Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Cocteau Twins/Faye Wong - rare collaboration - "The Amusement Park"

The Cocteau Twins/Faye Wong - rare collaboration - The Amusement Park

Is this possibly the most obscure Cocteau Twins track ever? Faye Wong (王菲Wang Fei) (b. 1969) is a Chinese singer who collaborated with the Cocteau Twins in the 1990s. In 1996 she released the album "Fu Zao" (浮躁), usually translated as "Restless" or "Impatience". The Cocteau Twins wrote two original songs for, "Fracture" (分裂)(which was later "covered" by Cocteau Twins as "Tranquil Eye") and "Repressing Happiness" (掃興) (later covered by Cocteau Twins as "Touch Upon Touch"). Both of these are available elsewhere on Youtube, and are often described as "Chinese versions". For the Cocteau Twins purist who has yet to hear any decent cover of their work, Faye Wong is perhaps the only singer who can come close to reimagining the unique sound of Elizabeth Fraser's wonderful vocals. It certainly helps that she has worked so closely with Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde. Before working with them on "Fu Zao" she had covered their work ("Bluebeard", retitled "Random Thinki! ng", and "Know Who You are at Every Age" as "Know Oneself And Each Other"), and had even recorded vocals for a special duet version of "Serpentskirt" on the Asian release of the group's 1996 album, "Milk And Kisses". In 1997 she released the eponymous "Faye Wong" album for EMI (王菲). Guthrie and Raymonde of wrote two original compositions for the album, but only one, "The Amusement Park" (娛樂場), was used. The albumn also included an acoustic cover of the Cocteau Twins' "Rilkean Heart", renamed "Nostalgia ...





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