COCTEAU TWINS

Garlands is where the Cocteau Twins story truly begins — their debut album, released 10 July 1982 through 4AD, and the only record they ever made with original bassist Will Heggie. The band itself formed just three years earlier in Grangemouth, Scotland, after Robin Guthrie and Heggie spotted Elizabeth Fraser dancing at a local disco and asked her to join them — a chance encounter that shaped the entire trajectory of one of the era's most influential groups.

Recorded at Blackwing Studios in London and produced with Ivo Watts-Russell, Garlands drew immediate attention from BBC Radio 1's John Peel, who championed the band from their very first session that June — before the album had even been released. On release, it climbed into the Top 5 of the UK Independent Albums Chart, a remarkable debut for a band still finding its sound: raw, gothic-tinged post-punk, a world away from the ethereal wash they'd become known for just a year or two later.

This original Japanese vinyl pressing captures the band at their rawest and most primal — critics of the time reached for words like "haunting," "spellbound" and "diaphanous" trying to describe it. A genuinely essential piece of 4AD and post-punk history for any serious Cocteau Twins collector, and the true starting point of one of dream pop's most singular catalogues.

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