The Return Of My Bloody Valentine

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.)

xpost: the root inspiration for both bands was the Birthday Party, too though.

^ indeed, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'd also heard scratch acid and killdozer through that god's favorite dog comp on tough & go

*touch

feed me with your kids was like two years before the first jesus lizard album though iirc?

^ now that's a pig fuck song title.

A+ typo

xpost
oh yeah, it was more just me using them as shorthand for the whole scene because the initial bassline and drum beat reminds me a lot of JL

were kevin and the gang sonic youth fans at all?

yeah definitely

KS talks about the influence of sonic youth et al during that period in this interview: https://thequietus.com/articles/08745-kevin-shields-interview-mbv-my-bloody-valentine

TP: So the new sound began here...

KS: Well... by that time, live we'd become that kind of band anyway, we just hadn't recorded it. Live we'd always been much harder than the records ever were. The records were like playing games. They were conceptual, all the early ones, they had kind of sick lyrics and... it just felt like we were messing about. Then when Bilinda joined, around that 86-87 period, we were getting into Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr, Sister and EVOL by Sonic Youth... they put a different slant on everything for me. A slightly more melodic, more soulful, more beautiful element. And when Bilinda joined it all became more balanced. So we were happy with the You Made Me Realise EP because suddenly we had something we could play live. The difference between the record and what we were live was much less. And it was actually easier to play that most of the stuff from the Ecstasy record.

So for the You Made Me Realise EP we got five days in the studio. Which we were very grateful for, because before that we'd been given seven days to make a mini-album, that Ecstasy thing. But because of how we lived at the time - we were in squats and had a very transient, free life – we didn't rehearse too much. Even back then we'd write in the studio, just go in with the basic bare bones of stuff. But then we got two months to make Isn't Anything, in a residential studio in Wales. And the guy we were recording with was a good guy, Dave Anderson – he'd been in loads of interesting bands like Hawkwind and Amon Duul II, as a teenager he'd been over to Germany – so he gave us a crash course in Krautrock. We'd been listening to loads of it, but he told us all the stories about taking acid all the time, getting into all sorts of trouble... so lines were crossing in the right way, you know? And when we were making the You Made Me Realise EP I'd become consumed by a certain attitude... but to be honest it came out more on Isn't Anything than the Feed Me With Your Kiss EP, which was more the darker side.

TP: The darker side?

KS: I mean, the band always sits between positive and negative, I guess, and that was veering towards the negative. A darker sound. People listen to the Feed Me With Your Kiss EP and say it's a bit more lo-fi than the one before, because I was becoming more conscious of high frequencies and - partly from the hip-hop thing - I was thinking "You don't have to keep putting all this top end on everything, making it all separate and bright." The '80s production value, basically. So the sound of that record is part of that whole attitude, which was solidifying around that time, but it's all low frequencies, not much top end.

interesting about amon duul ii though, it's nice to think that the low end on FNWYK is a nod to 'archangel thunderbird'

*argh FMWYK

Feed Nick With a New Keyboard

Dave Anderson, aka the "idiot who left his bass in the van" according to his Hawkwind replacement Lemmy.

nice; yeah it really does make sense that that's what they were into at the time. it's a very easily decoded influence and i always just assumed they were sonic youth fans — just had never heard it from anyone directly in the band.

also this made me chuckle:

that Ecstasy thing.

it seems like he genuinely does loathe that early material.

i own both the deluxe and the non-deluxe issues of loveless now, lol, anyway i can confirm that the deluxe analog cut sounds marginally better to me but also holy shit how good does this thing sound

was working from home alone today and was able to turn it up, something really does happen to this record when it's loud

The non-Deluxe remember is actually closer to the master (from first gen tapes), the deluxe analogue cut is made from copies as I understand it (I mean they didn't chop up the actual master to make it).

But I'm back to thinking the only real Loveless is the original DAT master ;-)

listening to the deluxe Isn't Anything now having bought it but not gotten round to putting it on and it sounds really really good, it jumps out of the speakers

Took me months to sort out a replacement platter for a turntable I’d bought, but got it all installed and set up today. Currently drowning in Isn’t Anything which sounds lovely on my very pedestrian Pro-Ject.

remember how there were going to be an ep, maybe even a new album by end of this year

*tremelos the memory of that up and down and out the brain hole at top volume*