Cocteau Twins "Lorelei"

“Lorelei” (mp3) from the Cocteau Twins’ 1984 album Treasure (the early highpoint and still second-best record, after, of course, Heaven or Las Vegas), is the second part of the remarkable one-two that opens the album, starting with the lovely “Ivo.” “Lorelei,” if my sources are correct, was actually recorded in a castle made of ice in medieval Scotland and a fairy programmed the drum machine, which was made of blown glass. A sustained gossamer hum opens the song, punctuated sporadically by the synthetic peal of a bell. Then WHOA the drum machine kicks in like DJ Shadow’s grandfather was up in this piece (or down the hall in another room, to be more specific), KICKSNAREKICKKICKSNARE, providing muted electronic and vaguely militaristic counterpoint to Elisabeth Fraser’s coldly attractive voice that echoes throughout everything in the world ever. She chants ascending three, four and five-syllable mantras about god-knows-what, the content meaning so much less than how it sounds. The whole thing is a dense, wonderous melange of longs and shorts: the never-ending echoey reverb underscoring Fraser’s clipped intonations and the thudding, chilly rhythm.