The Return Of My Bloody Valentine

I think it sounds best at fast-ripped 96kbps with glitches and snippets of Elvis singing "Hound Dog" interspersed through it.

OK, the LP just arrived here on the west coast. Looks to be in fine shape. LP sleeve is on the cheap size but I like the little cutout pouch for the CD.

I prefer to transfer it to cassette and play it full blast through the datacorder I used to use to load gamrs on my Spectrum 48k

Think my package was lost in the mail. :(

Got mine today. I was tiring a bit of the album and this has totally enlivened it again for me. Percussion really stands out, and the granular bits on Only Tomorrow are occasionally head-rushing. This is a much better album than I initially regarded.

vinyl finally showed up today. very minimal scuffs on the corners of the sleeve--not mint but not as fucked up as what some of you ended up with.

They were so amazing last night. The new stuff is tremendous

Mine showed up yesterday, very minimal scuffs but fairly disappointed in the lazy design considering how much it cost.

If anyone feels hesitant to buy from the band, Soundstage Direct has started carrying the record. I've never had a problem with their shipping.

They're quite loud, aren't they?

Yup. http://heystacks.tumblr.com/post/45303725771/my-bloody-valentine-new-you-mbv-2013-ive-got-a

my experience of MBV has been the same the past couple of times:

first few songs: gah this isn't the great wall of noise i was hoping for. it's not that loud is it?hmm maybe we're standing in the wrong spot. god I wish we weren’t in such a big venue. actually is there something wrong with the sound? not very dynamic are they? i know they bury the riffs and vocals in the mix but this is ridic.

middle section: this is getting tedious. i want to feel this rattling my bones, not tickling my ears.

then i guess the sound guy turns up a big knob called "meat". you start questioning whether it's sounded like this for the whole gig or if your ears have just acclimatised to the sound. whatever. you can finally feel the bass and hear the drones blending and shifting and swirling around. they’re playing some fan favourites, things are getting heavier, oh “you made me realise” this is it, here we go :-D

never fails to amaze me that bit. i guess they can’t really keep things LOUD like the do towards the end because of health and safety and stuff.

haha, that was EXACTLY my thought process, especially the "this isn't very loud and I'm right near the front" part at the beginning.

I was worried for the Apollo itself rather than health and safety.

did you go to the Apollo one, Nick?

Or were there two? I went on Tuesday night

My whole seat was shaking during YMMR on Tuesday. So glad I had 17dB professional earplugs - could hear whole spectrum of sound during the gig, and then could hear properly afterwards.

I was there last night.

I think I spotted you at the bar at one point actually, ithappens.

I was there last night too, and had p much exactly the same processes as yous, dog latin and Crackle Box. I felt that Wonder 2 was kinda diminished by having to follow You Made Me Realise, my head was so comprehensively in another place and took hours to regain some semblance of normalcy.

It's funny, because it wasn't until after the show that I came to realise just how much I'd enjoyed it. While I was there I kind of felt like I was enduring something that I ought to like, but afterwards I was just 'fuck I've gotta go home and listen to New You again and again'

I was lolling my head off all through the volcano bit.

http://sickmouthy.com/2013/03/15/inside-a-volcano-of-sound-my-bloody-valentine-live/

what was the song with the really wiggly guitar line played by kevin, loads of tremelo arm, a single line melody, the note bending all over the place, quite heavy?

Come in alone, or Only tomorrow, spring to mind.

ah i think it was "thorn"

does anyone know what the people hanging around behind Bilinda's amps were doing? Was it solely guitar tuning or was there perhaps a bit of sneaky additional keyboard work on the go back there?

there was another girl playing keyboards at times iirc wipd biwd

oh yeah... "you're a very japanese crowd"

Just guitar techs as far as I know - there's a girl playing keyboards on New you and wonder 2, and guitar on Only tomorrow. There's a fair bit of obvious backing track stuff happening so I don't think they'd need sneaky additional playing.

At the Glasgow show I was sure there was a song where Bilinda changed guitar at the beginning and end, and didn't play it at all inbetween but I'm pretty sure I was mistaken.

(xps) Good blog, Nick. I watched without ear plugs last time round (2008) and the 10-minutes or whatever it was in the middle of You Made Me Realise was actually excruciating. For a day or two I was worried that I'd permanently damaged my hearing. This time round I decided to give it a miss - going to a gig with ear plugs seems a bit daft (like going to a gallery with a blindfold on) (but not one that totally obscures your vision) (maybe some kind of veil) (with sunglasses on top).

Going to a gig w ear plugs is smart, not daft. Esp. if you go to them regularly.

Co sign

the only daft thing is not wearing ear plugs at a gig. Or not going because you wont wear ear plugs

if you go to MBV (or Mogwai, or lots of things) without earpugs do not come and complain to me when you are deaf

what?

btw if you see Sunn 0))) ,you know that 20 min burst of volume you get at MBV or Mogwai gigs at the end? Well you get it from start to finish!

mogwai's "loud shows" is the only gimmick left for this declining band imo.
i never understood why they are so loud live, as oppose to their relatively quiet records. whats the excuse?

Well quiet records is so you can turn them up loud without them distorting.

Loud gigs is because live music is a very different thing to recorded music.

true, but the correlation in this case is problematic to me

i can understand why MBV, Dinosaur, Sonic Youth etc.. are loud live bands.

Slint,for example, who resemble mogwai style, are quieter.

i saw mogwai once, and though the loud effect was exciting, afterwards i thought that this was the only virtue of the show, and without it, the show might have been kinda boring.

Well that's cos Mogwai's music is intrinsically boring, even loud.

which strengthen my argument, that the loud live show becomes a sort of a gimmick

ehhhh, i don't know about it being a "gimmick". being loud is a musical decision that affects how the listener experiences the song.

low plays very slowly (or, they used to). if they would speed up their songs to a medium tempo, it wouldn't feel the same. is low playing slowly a gimmick too?

I think the argument is more that if every live show had Low doing their songs at sprightly upbeat tempos, that would be a gimmick.

yeah, cause they play slow on records too, arent they?

oh, i must be misunderstanding what nostomo was saying. mogwai is loud on their albums (at the climax of many of their songs, at least), and they're also really loud in concert. and then nostormo was saying that without the loudness, the show would have been boring, and that it was sort of a gimmick. so all i'm saying is just that low is slow, both on their records and live. so is that a gimmick too?

anyway, no big deal

I think you're missing this key sentence: i never understood why they are so loud live, as oppose to their relatively quiet records. whats the excuse?

"mogwai is loud on their albums (at the climax of many of their songs, at least)"

arguable.

at the show,i remember they blew my ears from the FIRST Bass note.

anyway, no big deal