mixtape | bliss: a shoegazing primer

by way of dipping my toes back into the blogwater, here's the shoegazing mix i posted a while back, repackaged to match the other compilations i've done recently. here's whast i said last time:

shoegazing as a music genre has popped in and out of fashion since its media inception around 1990. but these days it seems more popular than ever, with various blogs, compilations and new bands dedicated to celebrating and replicating the layered sounds popularised by just a handful of bands.

shoegazing will always have a special place in my music collection because its arrival coincided with my own musical "awakening", transforming me from someone who liked a bit of music, this and that, bits and bobs, to a rabid indie guitar fan. so i've followed this most recent revival with interest. and one thing that has bugged me is the revisionism of the higher profile commercial compilations out there. i think the issue these compilers find is that in reality there just weren't that many bands that were doing the shoegazing thing at the time - at least not to any real degree of success.

like most music scenes, it was largely a media fabrication to help shift copies of the nme. that there was a cluster of bands clearly drawing from similar influences is true, but their number was pretty small. so that's why you end up with compilations littered with the likes of lush, swervedriver, curve, spiritualized and so on - good bands in their own right, but just because you share labels and bills doesn't mean you share sound too.

so i decided, largely for my own entertainment on a wet weekend, to compile my own shoegazing primer for the uninformed out there.

::: my bloody valentine - emptiness inside
okay, so mbv aren't really shoegazing, but without them you can bet the scene would never have existed, so it would be churlish to omit them. you know about this band already.

::: ride - decay
the big guns of the scene who set the template for the others to follow: one word band name, four track eps, one word record names, a sound that blends 60s psychedelia and pop sensibility with blistering noise and tons of reverb - a sound that the band themselves admit owes a large debt to both mbv and the house of love. sadly they never bettered their debut album.

::: the boo radleys - sometime soon she said
in between aping dinosaur jr and a commercially successful stint as britpop whores, the "do badleys" released a handful of pitch perfect shoegazing eps and one album ("everything's alright forever") with a heavy emphasis on the psychedelics. they repeated the formula with follow up "giant steps", a critical success but to my ears a record digged by rubbish self-production, before eventually gifting breakfast djs everywhere with "wake up boo!".

::: bleach - dipping
the underdogs of the scene, never achieving any major commercial success. true to form, they released a couple of blinding eps but their debut album marked the beginning of an artistic and public decline. their sound featured the scene's characteristic wall of guitars, but it's metronomic repitition and salli's upfront singing/rapping style gave them a harder edge that has more in common with the camden "lurch" scene than their home counties chums.

::: moose - i'll take tomorrow
critical darlings whose first three eps are classics of the genre, but the band quickly left the sound behind, with subsequent records owing much more to country music than the chorus and distortion pedal. a brilliant band.

::: medicine - aruca
not really part of the scene in a physical sense, given they're yanks, but they were signed to creation and they have clearly listened to mbv more than a couple of times. the americans insisted on calling the genre "dreampop", belying the vast amounts of distortion on offer.

::: pale saints - sight of you
the band themselves would probably have scoffed at being included at the time, but the similarities in sound can't be denied on their first few records, even if they had more of that customary 4ad quirk to them.

::: slowdive - morningrise
it's impossible to think of shoegazing without thinking of slowdive, and i think it's fair to say that their dreamy, chorus-heavy washes of sound have been just as big an influence on later generations of "nu-gazing" (ugh) bands as mbv. and in rachel goswell they had the scene's pin up girl.

::: the telescopes - flying
i hesitate to include the telescopes, since they always had a much stronger garage influence than the others, a darker edge that links them in my mind at least with bands like spacemen 3 and loop. but for a couple of records at least they were slap bang in the heart of things.

::: the ecstasy of saint theresa - swoon
teost crept out of czechoslovakia in 1991. despite years of communist isolation, it seems a few western records were in at least limited circulation. while geographical and ideological barriers meant the band weren't able to physically participate in the escne, thanks to the support of john peel their records made their own valuable contribution in my house at least.

::: drop nineteens - winona
another contribution from across the atlantic, this thunders along like the bostonites they were. basic british elitism means they were generally considered mere copyists at the time, but they definitely had their moments.

::: moonshake - gravity
yes i know, moonshake were not a shoegazing band, and yet their debut ep indicated the contrary. the band would later admit that having signed to creation (home to ride, slowdive etc) they ought to tow the party line. unsurprisingly after this release they jumped ship to too pure,a much more natural home.

::: chapterhouse - treasure
along with ride and slowdive, chapterhouse were subject to a certain amount of inverted snobbery thanks to their home counties' backgrounds. they also had the thankless task of following nirvana's performance at reading in 1991. however, their debut album remains one of the best records of the 90s. sadly they subsequently disappeared down into an ambient black hole.

honourable mentions/deliberate omissions:

adorable: another creation band, but definitely not shoegazers, got that?
beatnik filmstars: their first ep, "themes from foreverdrone" was pure shoegazing. everything else they released: not so much (but still good though).
catherine wheel: songs like "black metallic" and "texture" do qualify them in so much as it means they had effects pedals and knew how to use them. but so did fuzzbox.
curve: yes they had dense layers of guitar noise, but they were too busy twiddling knobs on the mixing desk to look at their shoes.
lush: wikipedia etc will have you believe lush were a shoegazing band, but while they certainly shared plenty of stages (and houses) with moose etc, if it wasn't for the robin-guthrie-patented reverb layer pasted all over their records, they would be "just" a solid indie schmindie band.
revolver: their one good song is a ride rip-off.
spiritualized: no, no, no.
stereolab: like lush, part of "the scene that celebrates itself" (tim gane played occasional guitar in moose), not shoegazing.
swervedriver: generally lumped in because they were signed to creation and released eps, but they were much heavier and clearly in thrall to us college rock.
ultra vivid scene: i don't get this one.

valerie bert n ernie

*coming soon* more post rock mixes - this time the post-slint side of things... plus i will post some actual original records, not just recycled mixes, honest.

mixtape | bleak house: a uk post rock primer (vol 1)

after a 2-week break it's time to get back into the fray. and here's a mix that i've been tinkering with for a while now. if you're a last fm user and a fan of post rock, then you're probably aware of samuel macklin's uk post rock group and therefore of the compilations he's been posting. in which case, here's my version.

post rock, by definition, is hard to define, but i think the original premise of post rock as a genre was the idea of the rock song deconstructed. think of it as an evolution of the dub/beefheart/punk melange of post punk, with added jazz and house music, plus a genuine sense of space combined with an "anything goes" approach. kind of.

i've sequenced the compilation in basic chronological order, so you get a rough idea of the evolution, though of course i'm not included any of the actual influences, just the influencers (if that makes sense). volume 1 covers the period 1981 to 1994.

anyway, like i said, this is just my take on it. i started to write about each track individually, but really you don't need my waffle.

::: dif juz - heset
::: ar kane - sperm whale trip over
::: bark psychosis - i know
::: my bloody valentine - instrumental
::: talk talk - after the flood
::: earwig - every day shines
::: moonshake - seen and not heard
::: papa sprain - bathtime
::: butterfly child - lunar eclipse
::: disco inferno - the last dance
::: insides - darling effect
::: laika - coming down glass

get.

mixtape | a real shoegazing primer

shoegazing as a music genre has popped in and out of fashion since its media inception around 1990. but these days it seems more popular than ever, with various blogs, compilations and new bands dedicated to celebrating and replicating the layered sounds popularised by just a handful of bands.

shoegazing will always have a special place in my music collection because its arrival coincided with my own musical "awakening", transforming me from someone who liked a bit of music, this and that, bits and bobs, to a rabid indie guitar fan. so i've followed this most recent revival with interest. and one thing that has bugged me is the revisionism of the higher profile commercial compilations out there (e.g. this and this). i think the issue these compilers find is that in reality there just weren't that many bands that were doing the shoegazing thing at the time - at least not to any real degree of success.

like most music scenes, it was largely a media fabrication to help shift copies of the nme. that there was a cluster of bands clearly drawing from similar influences is true, but their number was pretty small. so that's why you end up with compilations littered with the likes of lush, swervedriver, curve, spiritualized and so on - good bands in their own right, but just because you share labels and bills doesn't mean you share sound too.

so i decided, largely for my own entertainment on a wet weekend, to compile my own shoegazing primer for the uninformed out there.

::: my bloody valentine - emptiness inside
okay, so mbv aren't really shoegazing, but without them you can bet the scene would never have existed, so it would be churlish to omit them. you know about this band already.

::: ride - decay
the big guns of the scene who set the template for the others to follow: one word band name, four track eps, one word record names, a sound that blends 60s psychedelia and pop sensibility with blistering noise and tons of reverb - a sound that the band themselves admit owes a large debt to both mbv and the house of love. sadly they never bettered their debut album.

::: the boo radleys - sometime soon she said
in between aping dinosaur jr and a commercially successful stint as britpop whores, the "do badleys" released a handful of pitch perfect shoegazing eps and one album ("everything's alright forever") with a heavy emphasis on the psychedelics. they repeated the formula with follow up "giant steps", a critical success but to my ears a record digged by rubbish self-production, before eventually gifting breakfast djs everywhere with "wake up boo!".

::: bleach - dipping
the underdogs of the scene, never achieving any major commercial success. true to form, they released a couple of blinding eps but their debut album marked the beginning of an artistic and public decline. their sound featured the scene's characteristic wall of guitars, but it's metronomic repitition and salli's upfront singing/rapping style gave them a harder edge that has more in common with the camden "lurch" scene than their home counties chums.

::: moose - i'll take tomorrow
critical darlings whose first three eps are classics of the genre, but the band quickly left the sound behind, with subsequent records owing much more to country music than the chorus and distortion pedal. a brilliant band.

::: medicine - aruca
not really part of the scene in a physical sense, given they're yanks, but they were signed to creation and they have clearly listened to mbv more than a couple of times. the americans insisted on calling the genre "dreampop", belying the vast amounts of distortion on offer.

::: pale saints - sight of you
the band themselves would probably have scoffed at being included at the time, but the similarities in sound can't be denied on their first few records, even if they had more of that customary 4ad quirk to them.

::: slowdive - morningrise
it's impossible to think of shoegazing without thinking of slowdive, and i think it's fair to say that their dreamy, chorus-heavy washes of sound have been just as big an influence on later generations of "nu-gazing" (ugh) bands as mbv. and in rachel goswell they had the scene's pin up girl.

::: the telescopes - flying
i hesitate to include the telescopes, since they always had a much stronger garage influence than the others, a darker edge that links them in my mind at least with bands like spacemen 3 and loop. but for a couple of records at least they were slap bang in the heart of things.

::: the ecstasy of saint theresa - swoon
teost crept out of czechoslovakia in 1991. despite years of communist isolation, it seems a few western records were in at least limited circulation. while geographical and ideological barriers meant the band weren't able to physically participate in the escne, thanks to the support of john peel their records made their own valuable contribution in my house at least.

::: drop nineteens - winona
another contribution from across the atlantic, this thunders along like the bostonites they were. basic british elitism means they were generally considered mere copyists at the time, but they definitely had their moments.

::: moonshake - gravity
yes i know, moonshake were not a shoegazing band, and yet their debut ep indicated the contrary. the band would later admit that having signed to creation (home to ride, slowdive etc) they ought to tow the party line. unsurprisingly after this release they jumped ship to too pure,a much more natural home.

::: chapterhouse - treasure
along with ride and slowdive, chapterhouse were subject to a certain amount of inverted snobbery thanks to their home counties' backgrounds. they also had the thankless task of following nirvana's performance at reading in 1991. however, their debut album remains one of the best records of the 90s. sadly they subsequently disappeared down into an ambient black hole.

honourable mentions/deliberate omissions:

adorable: another creation band, but definitely not shoegazers, got that?
beatnik filmstars: their first ep, "themes from foreverdrone" was pure shoegazing. everything else they released: not so much (but still good though).
catherine wheel: songs like "black metallic" and "texture" do qualify them in so much as it means they had effects pedals and knew how to use them. but so did fuzzbox.
curve: yes they had dense layers of guitar noise, but they were too busy twiddling knobs on the mixing desk to look at their shoes.
lush: wikipedia etc will have you believe lush were a shoegazing band, but while they certainly shared plenty of stages (and houses) with moose etc, if it wasn't for the robin-guthrie-patented reverb layer pasted all over their records, they would be "just" a solid indie schmindie band.
revolver: their one good song is a ride rip-off.
spiritualized: no, no, no.
stereolab: like lush, part of "the scene that celebrates itself" (tim gane played occasional guitar in moose), not shoegazing.
swervedriver: generally lumped in because they were signed to creation and released eps, but they were much heavier and clearly in thrall to us college rock.
ultra vivid scene: i don't get this one.

get your sonic cathedrals of sound here.

mixtape | indie bass player appreciation day

if you didn't know, today is indie bass player recognition day, a day that, as a sometime indie bass player myself, i cherish like a junkie cherishes his works.

there aren't many famous bass players, especially not famous indie bass players. while guitarists are gods, then bass players are either scorned (hello bill wyman, mark king), or overlooked altogether (erm most everyone else).

of course there are exceptions, but they're generally recognised for their technical ability rather than contribution to songwriting (hello jaco pastorius, billy sheehan). and indie isn't a genre that generally acknowledges musicianship.

so in a futile attempt to redress the balance, here are some indie songs that i appreciate as an indie bass player:

::: stump - chaos
very hard not to include this - the playing is simply astonishing; kev hopper even achieves the previously unthinkable feat of making fretless bass seem cool to people who aren't jazz wonks.

::: ganger - lid of the stars
some day i'll do a post about bands with two bass players, but for now here's a prime example of a band that is totally driven by the rhythm section and a demonstration of the melodic capcity of the bass guitar.

::: pinback - non-photo blue
there's something about pinback that makes them so hard to describe, let alone define, and i think that has a lot to do with zach smith's distinctive bass playing - it's both spiky and rounded, melodically inventive and thoroughly grounded.

::: trans am - the campaign
trans am are such a schizophrenic band that it's hard to pick a song that's truly representative, so i chose one that represents the ac/dc, bass-heavy rock side to them. this is band as super-charged unit, with bass very much at the rythmic and melodic core.

::: bark psychosis - big shot
huge, warm, dub-influenced bass that defies you to turn it down. this is bass as fat room filler, laid back but propelling the song forward, a bass line i can't listen to without imagining myself playing it.

::: dawson - chuckleberry
this is bass playing as a manic, furious post-punk attack, absorbing the likes of gang of four, minutemen and big*flame and then spitting them back out again.

::: death by milkfloat - your independence (depends on me)
similar to dawson, but with more of a funk sensibility. when the guitars are this thin and scratchy the bass can do nothing but come to the front of the stage. bassist jonny went on to join collapsed lung.

::: the smiths - barbarism begins at home
excellent example of an overlooked bass player, but i would say many of andy rourke's bass lines are every bit as inventive as johnny marr's guitar playing. i expect johnny marr would tell you that he actually wrote them all anyway.

::: the cure - disintegration
i think simon gallup is more frequently lauded for his heart throb status than his moodlily melodic bass lines, but this and many other songs wouldn't be the same without them.

::: mercury rev - black forest (lorelei)
not sure if this really counts as such since i'm assuming anthony molina is a session musician, but i find it hard not to concentrate on the bass throughout "the secret migration".

::: moonshake - city poison
just listen to that bass and tell me it doesn't get you throbbing right here.

::: curve - horror head
exemplifying an unsual combination of session-worthy musicianship and shoegazing - dean garcia did after all play bass for eurythmics for a while - the bass playing has a curiously velvety quality to it that roundly underpins the icy chill of toni's vocals.

::: tears for fears - head over heels
not an indie band by a long shot, but curt smith's bass playing is really great here.

grabthelot.

i could go on but i won't. in short, give your local indie bass player a cuddle today.

moonshake | first

despite being entirely unrepresentative of the rest of their discography, this ep still remains one of my firm favourites. the story goes that, having signed to creation, home to shoegazers like ride and slowdive at the time, moonshake felt pressured to fit in with that seen, hence the washes of sound displayed here. produced by guy fixsen, who also produced moose's early eps amongst other things and would later join laika, i believe he added a lot of the samples that give the ep it's haunting, dreamy feel.

after this release of course they moved to too pure and became the highly rhythmic, sexual beast we all know and love (at least until they split down the middle and dave released two disappointing albums).

released by creation in in 1991.

gravity is falling.