The Return Of My Bloody Valentine

thanks akm!

Anyone grab both versions of Loveless and Isn't Anything?

I'll check this again on my other stereo later today or tomorrow, it's more sensitive to things like this (I just listened on an AT-120 with some cheap powered studio monitors). It is hard to a/b when you dont have two turntables running through a mixer.

Thank you!

Pretty good interview, learned some stuff and details I'd not heard before

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/may/27/my-bloody-valentine-kevin-shields-band-killing-songs

Shields has a habit of making it sound like the most reasonable thing in the world one minute – bands are loud, he shrugs, but most gigs are “laughably quiet … something you’re consuming, not being consumed by” – then admitting that My Bloody Valentine reached a point where they were playing at such volume that they were causing structural damage to venues. “Chunks were falling out of the ceiling. It sounds like an exaggeration, but I’m serious – we were really concerned that eventually some roof was going to fall down,” he says. “It was a matter of time before a serious accident happened.”

Not everyone was impressed. There is a bootleg recording circulating among fans of a late 80s London gig degenerating into chaos – the sound man has given up and fled the building. Shields says that was one of the less extreme reactions. “At one gig, a butcher was literally chasing my sister with a cleaver – he wanted to chop the cable because it was shaking his shop so much when we were doing You Made Me Realise. The police turned up and arrested our tour manager during You Made Me Realise. They arrested him, put him in the car, questioned him and let him go and when he got back we were still playing it. Countless, countless situations.”

:D

that article is interesting but weirdly skips over, completely, MBV (the album) and says there has been nothing new from the band since the 90s

Not quite!

With the switch apparently more off than on, the band quietly split up. Shields eventually gave up, too, joining Primal Scream and dabbling in remixes and film soundtracks. My Bloody Valentine eventually reformed for a succession of live shows in 2008, which prompted him to return to Loveless’s unfinished follow-up; m b v was eventually released, virtually without warning, five years later.

That manager-getting-arrested story is golden.

This bit stuck out to me:

“Basically, I know when the switch is on or off. When the switch is on, everything’s fine, everything’s good, and when the switch is off, everything’s pointless. I would go: OK, I’m not trying, I’ll watch television, I’ll read magazines. That’s why Loveless became this seemingly long, drawn-out process, because I discovered pretty quickly that when circumstances around me turn the switch off, I just feel like it’s a labour, or I feel too much emotional and psychological uncomfortableness around me to be doing music in a way that’s pure, the way everyone should be doing music.”

It kinda just sounds like untreated depression to me. On the other hand, it's weirdly heartening because I think I have the same (lack of) work ethic, and if this guy could make Loveless then maybe I can make something 1/100th as cool one day.

Seeing that interview pop up on my feed last night was great.
Always good to hear from the recluse.

Side note: any time I think of MBV, I can't help but think of Tim Smith (Cardiacs; R.I.P.), as well. The irony of the situation gets me every time.

oooh my non-deluxe loveless arrived today

.... yes i have also ordered a deluxe copy of loveless

i probably said that upthread but the irresponsibility of the decision has not lost its novelty

GREAT recent Double J radio interview:
https://www.abc.net.au/doublej/programs/curated/kevin-shields-mbv-interview/13293944
Well worth the time for fans with lots of great anecdotes.

This interview has the most detailed discussion of his influences I've ever heard.

Yeah that's really good. Hearing S*n* in that context is like, well of course! Trying not to spoil there.

Yeah, there's a lot of things I want to quote from it, but holding back for everyone because it's the deepest Shields interview I've ever heard and the interviewer seems to have no agenda beyond wanting to learn more about his influences and process.

Will give an ear when I can!

The bit near the end of the interview where Shields talks about having him and Belinda only track vocals on Loveless without being heard by the engineers/only monitored via VU meters, as if to create similar quantum conditions to that of an unobserved photon in a double-slit experiment (and then claiming that it led to many takes being uncannily lined up in sync upon playback), is so very Shoeperstitiousssssss

Hahah the Jim Reid story. Great interview indeed.

So it turns out that was the edited version? There's a 3 1/2 hour cut!

https://abcmedia.akamaized.net/radio/doublej/audio/202104/dkl-2021-04-08-kevin-shields.mp3

I will rely on others here to report any further revelations. I loved the interview - it always helps to have an interviewer who isn't obnoxious and who knows what they are talking about - but it was tough enough finding 90 minutes to sit and listen, let alone 3 1/2 hours!

You can walk and stand and drive and passenge and shop and iron and exercise and clean and paint and build model train sets instead

You made me summarize

near the end, he talked a lot about what he was up to during the 22 years after loveless. the short version was, he spent a lot of that time on a spiritual journey, starting with doing what he referred to as "the dumb drugs", "party drugs", and eventually ending with transcendental meditation. he seems relatively happy now, or at least content.

he also said, (and maybe this part of it isn't news, i don't know) that they're working on 2 albums (one of which is a double-album?) and 2 EPs, and one of the albums (not the double-album) is coming really soon. he seems really excited about that one. they're still working on the other stuff.

oh, sorry paul ponzi, i thought you were referring to the 90 minute interview, which i just finished listening to. 3.5 hours is too much for me too, ha!

someone out there, please take the kevin shields challenge

I'm going to listen in my sleep to the remastered deluxe version of this interview and will report any hypnagogic reveries thus triggered if I can remember them.

Had he talked about the very heavy concept behind the mbv album much before?

Those general revelatory/apocalyptic themes Shields was claiming went into m b v seemed to potentially tie into an end-of-Mayan-calendar/Dec 2012 timeline, so at least he was only a month or so late on that thematic deadline

xpost To my knowledge he had not.

honest to god there's times i almost want to challops and say this is their best album but probably just because it's new

― downton arby (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, February 4, 2013 3:28 PM (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

eight years later it is no longer new and I think I agree it is their best album

One day we will wake up in the morning and there will be a new MBV record.

Another reason to stay alive

I totally forget I pre-ordered the Isn't Anything and Loveless vinyl

i think i got the non-deluxe of isn't anything? i have no idea. i finally played it the other day, it sounds amazing

I got the Loveless vinyl with the nice sleeve, it sounds pretty great

Hmm mine never arrived

oh no I mean I ordered it from Boomkat a couple months ago, they had copies in stock at the time somehow

Mine says "available 10.20.21" on the confirmation email?

Oh cool, good to know

vinyl finally arrived today, loveless and isn't anything

pretty hard not to talk about this vinyl master and not sound like a dork but it is really really amazing and makes me want to spew "like hearing it for the first time" type hyperbole

it's just like, i dunno, the layers seem more separated or i can hear space where there didn't feel like any (in the old CD version I had)

how does your digital setup compare to your analog? This just arrived for me back home for me from HHV and i look forward to checking it out. I enjoyed the Discogs reviews that are like..i cannot tell the difference from the digital sourced vinyl but I'm glad this exists

i really need to swear off posting from my cellar good day!

omg CELLULAR i did not mean for this

I have a pretty good digital setup but I haven't a/b'd them, just got the record today

Back in the actual day I had an OG Australian pressing of Loveless, I used to fkn hate that LP, on my cheapshit bedroom record player it used to skip like crazy and the tracking distortion made it semi-unlistenable - remember being so relieved when I got it on CD!

I can't remember selling that LP but I must've, and it would have been for $20 or something, it's worth hundreds now of course.

Find it kind of funny and unexpected that the band whose MO was essentially dissolving the rock format in a sea of distortion are now some kind of standard bearers for a nu-audiophilia

PS I have of course rebought the deluxe all-analogue cut of Loveless and it sounds pretty cool on my middle-aged man turntable, so I cannot draw any conclusions from all this - I do think it's definitely a record that sounds -different- on vinyl

I am neither a hardcore audiophile nor a hardcore Loveless fan but I bought the analog LP as a birthday gift for my wife and it sounds noticeably better IMO.

haven't listened to Isn't Anything for a long time, "Feed Me With Your Kiss" esp the opening sounds so "Touch & Go" Jesus Lizard, et al. to me, were they following that pigfuck/post-punk stuff going on in America?

They were definitely aware, given their Husker/Dino Jr interests.

His collaboration w Patti Smith on her spoken The Coral Sea (two shows, two discs, minus her opening solo sets) is worth checking: the guitar isn't and is like in MBV---somebody on ILM mentioned Stars Of The Lid---it's him drawing on thee powers v. strategically---put my fairly concise review in this stash when began (?) to have doubts about future of villagevoice.com:
http://myvil.blogspot.com/2016/06/southern-crossing.html
(Listened to all the MBV I could find while writing, incl. much live stuff then on the 'Tube, incl. Shields hopping up and down on earthquakes, casual rabbit right at home.)