The Return Of My Bloody Valentine

""First listen" posting is a good thing except for those extremely rare times when you wait twenty years for the follow up to one of the best albums ever and then it suddenly appears with almost no advance notice. The usual stuff about sitting through multiple listens and trying to gain some perspective hardly seems to have any meaning right now."

LOL @you for hanging out on a message board going over first listens forensically in that case.

I'm not that bothered because I don't even think Loveless is the best MBV album let alone one of the best of all time.

currently beginning my third listen to 'in another way', have that you archephonophobes

and it's going to be hard beaten as song of the year. next stop autechre

I didn't say that first listen reactions aren't interesting, but expecting professional sounding reviews and criticism after a few hours of perspective is asking a bit too much.

xpost

third eye foundation is a reference-point i want a few others to pursue

― imago, Sunday, February 3, 2013 2:46 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree with this. iirc a large proportion of writing about 3EF from say 1996-98 focused on "remember when ppl were saying Kevin Shields was writing drum'n'bass tracks, well guess we'll probably never hear those but check this guy out"

I don't even think Loveless is the best MBV album

on this we are agreed!

i don't think its an album that is hard to talk about after a first listen. sounds EXACTLY like my bloody vslentine.

scott otm

valentine even

xps to mencap: well, yeah. more people should hear 'the dark' (3EF's brilliant 2011 record), there are parallels with this new mbv but it's longer, more monolithic and more (imo) transportingly intense, albeit far, far less pop

that said, the highs on m b v are skysearing

i think most fans will love it forever and be really happy that they can put it right next to the other stuff. its in keeping/part and parcel/a welcome addition/etc.

What scott said.

i mean i guess years ago when millions of people would run out and buy an album the day it was released things were different pre-internet but not that different. took longer to get other people's reactions but there were always lots of quick opinions. i miss when radio existed and they would actually debut an album and talk about it. that was cool.

it totally hit the spot last night. even on youtube! like being denied a drug you really like for a long time. oooh that's the stuff...gimme that guitar tone, baby.

Yeah I loved the comparisons from a couple of folks like Elvis T. about how this felt like lining up in front of Tower before midnight.

since they have made such a big deal about the all analog vinyl thing they should really release this on reel to reel tape. that would be amazing.

I wonder how the actual vinyl or cds will sound

As a fan, yeah, this is lot of fun. But I kind of pity the people who have to review this in the next week.

Re: TEF, this sounds nothing like "The Dark", but "Wonder2" could almost be an outtake from "Semtex".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lxu8nbARYQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gH6UOatmAM

Looking back at this article, it seems to me Kevin's take on this material is very accurate:

Shields also gave some indications as to what the third album might be like: "It's not going to sound like Loveless where it's like looking into another world," he said "More like Isn't Anything, where it seems to be of this world, but with one foot in another world. The songs on Loveless had more in common with folk-blues music to me, just a verse and an instrumental passage, circular. The new songs are more... sometimes it's just that, and sometimes it's songs that have one verse, then a musical part, then something that's totally different. More elongated... and more raw. A lot of the guitars are very aggressive."

Nah, the good reviewers will have to work extra hard because of all this. The best reviews will be dead good because of it.

One good example of massive amounts of discussion of a record before the publication of reviews being obviously a good thing was before Let England Shake came out. It really felt like a lot of information was being shared and opinions were changing on a daily basis.

I'm not saying they're comparable records of course.

Should have been XP.

my first reaction is like, I wnana go home and put this on loud speakers

MBV never really worked as a headphone band 4 me

i wanna go home and play earthbound

haha my USB controller is also @ home. I am going to bring it up here and play wind waker on my computer. also earthbound. so many ROMs.

tbrr listening to this album wasn't even the most euphoric listening experience I had in the past 24 hours. that would belong to lsitening to this fan remix of GD & TOP over that one ALICE DEEJAY song everybody samples. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4KhxPR52Lo

sitting around playing super nintendo and listening to my bloody valentine...the early 90s really ARE back.

get your Zubaz pants ready!

imagining danzig bellowing MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTHER *pauses* *whispers* 2: revenge of gyiygas

Earthbound is getting re-released digitally soon as well, first time in 19 years - Japan only so far, though :(

oops forgot about that GBA cart from 10 years ago. Itoi really is the video game Kevin Shields tho!

disappointed that DUKE NUKEM FOREVER was actually released 2 years ago and so we can't really make joeks about it itt

i think this album gets very interesting in the second half, or more specifically the last three songs, which immediately struck me as as a departure from anything else the band has done. what particularly intrigues me is how these tracks don't simply integrate a few stray elements here and there to hint at a new approach, they fully embrace something altogether new that creates a sudden juncture in the album's circuit; these are fragmented, almost deconstructed numbers -- replete with the usual woozy MBV charm, but with extra clutter and loose ends -- that are likely to give me a lot to ponder as i wrap my head around the album as a whole and determine how (and why) it all fits together.

brb making dubstep remixes of all the tracks

charlie h otm - that's where the album really takes off for me

i think this album gets very interesting in the second half, or more specifically the last three songs

if it is for the good

The vinyl has been recorded, mixed and mastered in analogue. It is manufactured on 180 gram vinyl and comes in a gatefold sleeve with the CD in a card wallet. The vinyl will be limited due to manufacturing restrictions.

Is anyone else going to wait the three weeks plus for the vinyl release to get their First Listen(tm), or I am alone in being that guy? I totally get the frenzy for this, and don't begrudge ppl the need to hear it now, but somehow this event makes the notion of waiting for "ideal" listening conditions per one's tastes entirely acceptable.

i'll wait for the vinyl to listen again. i heard enough last night to know that i would love the record. i love my original u.k. copy of loveless. sounds amazing. and the u.k. feed me with your kiss 12 inch i own is one of my favorite things to hear on vinyl. so much so that i can't really listen to that song on the album cuz it sounds so much worse than the 12 inch. never had a u.k. vinyl copy of isn't anything though so maybe that would make the a difference. the u.s. vinyl of that album is abysmal. just terrible.

i think there may well be something exciting about the repetition of that song ("nothing is") if i probe deeper. the band have often been repetitive in a gliding, replenishing way in the past; this is repetitive in a bouncing-off-the-walls kind of way, like it's trapped in a tiny, enclosed space. and it seems to get more and more agitated by the second. or maybe that is just how my mind conditions me to hear it?

x-posts to alex

Not totally coherent thoughts but ... I've got a sense of how much I have changed in the time since Loveless was released that I almost want a new My Bloody Valentine album to echo that in some way: I guess I want it to sound like My Bloody Valentine but 20 (or whatever) years different. I'm not really getting that from the plays so far (to be fair, playing on computer speakers isn't really how I should be listening).

would buy double album 45 rpm version of isn't anything. just in case lazybones shields lurks on ilx.

which reminds me! i've had these rollerskate skinny 10 inches in the store foreeeeeever and nobody will buy them and i am gonna listen to them now.

Also struck by a vague feeling of ... there are other records I'll be buying before this and am more excited by ... which surprises me given how important they were to me.

to be honest, and i haven't really thought about this THAT much, i kinda figured if he ever put out more mbv stuff that it would be really formless/drifting/drone type stuff. long 10+ minute songs and all that. collaborate with, i dunno, sonic boom or stars of the lid or something and just disappear into hyperspace. its not like he couldn't have done that at home and knocked out an album every couple of years. so i'm kinda glad that he stuck to the, you know, formula. for the most part. the contained thing. though there is a little more formlessness. the structures aren't as simple/catchy/riff-y as before. less rock action. which is fine by me.

formlessness not the right word at all. sorry. i need more tea. just less pop-oriented. rock-oriented.

cuz there is obviously form there. form up the butt.

Am I wrong or is my impression correct that a lot of athletes sign contracts with provisions saying they'll have to do that kind of shit?

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, February 3, 2013 8:40 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ned, I think it's a variety of things, one, some athletes are just kind of blank ppl as strongo noted, others aren't that bright, but others I think kind of recite those cliches like zen koans because they are safe things to say, they protect you from the espn/sports radio echo chamber, which will eat you alive and spit you out the minute you say something ill considered

Someone observed elsewhere that it took longer for Shields to follow up "Loveless" (22 years) than it took the slasher in the film "My Bloody Valentine" to return and wreak havoc on the town's Valentine's Day celebration (20 years).

Second half of this album is what intrigues me the most.

officially official youtubes so they won't get taken down...

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheOfficialMBV/videos