On Wednesday 14th December 2022 at 8pm GMT our Album of The Month Club will feature one of the most significant Cocteau Twins’ albums Blue Bell Knoll. Often regarded by the band as their first real album, Blue Bell Knoll was released after a two year hiatus emerging with a denser, more sophisticated sound.
The late eighties and early nineties saw a whole wave of bands, including Lush, Slowdive, Ride and Chapterhouse, who undoubtedly took a musical cue from the Cocteau’s. Most likely so did Bristol acts like Massive Attack and Portishead, who drew on these principles to create their own unique brand of alternative hiphop. Fraser, Guthrie and Raymonde may have been inspired by acts like Siouxsie and The Banshees and musicians like Brian Eno, but in turn their own distinctive influence is still heard in the heartbreaking and lovelorn music of today.
In advance of the meeting, Colleen will send out a ‘Musical Lead-Up Playlist’ of 10 songs – music that will set the tone for the deep album listening featuring Cocteau Twins’ inspirations and other bands in their milieu at that time.
At the meeting, itself, Colleen tells the story behind the album for about 20 minutes and then we listen to the album in its entirety without interruption following our listening guidelines – phones off and no talking. To be clear, its up to you to source whichever copy of the album you can get your hands on – streaming online, CD, vinyl – whatever it is. We don’t broadcast the album over Zoom as you won’t have a great listening experience.
After the album finishes we reconvene and have a discussion about the album and our listening experience.
Patreon Members and higher tiers can attend the Album Club. You can subscribe here and don’t forget you can unsubscribe at any time.
We hope you can join us and thanks for listening!
Our events really resonate with people and one of our newest members sent this testimonial after her first Album Club last month:
“I wanted to thank you for the warm welcome and the knowledge there are friendly like minded people across the world out there and you brought us all together through a shared love of music. That is awesome. I have been mostly alone through the pandemic (am single, live alone – and yes do have the requisite cats to complete the stereotype!😂) My 25 + year career has been in events, currently in the West End of London so in my “normal” life I would be out at least 3/4 times a week. That has all obviously completely stopped for me and it has been a somewhat of a struggle mentally, music has kept me sane and Sunday’s event really helped my sanity. I truly hope to meet you in real life at some point to say thank you in person and look forward to engaging in more events.” – Angela
