Disco de Cocteau Twins: “Lullabies to Violaine Vol. 1 [Digipak]”

Don't get me wrong. I am not critiquing the quality of the songs themselves. I like Cocteau Twins and there are some outstanding track selections on this CD. However, the mastering of the songs on this CD is HORRIBLE!! All the songs are smashed and compressed with digital clipping so that there are no dynamics and the result is just a painful wall of noise. Outraged at how the Cocteau Twins catalog was handled for this CD, I immediately looked up in the CD booklet who the idiot was that mastered this CD, and ironically it turned out to be Robin Guthrie himself. =/ Apparently sometimes musicians shouldn't tamper with mixing consoles if they don't know what the heck they're doing.

Play this CD on a proper stereo and you'll hear what I'm talking about. All the sonic textures that make up the Cocteau Twins sound are just destroyed by severe digital clipping and compression. Open up the CD tracks in any audio editing program and look at the waveforms. You won't believe your eyes. And to add insult to injury, it looks like after Robin cranked up the amplitude on these tracks and clipped the signals, he then decreased the amplitude and added some headroom. Hard evidence that he didn't know what the hell he was doing and simply took control of the mastering responsibilities for this CD out of vanity rather than technical ability.

All I can say is, there are great tracks on this CD, but look elsewhere for better sounding versions of them.

I agree with another reviewer who wrote that Cocteau Twins' older songs are more primitive and less accessible. But is this a bad thing? While I also enjoy their post-"Four Calendar Café" sound, some of the old songs are much stronger than the 1990s bunch. Close your eyes and listen to "Sugar Hiccup", "Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops" and my personal favorite "Aikea-Guinea" (all in nice, yet not that different, alternate versions), to name a few - those primitive drums have never sound so good, Raymonde's bass is an artwork in itself, Guthrie's guitar provides the ethereal central qualities so characteristic of Cocteau's music, and the structure development of these songs are as subtle as they are powerful. All this, of course, not to mention Fraser's airy, sometimes slightly eerie vocals. These 1983-85 tracks are as poignant as contemporary music can be and the examples I mentioned above provide enough reasons for buying this collection.

I received all items intact and unspoiled. Package seemed brand new, and all songs playable. No damages or skips to disc

I only recently found out that this product existed after having visited the Cocteau Twins website. Both Volumes 1 and 2 are 2-CD sets. Much of the Cocteau Twins output was orginally done in the form of EPs having 4 songs per EP. This is a great way of getting to hear an hours worth of music on each CD without having to constantly change the CD your listening to (if you were listening to one of the original CD-EPs, let's say...) It's also a great collection of the many EPs they've put out, B-sides and remixes. When I first bought the set, I didn't know that there were alternate versions and remixes, so that's a bonus.

Many of the songs on this collection are my favorite music - ever. I actually own the 10 disc box set that has all the same songs that came out years ago. Seems now they've decided that preserving the original EP's wasn't as important as packaging it to be more affordable. Good move. I say.

Just listen to the clips and decide for yourself.