Dear Fans, Friends, and Followers,
Happy September.
There’s not a lot of Cocteau news, per se, as it’s been summer in the northern hemisphere and things get quiet. But I thought I couldn’t let September pass by without sending a note to you all. David Sylvian has a gorgeous little song called “September” that I love to listen to at this time of year. Perhaps you know it?
All the news, everywhere, seems to be getting worse and worse. I hope you’ve been able to find pockets of calm, respite, and encouragement during these turbulent times. Perhaps today’s newsletter will be a bright spot!
(Heads up that this email has a lot of images, and it will be cut off in Gmail. Just click at the bottom to read the full message or read it on Substack.)
What’s in a song title?
Back in the late 1990s or early 2000s, we had a feature on CocteauTwins.com that used Javascript to randomly generate “Cocteau Twins song titles.” Basically, we created an array of words taken from their song titles and the script would randomly splice them together in two- or three- word combinations every time you pressed a button. Occasionally you’d get something cool that actually looked like a Cocteau Twins song title, such as “Red Rococo Love” or “Tiny Snow Grenades.” It was cute, but it wasn’t “artificial intelligence.”
But what happens when we sort of do the reverse, and feed actual Cocteau Twins song titles to an A.I. that can then produce visual images based on them?
As it turns out, some rather fascinating stuff.
I signed up for a “Basic” Midjourney A.I. account (US$10/month) and plugged in dozens of Elizabeth’s song titles to see what happened. About 60 percent of the time, it’s marvelous. If you have a Discord account, I recommend you give it a try. If you can get a trial pass, you get 25 free images.
How it works is, you type in a text prompt, and the A.I. chews on it for about 30 to 60 seconds or so, gradually rendering an image with four quadrants. Each quadrant represents a visual interpretation of your prompt. You then can request that the system create variations on one or more of them, and/or that it upscale — or enhance — one or more of them, if you like where it’s going.
Sometimes the output looked almost like a 23 Envelope sleeve from the 4AD days. Other times, they’re either dull as dishwater or utterly magnificent.
I won’t lie: it’s pretty addictive. Hence my paid subscription for the chance to render 200 images every 30 days. (I doubt I’ll keep this up, but it is fun.)
The responses I received to these prompts illustrated a few things for me…
Midjourney, like all A.I., has biases that probably reflect the biases of its creators and its users (like me). Many of the images it produced had a very European quality to them, if not in the subjects or imagery, then in the style in which they were rendered. Even when they included human-like figures, they appeared European (though almost always from behind), and when the prompt inspired romantic images, the figures were almost always rendered as evidently male and female, albeit sometimes vaguely so. As always, beauty is subjective, and what I may have considered an apt — if abstract — rendering of a Cocteau Twins song title, others may find ridiculous.
At the same time, Elizabeth is Scots. English (or, Scots English, anyway) is her first language. Her titles used English words (nearly always), and their phrasing sometimes rang archaic, or had a somewhat Victorian or Edwardian aura. In the ‘80s, this frustrated the hell out of the band, who got tagged as Pre-Raphaelite sprites writing songs about dewdrops, spangles, flagstones, and Greek demigoddesses, using words like “hitherto” and “millimillenary,” but it really just came down to Elizabeth loving strange words and syntax, and using those words to craft consistent themes from record to record. The songs always held together sonically; she simply used her love of and facility with language to ensure they held together in other ways, too — something few other singers did well (Kate Bush comes to mind). No one can argue those song titles didn’t make listening to a Cocteau Twins record more special.
Anyway, the titles themselves often evoke images that are inherently European or, more specifically, British — “From the Flagstones” or “Sigh’s Smell of Farewell” or “The Spangle Maker,” and so on — and the output reflects the A.I. at least grasping that.
Other times, the output can be fascinatingly abstract, as with “The Tinderbox (of a heart),” “My Love Paramour,” and, perhaps not surprisingly, “Ooze Out and Away, Onehow.” Titles from Blue Bell Knoll generally produced mixed results, which makes sense given Elizabeth’s syntax and words on those titles were sometimes extreme, as with “The Itchy Glowbo Blow” or “Spooning Good Singing Gum.” The former of these turned out interestingly, as did “A Kissed Out Red Floatboat,” above. “Ella Megalast Burls Forever,” by contrast, turned out dull and pointless.
The titles from Treasure, being single-word names, produced mostly images of European-looking women in vaguely period dress, which wasn’t particularly compelling. But “Persephone” — a reference with a lot more supporting data — turned out well. I actually did a few variations on “Persephone” because the results were so good.
Some song titles produced dull or too-literal responses that didn’t appear likely to go anywhere, including “Cherry-Coloured Funk,” “Iceblink Luck,” “Eggs and Their Shells,” “Seekers Who Are Lovers,” “Feet-Like Fins,” or “How to Bring a Blush to the Snow.” “Cherry-Coloured Funk” generated random images of cherries. Ground-breaking. “Feet-Like Fins” was just incomprehensible.
Occasionally, I got results that were not only bizarre — “An Elan” seemed to evoke completely unrelated images — but sometimes downright ugly (“Carolyn’s Fingers,” alas).
It’s worth remembering, of course, that such A.I. engines produce better results with more input — the more descriptive the text, the more detailed and varied the output. Elizabeth’s titles are quite narrow and constrained, so to have got what I did is impressive (to me). If you’re someone who knows a lot about these types of systems, please post a comment with your thoughts and reflections.
Some titles inspire the A.I. to render landscapes, which aligns with many fans’ impressions of the music feeling spatial or geographic or architectural (indeed, the look of “From the Flagstones” echoes the “cathedrals of sound” critique from their earlier days). “An Elan,” “Aikea-Guinea,” “Blue Bell Knoll,” and “Victorialand” all produced landscapes, as did “Wax and Wane” and “Heaven or Las Vegas.” (Blue Bell Knoll is an actual physical place in the US state of Utah, but it looks nothing like this.)
In one surprising coincidence, “The Spangle Maker” produced images that clearly (to me, at least) suggest the photograph, “The Crystal Gazer (or The Magic Crystal)” by Gertrude Käsebier, which 23 Envelope featured on the sleeve of that EP. So it’s possible that the A.I. had previously made this visual connection with these words.
Many outputs are darker in their tone, with few exceptions. “In the Gold Dust Rush” is, as one might expect, quite golden, and “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” glimmers beautifully, but most of them have a darker hue.
The two above images were among the only ones to produce photo-realistic output; the rest all appear like drawings or paintings, with the possible exception of “Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires.”
Prosaic titles tended to produce imagery that felt story-like, including “The Ghost Has No Home,” “Theft, and Wandering Around Lost,” “Know Who You Are at Every Age.” (Interestingly, I initially mistyped the prompt for “The Ghost Has No Home,” and input “The Ghose Has No Home.” The typo produced more interesting results than the correct prompt.)
Sometimes, though, the results are unexpected and wondrous…
What do you think?
I hope these have been a nice diversion, and I welcome your comments! I didn’t make them, after all; some bunch of code somewhere did.
Which ones would you like to see?
Simon Says
As always, thanks for subscribing and being a part of this community. May the days and weeks ahead be more like that rendering of “Blue Bell Knoll” and less like the one for “Heaven or Las Vegas.”
With fond affection,
Michael
I can see how that would be addictive! Is there one for "Blood Bitch"?