If it seems like there’s been a rush of new music from former Cocteaus guitarist Robin Guthrie… well it’s because there has been. Yesterday, to coincide with his 60th birthday, Guthrie released the Springtime EP – a set of four gossamer guitar instrumentals. This follows last year’s relative deluge of material, starting with the Mockingbird Love EP in October, the Pearldiving full-length in November, and another EP – Riviera – in December. This, in addition to releasing a handful of one-offs that he called “orphans” via his Bandcamp.
As for the why of it, in a recent interview with The Yorkshire Post, he explained the passing last year of frequent collaborator Harold Budd was something of an eye-opener:
The loss last December of the American ambient pianist Harold Budd, his longtime friend and collaborator, initially left him “on the floor”, he says – “I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this any more’” – however at the turn of the new year, his feelings changed. “Just learning from Harold being there one minute and not the next, I thought, ‘I should just do this, what could go wrong?’ So I decided to clear out my studio and got rid of loads of things and just started afresh, writing and creating music.
Robin Guthrie: ‘I’m not resting on my laurels’ @ The Yorkshire Post
And he also said as much in a recent interview with Guitar World, which also contains some great insights into the gear he used to craft the early Cocteau Twins material and his current philosophy on equipment:
“When Harold died. It got me to thinking, ‘Fucking hell, I’m going to be 60 soon and I’ve got all this music I haven’t put out. I should probably get on with it.’ So earlier this year I completely rebuilt my studio. I got rid of my mixing desk, changed a lot of outboard, changed the guitars I was working with, some software. I pretty much changed every single thing in my signal path but it still sounds like me!”
Robin Guthrie: “I’m not playing a guitar – I’m playing the sound, I’m playing the pedals, I’m playing the reverb” @ Guitar World
I can’t remember the last time I read such an in-depth profile of Guthrie in a guitar magazine; probably not this century. A very enjoyable read…. perhaps while listening to his birthday EP?
Oh yeah, Happy New Year, everyone.
