COCTEAU TWINS

Head over Heels, Cocteau Twins' second album, arrives here as an original Japanese vinyl promo pressing of a genuinely pivotal record. Recorded at Palladium Studios, Edinburgh after founding bassist Will Heggie left mid-1983, this is the first album written and recorded by Robin Guthrie and Elizabeth Fraser alone as a duo — Guthrie later described the songwriting as almost entirely unplanned, the tracks simply "coming together very naturally."

The album's drenched, reverb-soaked production has become the stuff of legend — one reviewer speculated it sounds as though an engineer accidentally fed only the reverb channel to the master tape, though the band clearly intended listeners to get lost in it. That wall of guitar and voice became a hugely influential template for the entire ethereal wave and shoegaze movements that followed.

On original release, Head over Heels became 4AD's first-ever UK Independent Chart #1, and placed two tracks in John Peel's 1983 Festive Fifty — "Musette and Drums" at #5, "Sugar Hiccup" at #14. This Japanese pressing offers the meticulous mastering and pressing quality the format is renowned for, making it a genuine essential for any serious Cocteau Twins or early 4AD collection.

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