Saturday March 2 marked exactly four weeks since the release of mbv, My Bloody Valentine’s absurdly over-awaited and for the most part unbelievable (as in, hard to believe this actually happened 22 years after the release of the seminal loveless) new album. Visceraudio for the first time was dedicated pretty much entirely to the work of one artist. I became a fan of My Bloody Valentine in 1991 when a friend turned me on to loveless, which was so utterly compelling a recording that I quit my job, moved to Southern California, and tried to become a professional independent rock musician. The swirl of distorted guitars and spooky vocals had me at one point believing the master tapes had literally been left on the dashboard, and the twisted, warped beauty that resulted was a happy accident. It soon became apparent that this was a guitar genius’s magnum opus, that the bent sounds were all particularly contrived, layered and textured to create the otherworldly atmosphere which defined a genre (truthfully: when i first saw the term “shoegaze” in print I sincerely thought it was pronounced “shugazi”, assigning it far more credence and cleverness than was actually due!). I had never heard anything like it, and in the years that followed, with semi-annual whisperings (“the recordings of the next record are done, Kevin Shields is mastering now and planning to finally release the follow-up!”) losing steam, then re-inflating a couple years later, cycle repeated for over two decades, I became certain there would be no sequel.
But there was, there is, I downloaded it the night it was released (vinyl and CD arriving in the next few weeks I hope), I have listened to it a dozen times or more in the past four weeks, and we listened to it as a group Saturday night. Lively commentary ensued, with tons of speculation about things like recording techniques and when it was actually recorded. There are plenty of “reviews” of the album out there, and I am not going to make this blog into a record review. I will simply say: mbv is awesome: a pleasure to listen to, filled with amazing guitars, interesting rhythms, spacy vocals, weird song titles, and tons of atmosphere. Yeah, that could be a review of loveless, but the two albums are equally unique and similar, and although one has 22 years of history on its side (that’s a lot of time to establish an emotional connection!), I honestly can’t say that one is better than the other. We then listened to loveless: Disc 2 of the 2012 remaster says “mastered from the original 1/2 inch analogue tapes”, which upon further reading (see http://thepowerofindependenttrucking.blogspot.com/2012/05/mbv-loveless-2012-remasters.html) suggests was in fact the choice we wanted to make, even though we understood the description wrong, because the discs are mislabeled. Possibly, or certainly according to the blog cited above. Anyway it was nice for comparison; no real conclusions were made, but we all agreed we had just heard two great records from one great artist separated by 22 years of musical history and technology, and I will I am sure regularly listen to and appreciate both for years to come.
visceraudio 