The Cocteau Twins’ fifth and sixth albums, Blue Bell Knoll, and Heaven or Las Vegas, which featured singles “Carolyn’s Fingers” and “Iceblink Luck”, originally released in 1988 and 1990, are reissued today by the 4AD label. The LP’s are on heavyweight black vinyl cut from brand-new HD 96/24 masters. This Includes MP3 downloads.
Simon Raymonde recently had this to say about the reissues:
[pullquote]“They can just go ahead and do that. That’s the annoying thing about that period – we signed a two or three page contract back in the early 80s both for publishing and recording that gives them rights to everything forever, forever, forever. We didn’t even have a lawyer. I get on fine with Martin Mills, he’s an empire builder, he’s a very shrewd, smart businessman, but we don’t have a particularly solid relationship as far as the old back catalogue goes because I think our records recouped pretty much the day they came out. With most bands nowadays you’d be lucky to recoup in 10 years. We recouped the day we released a record and I think when you’re 30 years down the line and you look back and you go, ‘these guys have done pretty well for us, 4AD might not well exist if it hadn’t been for that band.’ And I’m not blowing that out of proportion, that is fact. If it were me I’d go, ‘have your stuff now, we’ve made enough money out of it.’ Or if it wasn’t that, I’d offer to give it back in five years or give the digital rights or something like a golden handshake. Come on Martin!”[/pullquote]-via london.lecool.com