock groups in the 1980s and 1990s aroused as many flowery adjectives and vivid descriptions from music journalists as the British band known as the Cocteau Twins. Since their first album in 1982, the band’s musical textures, which merge florid female vocals with layers of electronically processed guitars, have been met with great critical interest and journalistic prolixity. At least part of the Cocteau Twins’ attraction for critics has been their unusual approach to songwriting: their vocalist, Elizabeth Fraser, spent much of the 1980s singing lyrics made almost entirely of vocables, creating songs whose significations were derived solely from sound, and not language. But judging from kind of journalistic writing which has surrounded the Cocteau Twins throughout their career, the timbrally rich and sometimes ambient use of backing instruments also plays a considerable role in the interpretation of the band’s music. With their non-lexical vocals and the group’s love of studio gadgetry and electronic processing of instruments, the Cocteau Twins’ music seems to invite flights of interpretive fancy from many critics. What concerns me today are the patterns of description and interpretation which have been made of Cocteau Twins’ sound, and what these reveal about social meaning and aesthetics with respect to a musical sound heavily mediated by the recording studio and electronic sound technology. In particular, through their reception in the press, I want to explore the what informs both the gendering and “placing” of the highly technologized sounds of the Cocteau Twins, for this reveals some interesting paradoxes.

I will begin with some background information on the group. The Cocteau Twins were formed in 1982. Their emergence in Britain in the early 1980s coincided with the rise of a number of post-punk British acts, including the Cure, Siousxie and the Banshees and Joy Division/New Order, and the band was often linked to British post-punk rock, even though their music was considerably gentler and more atmospheric than most of their peers. The Cocteau Twins are often credited with forging a subgenre of 1980s and 1990s alternative rock called “dream pop,” a style of mostly guitar-based music which is often described as “ethereal” or “atmospheric,” and which to some degree brings together the aesthetics of rock and “new age” music. Other artists who became associated with the style of dream pop, and with the influence of the Cocteau Twins, included Lush, the Sundays, Slowdive, This Mortal Coil, and most famously, the Cranberries. While all of these bands shared with the Cocteaus a propensity for female vocals placed amid “atmospheric” guitar textures, none attempted to imitate the non-lexical lyrics or degree of studio manipulation of guitar timbre and sonority which characterized the Cocteau Twins.

To provide a sonic frame of reference to the discussion which will follow, I will present two brief examples to give a sense of the Cocteau Twins’ sound. The first piece, “Feet-Like Fins,” features the voice accompanied by an electric guitar with a very fast and sustained echo or delay effect, which allows the guitarist to produce a buzzing, shimmering texture with each chord strum. The echo is also rapidly stereo-panned back and forth from speaker to speaker to create a wave-like motion to the sound. A cymbal played with mallets is present as well, and is treated heavily with flanging. [play] The second example is a piece called “Oomingmak.” Here, there are at least three layered guitars, one of which plays arpeggios with a very steely, sharp tone. It is treated with echo, with the repeats timed to synchronize with the arpeggiation, blurring the sense of which note is played and which is the echo. A second guitar plays with a mellower, more ambient tone, playing quick, repeated figures. A third guitar plays volume swells in the background, a sonority fading in and out of the texture in an undulating gesture. [play]

Though the Cocteau Twins’ wordless vocals and highly studio-doctored sounds could conceivably be viewed as gesturing towards a kind of musical abstraction, critics have rarely viewed the band this way. On the one hand, the band’s sound is often interpreted as symbolizing environments – seascapes, open spaces, winter scenes – and on the other hand, the vocal material is sometimes interpreted as an aural re-creation of the mother-child relationship. Examples of such interpretations abound. Rachel Felder frequently deploys aerial and aquatic metaphors when describing the vocal and guitar textures of the group; for example, she describes them “soar[ing] and peak[ing] like a seagull flying over a body of water” (1993: 130). Simon Reynolds, writing for Melody Maker, calls the Cocteaus’ music “oceanic rock,” which he describes as music “attracted to expanses (the sea, the sky, the desert, the tundra) in which self-consciousness evaporates as the borders of the self dissolve” (1990: 127). For Reynolds and Joy Press, the band’s music contains symbolic elements that are “connotative of the lost maternal body” (Reynolds and Press 1995: 286); they describe Fraser’s singing as “a garbled phoneme soup...that’s mostly indecipherable but always sounds rich in wholly private non-verbalisable meaning...Fraser plays both infant and mother, duetting with herself in an endless serenade” (Reynolds and Press 1995: 286). Regarding the instrumental sound Reynolds and Press note, “the Cocteau Twins recreate in sound this self-suckling paradise. Their music plays up all the chromatic, synaesthetic elements that distinguish...the ‘perfumed fog’ tradition from Hendrix...to Brian Eno to My Bloody Valentine: lustrous guitar textures (effects laden and heavily studio-processed), cascades of gauzy sound that seem to swathe the listener like atomised droplets of fragrance. Iridescence and deliquescence are the Cocteaus’ watchwords...[their] music transports us back to the gilded realm of the infant-mother dyad, where all the baby can perceive is a dazzling chaos of sensory stimuli” (1995: 286-87). Reynolds invokes Helene Cixous’s concept of “feminine writing” as an analogue for what the band achieves sonically, providing “access to a time before time, a pre-Oedipal ‘space’ before the infant even has a concept of spatiality” (Reynolds 1990: 130). A similar interpretation is given by Dave Toop, who finds in the Cocteau Twins’ sound a metaphor for immersion in water: he states, “submersion into deep and mysterious pools represent an intensely romantic desire for dispersion into nature, the unconscious, the womb, the chaotic stuff of which life is made” (1994: 270). Toop finds in such music evidence of “a nostalgia, or a yearning, to float free in a liquid world of non-linear time heightened sense perceptions and infinitely subtle communications, as opposed to the everyday world of divided time, sequential language and objectification” (1994: 273). What arises out of these descriptions is a sense of the group’s sound as symbolic of the maternal, the womb, water and aquatic spaces, timelessness and an idealized image of the natural environment. These responses lead into a number of issues surrounding the reception of the Cocteau Twins sound, including gender, the natural/artificial dyad and the aesthetics of the soundscape, each of which I will discuss in turn.

The relationship between gender, studio technology and the electric guitar is the first area in which the Cocteau Twins’ critical reception becomes interesting. In the first place, little gender distinction is made between Fraser’s clearly ‘female’ vocals and the instrumental sounds in which they are set; the whole sound is said to evoke the maternal, including both the wordless vocals and ambient guitar sounds which seem to immerse the listener. The very metaphor of an electric guitar which provides a sound into which one may be “immersed” is a marked departure from the more common metaphor for the instrument in rock, as a phallus which penetrates. The electronic manipulation of the guitar sound, which very frequently includes echo or delay, and various phase-shifting effects which give greater dimension to the sound, also add to the sense of the sound as both immersive and submersive. Dave Toop, describing the Cocteau Twins, insists that “Immersion is one of the key words...bass is immersive, echoes are immersive, noise is immersive” (1994: 273). This notion of “immersive” sound could be described in gendered terms using soundscape researcher Joachim-Ernst Berendt’s concept of “female” and “male” soundscape ideals. For Berendt, the masculine sound ideal aims for clarity and focus, a high degree of definition and stratification, leading to a concept of sound which could be described as “logocentric.” The feminine soundscape emphasizes sounds that permit the listener “to stand inside them,” and aims more for blur, ambiguity, diffusion, blend, and a sense of “spaciousness” (1991: 129). Composer R. Murray Schafer proposes a similar continuum, suggesting that, for example, much classical music aims more for an aesthetic of clarity and penetrative focus, while some popular music creates a sound which “massages and floods” the listener in a more immersive aesthetic (1994: 117). The ambient guitar sounds of the Cocteau Twins seem to enact the kind of “feminine” sound ideal that Berendt and Schafer propose.

This interpretation of the Cocteau Twins’ guitar textures contrasts many of the normative cultural associations regarding gender, the electric guitar and sound technology. Rosalind Gill and Keith Grint, in their anthology on gender and technology, note the staying power which popular assumptions about gender and technology have had, both within the academy and without. They note that masculinity remains central to definitions of technology, while technical competence remains a part of masculine gender identity (Gill and Grint 1995: 8). The interpretations of the Cocteau Twins music, by Reynolds, Toop and others, though they always acknowledge the “high-tech” aspects of the construction of their musical sound, nevertheless describe the sound and meaning of the band’s music in gendered terms which stress the feminine.

While this may work with respect to the sound, it must be admitted that within the Cocteau Twins, the gender roles of the band members seem fairly traditional and conservative for rock music. Elizabeth Fraser provides the vocals while her two male colleagues, Robin Guthrie and bassist/keyboardist Simon Raymonde provide the instrumental components. The precise roles of the band members in terms of their work in the recording studio itself is not made completely clear in interviews, but Robin Guthrie is often the most vocal member in explaining what gear was used on their albums and how it was operated. The socially constructed feminine role of “singer” and masculine roles of “instrumentalist” and “engineer” remain entrenched in the band’s division of labour. If anything is interesting about the Cocteau Twins’ use of technology, it is that the electric guitars, loaded as they are with echo, reverb and phase-shifting effects, signify as a feminine “actor” within the musical texture. This reflects, perhaps, Gill and Grint’s assertion that the perception of the gender in technology is not fixed, and is not “in” the machine; rather, “it is us who construct [its] form... The politics and values of technology...result from the gaze of the human; they do not lie in the gauze of the machine” (Gill and Grint 1995: 70-71).

The second area where the Cocteau Twins’ critical reception reveals interesting paradoxes around their use of technology is the description of the band’s sound through metaphors evoking nature. Both Toop and Reynolds frequently refer to terms such as “oceanic” to describe the band’s sound; Reynolds describes the Cocteau Twins’ music as evoking “[an attraction] to expanses – the sea, the sky, the desert, the tundra” (1990: 127). Toop discusses how the Cocteaus and other dream pop artists transport him to a imaginary world of “oceans and islands.” (1994: 270). Rachel Felder likens the band’s musical textures to “a kite being blown around in the sky on a windy day” and other aerial metaphors (1993: 136). Tropes describing the band’s music through “natural environment” metaphors may be seen as linked to descriptions of the band’s sound as feminine, since the “nature” has been socially constructed as the feminine “other” to human civilization. The question that arises is why, when all of these writers individually acknowledge the Cocteau Twins’ use of the studio to electronically alter the sound of the electric guitars, are links made consistently to imagery from the natural environment?

A large part of this tendency lies in the fact that the Cocteau Twins, and dream pop at large, draws heavily on the established aesthetics of “new age” music. By the time that the Cocteau Twins became active in the early 1980s, “new age” recordings which brought together sounds from nature, drones, and rich, sustained sounds which produce timbral “washes” had already been produced and marketed as music for meditation, and as sounds which evoke nature and spirituality. Richard Garneau describes the stylistic norms which developed for “new age” music: “Although non-lexical vocalizations are sometimes present, new age music is predominantly instrumental. In general, rhythm is loosely organized and harmony is static and non-functional. Sonority has been emphasized in new age music rather than pitch information or form. In general, the music is intended to provide a sonic ‘environment’ or ‘context’ rather than to present a musical dialectic” (Garneau 1987: 58). Many of these features can be seen in the Cocteau Twins, though their use is translated into a rock context. Although sounds recorded from nature, such as the ocean, bird sounds, etc., are never present in the band’s music, the non-lexical vocalizations, low-tension chord progressions and emphasis on timbre or sonority certainly overlap with “new age” aesthetics. The genre of “ambient” music, pioneered in part by Brian Eno, also provides a body of music and aesthetic ideas about sound which overlap with the music which the Cocteau Twins produce. Ambient music, as sound compositions designed to suit a space, enhance its acoustical properties, and be appropriate to the atmosphere of a space, is embedded in the construction of social ideas about what a particular place or space “is.” Echo and reverb are associated with openness, depth and distance; thus, when a group like the Cocteaus use echo and reverb, imagery of expansive landscapes becomes likely interpretive language when writers begin describing it. In short, terms and concepts used by critics to describe ambient and new age musics are readily available for use when describing the Cocteau Twins’ music.

However, I want to suggest that writing which describes the band’s music with “new age” or “ambient” terminology reveals something more about the interpretive moves being made regarding the meaning of the Cocteau Twins’ construction of their sound. Reynolds, Toop, Felder and others come close to treating the band’s music as “soundscape compositions” rather than as rock songs. The premise of soundscapes and soundscape composition was defined most authoritatively by the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer as “a sonic environment, and may refer to [sounds in] an actual environments or to abstract constructions such as musical compositions...particularly when considered as an environment” (1994: 274-275). Listening to the Cocteau Twins’ music as a soundscape or sound environment means privileging some elements of the music and effacing others. For example, Rachel Felder goes quite far in suggesting that the Cocteau Twins’ music foregrounds instrumental timbre and vocal material, and that their song structures are amorphous, quasi-improvisational and difficult to discern (1993:132-133). In point of fact, this is not correct – most of the group’s songs fall into typical verse-chorus structures or conventional AABA forms – but Felder’s response is suggestive of the degree to which the band’s music functions as soundscape environment, rather than as rock song, for her.

This “natural environment” trope which has been used frequently to describe the band’s music stands in contrast to the blatantly electronically-processed character of their work. All of the commentators discussed so far acknowledge, at some point, the “obviousness” of the role of electronic effects and recording technology in the production of the Cocteau Twins’ music, and praise for their skill with these media is frequent. Indeed, the band is “studio-bound” to a considerable degree, layering multiple guitar and vocal lines upon each other (and therefore requiring extra musicians to be hired for live performance); the band has rarely employed actual drummers and has preferred to use drum machines and synthesized percussion. Even when acoustic guitars are used on the band’s records, they are usually processed with the kinds of echo and phase-shifting effects that the band applies to the electric guitars. Despite all of this, the music is rarely described in the press as signifying “artificiality,” or anything like modernity or futurism. As we have seen, the descriptions and metaphors often point the other way, towards natural environments, or a return to some kind of “elemental” state such as infancy or being in the womb.

In terms of signifiers, there is clearly more than the presence of sound technology impacting the interpretations made in journalistic discourse. The sound of Liz Fraser’s voice, the vocable-based lyrics, the ambient sounds and blurred timbres which arouse references to new age music – all of these play a role in how the Cocteau Twins’ music is interpreted. Some of the song titles themselves suggest interpretive trajectories. For example, the songs “Lazy Calm,” “How to Bring a Blush to the Snow,” and “Feet-like Fins” suggest ambient mood, landscape, or seascape; the song titles from the album Blue Bell Knoll such as “For Phoebe Still a Baby” and “Suckling the Mender” present the themes of infancy and motherhood to the listener. The oft-cited prominence of technology in the Cocteau Twins’ sound is subsumed within these other contextual factors, leading the electric guitar textures to become perceived as “expansive” and “oceanic” habitats, or as warm, liquid environments in which the voice and other signifiers interact.

Though the Cocteau Twins provide a particularly good example of the sophisticated use of sound technology in creating soundscapes which are interpreted as elemental or environmental, they should be understood as intersecting with some broader ideas about the aesthetics of electronically produced and amplified sound. R. Murray Schafer, for example, argues that some of the ways in which electronic sound technology is used can facilitate an imaginary link between modernity and a distant elemental past. He states, “we can look back [a great distance and imagine] a common origin. Where is the dark and fluid space from which such listening experiences spring? It is the ocean-womb of our first ancestors: the exaggerated echo and feedback of modern electronic and popular music re-create for us the echoing vaults, the dark depths of the ocean” (1994: 118).

Through some critical responses to the Cocteau Twins and an examination of the meanings with which their uses of sound technology are invested, we have seen evidence that the signification of sound technologies is quite open in terms of its gendering and placing. Far from signifying as a manifestation of masculinist rock technoculture, the Cocteau Twins’ use of the studio and sound technology seems to point towards maternal imagery, soundscapes of nature and the environment, and seems to evoke elemental states such as infancy. This idea of returning to nature or returning to a pre-lingual, perhaps pre-birth consciousness through the medium of a high-technology soundscape is prominent in the critical writing discussed. There is some question as to what is at stake in linking sounds like the Cocteau Twins’ to primordial or natural imagery. Such critical descriptions certainly argue for a sense of “depth” to the music and the critics’ experiences of it. Rather than being just studio “discoveries” made with the latest sound gear, the Cocteau Twins’ music is held up as facilitating a kind of human experience that is at once universal and ancient. This serves to imbue the music with a sort of authenticity, by placing it in a context in which it appears symbolic of nature and human “roots.” Electronic sound technology, such as that used by the Cocteau Twins, thus becomes subsumed by the authenticating discourses of rock criticism, becoming linked as much to the past as to the future, and to the natural world as much as to the industrial world.

References

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Cocteau Twins. 1988. Blue Bell Knoll. 4AD 836 484-2.

Felder, Rachel. 1993. Manic Pop Thrill. Hopewell: Ecco.

Garneau, Richard. 1987. “Ritual and Symbolism in New Age Music,” Pacific Review of

Ethnomusicology 4, pp. 57-73.

Gill, Rosalind and Grint, Keith. 1995. The Gender-Technology Relation: Contemporary

Theory & Research. London: Taylor & Francis.

Reynolds, Simon. 1990. Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock. London: Serpent’s Tail.

Reynolds, Simon and Press, Joy. 1995. The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion & Rock ’n’ Roll.

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Schafer, R. Murray. 1994. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the

World. Rochester: Destiny Books.

Toop, David. 1995. Oceans of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary World.

London: Serpent’s Tail.