ILM's Best Shoegaze / Dream Pop / Post-rock TRACKS poll - RESULTS THREAD

My thing is, a genre's most important characteristic should always be sound. Let's forget geographical location and year for a minute here. Would 'I wanna be adored' be sincerely out of place on a shoegaze compilation? Let's pretend it's the Stone Roses first and only and that it was released on 1992.

Even if I were *able* to divorce a song from its context (because let's face it, a song is so much more than just the piece of music, it's your emotional reaction, the context, the associations, the time, the place, this is not just disregardable stuff...)

The *only* thing it has in common with anything even resembling shoegaze is that it has John Leckie production, and so do those early Verve tracks. John Leckie production in and of itself does not make something shoegaze, or everything from the Dukes of Stratosphear to Muse would be counted. Leckie's style is more straight *psychedelic* than anything else.

The song itself has almost nothing I associate with shoegaze - there's no effects on the guitar (where's the long digital delay I associate with shoegaze? the phase/chorus? Even the walls of distortion? that guitar is almost clean except for some amp tone which is "basic psychedelic rock".) It has whispered vocals, but where are the harmonies? (Which is weird, because I do actually associate the Stone Roses with Brown/Reni vocal harmonies, but there aren't any on this song.) Classic shoegaze almost *always* features harmony singing, or at the very least double tracked vocals if there's only one singer. And again, where's the "I'm singing from the top of Mount Ethereal" reverb?

I'm sorry, even if I were able to put the context aside, this simply lacks any of the hallmarks of *sound* that I associate with shoegaze.

My thing is, a genre's most important characteristic should always be sound

I agree more with Kate on this. Sound is important, but it's not the only thing, and the other stuff is vital. Genres are rooted in times and places, and particular views of the world. You can't ignore those things (well, you can, but it leads to, if you will, category mistakes such as Just Like Honey or Disintegration placing in a Shoegazing/Dreampop/Postrock poll). It's like saying the Ocean Blue are a Sarah band. In purely sonic terms, that sort of works, but it's hilariously wrong if you consider their respective aesthetics and politics.

And for a primary characteristic of a genre, using sound just doesn't work for post rock. What's the easily discerned commonality in sound between Talk Talk, Disco Inferno, and Pram?

xpost!

What's the easily discerned commonality in sound between Talk Talk, Disco Inferno, and Pram?

'Dronology'.

aka, 'that which makes me happy, I don't know about the rest of you.'

And I'm coming from a point of view of genre as sound, not caring if it's hommage or influence. If we rule it out as the most important thing to consider within a genre we might as well remove all "nugaze" nominees and votes and every shoegaze single produced outside the UK.

Even if we were going with the the "sound alone matters" thing, I've just pointed out 3 canonical shoegaze hallmarks that the song completely lacks! It doesn't even *sound* like a shoegaze song.

Unless you mean "vaguely droney" in which case why not nominate classical Indian ragas?

Thing is, I'm much more willing to be inclusive & vague on purely descriptive genre terms like "dreampop" or "dronerock" where if it fits the sound it's in. But highly specific genre names like shoegaze means "this stuff and stuff demonstrably derived from it."

like, look at a song like From A Motel 6 which is a shoegaze song by a totally not-shoegaze band - because it has those hallmarks of sound, the sheets of distortion guitar from MBV, the close harmony boy/girl vocals, the layers or reverb. That got in on sound alone, but it's a very specific sound that arose from someone hearing MBV guitars.

Lycia are sooooo not metal btw

No, they're frost.

They are emo post crust baggy epic death doom ska.

dream pop, post rock, gazing at your shoe tops
it's still an ilxor poll to me

sorry

Lycia are sooooo not metal btw

Well, I know. I was thinking more along the lines of Jesu and stuff.

They are emo post crust baggy epic death doom ska.

You 'um it, and I'll smash yer face in.

Welcome to the house of Trayce

Ha, I'm glad you got the reference :D

what an embarrassment

if only john m@rk b0ling, shade or kyr@ schn@ub3r were here, they could clear all of this up for us. aside from 'deep sleep for steven' the pale saints weren't all that shoegazey but no one is objecting to their inclusion. how come?

I think "because 4AD" is the answer to a large slab of such queries, tbh.

(or "because Creation")

because cute cat on the cover of the album! see chapterhouse, secret shine, and... uh, the aikea-guinea video.

Ha! I love the cat in the Aikea-Guinea video :)

noooo it are shoegaze

Theres some dodgy lookin lapgaze going on in the end of that clip thats for sure.

What crazy-ass definition of shoegaze are you using that doesn't include Pale Saints?

They're absolutely canonical first generation band, part of the scene that celebrates itself, on 4AD, CONTAINED AN EX MEMBER OF LUSH, ffs... and that's before you even get to the sound.

Sound signifiers of shoegaze:

1) gratuitous guitar FX abuse, especially sheets of distortion, digital delay, chorus/phase and tremolo? CHECK
2) harmony vocals slathered in reverb? well, some harmonies and double tracking but definitely run through that WHISPERED THROUGH A MEGAPHONE FROM MOUNT ETHEREAL filter
3) thrumming, hypnotic bass (especially playing chords on bass) CHECK
4) BIG drums. Really big sounding drums. If your drummer isn't named Loz, use reverb to make them bigger. Turn the Alesis Quadraverb all the way up to "CATHEDRAL"? CHECK

If it walks like a sonic cathedral, if it quacks like a sonic cathedral, if it's propping up the bar at Syndrome on a Thursday night, it's a bloody shoegazer.

sounds like the Cure

Gah. Can't decide between:
a) albums only poll
b) separate albums and EPs polls
c) joint albums and EPs poll
d) no more fucking polls

Joint poll, but wait a few months.

OK, will do it after Christmas.

An all-time-all-genre EPs poll would be fun - it's such a shoegaze format that Slowdive could come out of it looking like twentieth century music's dominant figures.

...they're not?

yeah, but the pale saints wrote catchy pop songs, that's not very shoegazey. x-post times 6.

maybe not the place to post this, but I just listened to Strawberry Wine for the first time, and I think it might be my favorite MBV song (though To Here Knows When is def. close second)

Its a pretty awesome song, most certainly.

Keith is summoning shoegaze demons! Be careful.

i considered pale saints shoegaze in 1992 and i consider them shoegaze now

("dream pop" as a genre signifier didn't exist for me til the mid-late 90s)

yeah, but the pale saints wrote catchy pop songs, that's not very shoegazey. x-post times 6.

So did Lush.

So did Ride and Chapterhouse and even occasionally MBV if you strip the noise back, in fact, so did every single damn first wave Shoegaze band except Slowdive.

I feel like the annoying dronerock paperclip that pops up and says "when you typed shoegaze there, did you mean DRONEROCK?" at some of these complaints.

Gotta say that I never heard the term dronerock until I saw it on ilm. Was it a term in wide use? Having said that, i CAn't really remember what the likes of spacemen 3 and loop were referred to as genre-wise. Maybe 'the new psychedelia' or something?

Well, I basically remember "dronerock" as a catchall term for all those children of the Velvet Underground who started popping up in the mid/late 80s. (I always ask this, but wasn't there a set of VU reissues in the 80s?)

That's the whole hypnotic, droney, no-tune aesthetic. Shoegaze had tunes as well as sonic cathedrals.

I first read the term drone-rock reading a review of a Fall show ca. 79; the Fall opened with "Before the Moon Falls" and the reviewer said they were shaping up to be a rahter good sub-Velvets drone-rock band...

that's what drone-rock usually means to me: stuff on Dragnet like Before the Moon Falls and Flat of Angles, or Clean songs like Point that Thing Somewhere Else. Those bands were heavily influenced by VU and a bit ahead of the curve as far as that goes (Dragnet came out in 79; Boodle Boodle Boodle came out in '81 I believe; I'm thinking that open VU worship in the American/British rock underground began outright with The Dream Syndicate's Days of Wine and Roses, which was '83??? and then JaMC came out with Psychocandy in '85, trying to outWL/WH Reed & Cale, and that's kind of when shoegaze started to materialize???)

Gah. Can't decide between:
a) albums only poll
b) separate albums and EPs polls
c) joint albums and EPs poll
d) no more fucking polls

― Running the Gantelope (Nasty, Brutish & Short), Monday, November 1, 2010 6:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

imo there is no reason not to combine EPs & LPs for this. there is such an embarrassment of riches for both formats in this case that I think pitting them against each other objectively would make for the most rewarding results anyway.

I have some ideas of what a loose set of parameters might be, mostly in keeping with Moka's but with a few delimiting factors to prevent w/ too general an overlap with certain strains of post-punk, IDM, indie, post-rock etc. But I am also definitely for keeping it diverse and inclusive enough to cover various splintering genres & also the occasional wild card b/c limiting an entire albums poll to OG shoegaze bands would not give us enough fodder to make this interesting.

how is it that 'mad as snow' did not make the top 100?

never really heard much KoD myself. the name always put me off for some reason, among other reasons. suppose i should hear more.

"drive that fast" is some serious shit

So bummed I Only Said is so high on the list. The shoegaze "solo" in that song is the most mesmerizing 20 seconds in all music ever 4ever ever.

So bummed I Only Said is so high on the list. The shoegaze "solo" in that song is the most mesmerizing 20 seconds in all music ever 4ever ever.

― time for a chimmy changa run (kelpolaris)

This make no sense to me.