Shoegaze

rivetrenuck

Well-known member
I just felt like writing about the greatest type of guitar music in the world Shoegaze Dream Pop. Its like Pop Noise music.



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Unfortunately couldnt embed any of the Jesus Mary Chains.

Let get it rolling, I think there are only 5 bands that actually did this well.

My Bloody Valetine, JMC, Ride, Slowdive,
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
There's apparently lots of Brazilian shoegaze that I never had the patience to look up...

Slowdive - Rutti is off the scale of good...
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I would say MBV are by far the best of the proper shoegaze bands, a million times better than Ride or Slowdive.

This is the best song...

 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I would imagine theres loads of Japanese shoegaze bands I haven't heard, but definitely Boris do the MBV thing quite well

 

Leo

Well-known member
'Shoegaze' is the worst genre name ever by the way

i always thought it was clever, actually. a perfect depiction of the initial wave of bands, you pretty much knew what the music sounded like when you first read the phrase.
 

connect_icut

Well-known member
I am a massive, massive MBV fan but I don't care for most actual "shoegaze". To me calling MBV shoegaze is like calling Jesus a Christian.

Nevertheless, I recently posted 2 CDs-worth of related sounds on my blog and the whole thing went modestly viral. The compilations were called Dream Rock & Noise Pop 1985-1993 and they featured: The Jesus & Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, My Bloody Valentine, A.R. Kane (can't believe nobody mentioned them yet!), Sonic Youth, Loop, The House of Love, Ride, Cocteau Twins, Lush, Ultra Vivid Scene, Pale Saints, Moose, Swervedriver, Drop Nineteens, The Boo Radleys, Slowdive, Medicine, Black Tambourine, Swirlies and loveliescrushing (a really great, little-known band, well worth investigating).

You can read about and download the mixes here:
http://bubblegumcage3.com/2011/01/17/mix-cd-dream-rock-noise-pop-1985-93-vol-2/

Please note the constricted time-frame, which accounts for the absence of A Sunny Day in Glasgow, the only indie band I've given a fig about in recent years.

Also note that, when I was compiling the mixes, I deliberately avoided overlap with my world-famous UK Post-Rock compilations (also available through that blog post), which accounts for the absence of: Disco Inferno, Butterfly Child, Insides, Laika, Moonshake, Flying Saucer Attack, Papa Sprain, Seefeel, Bark Psychosis, Piano Magic and many, many others. Out of all those, I'd really recommend Papa Sprain to anyone who likes dreampop/shoegaze/whatever - another truly remarkable and sadly little-known band. I wrote about them here (the only other post I've done which went anything like viral):

http://bubblegumcage3.com/2009/10/0...-delightfully-confusing-world-of-papa-sprain/

Oh and I should also mention that the new Seefeel album if friggin' awesome.
 
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CrowleyHead

Well-known member
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1st and 3rd bands are the fragments of the 2nd.
 

rivetrenuck

Well-known member
thank you connect_icut for the blog post, Loads of stuff in there that I've never heard before, its gonna be wicked!.

Also Massive fan of Brainjonestown Massacre, Did anyone watch "Dig", The dude is a twat, but great musician.

I totally forgot about A Place to Bury Strangers!!! when i heard their first album, i think my head exploded. The sweetest thing ever. Interesting that they have broken into different bands, need to do more research. :cool:

Also I love the Genre name Shoegazers. Even while listening i gaze at me shoes. and just love saying the word to.


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The guitars on this are so sick, and the haunting voice.

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Far to dreamy! guitars take over me.
 
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MatthewH

makes strange noises.
I'd just like to say an enthusiastic YES to the mere idea of a thread about shoegaze.

True story: my first band was heavily influenced by all that stuff, and were featured on a comp full of similar-sounding bands. I actually dropped off a review copy of the comp at the local arts weekly with a pair of shoes that I'd bought from a charity shop for a few bucks. Included were instructions somewhat like:

1. place shoes in easily-visible place.
2. place cd in player.
3. play cd.
4. gaze at shoes.

It didn't work, of course.
 

skull kid

Well-known member
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^under-appreciated classic imo
 

franz

Well-known member
well... MBV are certainly great, but i have no idea why they would be regarded as the unimpeachable tops... Shoegaze is a sound, imo, whose promise is only fulfilled through tracks scattered across the discogs of many bands... frankly i have been trying for years and am still trying to squeeze all the juice that i feel i should be able to get from the sound.

one band whom i can say for sure have not received the attention they deserve is Medicine... both Shot Forth Self Living and the Buried Life are great great albums--sonically and from a songwriting standpoint.

 

connect_icut

Well-known member
well... MBV are certainly great, but i have no idea why they would be regarded as the unimpeachable tops...

Well, from my point of view, MBV are the unimpeachable tops of music, full-stop and "shoegaze" is a derogatory term used to describe half-baked bands' rather cheap efforts to rip off their ideas. Having said that, when researching those compilations, I was pleasantly surprised by some stuff - Slowdive, it turns out, were fantastic and even Moose had at least one good song in 'em. Some of the things I discovered were less surprising, though (Chapterhouse really were shit).
 

franz

Well-known member
people tend to point to Loveless as an unparalleled studio achievement--which i wouldn't necessarily argue with, but to me Isn't Anything just sounds like one album among others of its ilk (and possessing only a few great tracks in my opinion). if you follow the trajectory of that area of rock/pop through the 80s you can see the shoegaze sound developing long before Loveless ever hits the ground. Jesus and the Mary Chain dropped Psychocandy in 1985. 4AD and the Cocteau Twins span the 80s.

i'm interested in the chronology because i've been chewing on the idea of a sensibility which coarses through shoegaze for a few years now... offhand, goth and certain art pop (David Sylvian) new wave, dream pop, and noise rock gradually morph into slowcore and shoegaze and post-rock and there is a lot of entanglement to my mind...

but chronology aside, even if every band on the scene were ripping off or reacting to the MBV sound, i wouldn't care, because there are plenty of great songs (without having the studio splendor turned up to 11) and/or great articulations of the sound that are not MBV. and in fact, when i think about it now, in spite of Loveless' amazingness, i think i am reacting a bit to the fact that, well, it's palette is pretty intensely refined/limited, and so, to me it starts to feel not wholly satisfying as some kind of end-all be all stand in for "Shoegaze". It's a term that, for me, does denote something positive (even if really elusive).

Slowdive definitely have a whole host of songs that are amazing. In the "post-era" Blue-Skied and Clear from Pygmalion is pretty flippin' spectacular...
as far as earlier stuff goes, i like this one quite a bit:

Haven't entirely connected with Chapterhouse, but Pearl is a pretty nice response to Soon... debatably both tracks are drawing from AR Kane and other folks who were beginning to dabble with drum machines in that kind of sound in the late 80s (Bark Psychosis, Stone Roses, etc.)...

Kitchens of Distinction have some greatness in them, as do Pale Saints, the Lilys, Swirlies, i'm trying with Curve again--Doppelganger this go 'round--and having more success than i've had in the past...

a propos of Boris, there are a few interesting modern metal affiliated things i've come upon (Shoe Doom was making the rounds as a term for a minute there, and the idea definitely had some allure for me... some Jesu tracks hit the spot for sure, some Nadja, and Goslings (to the noisier end for sure, but then somehow more true to some of the sounds hallmarks by way of their lady vocalist...)
people tend to swear by Alcest...

but yeah, my strongest feelings are reserved for Medicine, and it is in part on the shocking strength of those finds that i've persisted in my diggings here...
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
one band whom i can say for sure have not received the attention they deserve is Medicine... both Shot Forth Self Living and the Buried Life are great great albums--sonically and from a songwriting standpoint.
Yeah they're great. I like that first album more than 'Loveless'. Baffles me it was a debut and on a major label. Something flukey afoot. That track 'One More' above is one of my favourite tracks of all time.

The main guy, Brad Laner, has done heaps and heaps of stuff ever since. Solo electronic stuff as Electric Company, solo song-y stuff under his own name, collabs with all kinds of people, and reformed Medicine as a duo with Bruce Lee's daughter on vox. None of it thaaaat interesting compared to that first Medicine album in particular, tho.
 
Shoegaze is a sound, imo, whose promise is only fulfilled through tracks scattered across the discogs of many bands... frankly i have been trying for years and am still trying to squeeze all the juice that i feel i should be able to get from the sound.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesmas 'Love Is A Stream' from last year is a bit like a a distilled shoegaze album, as if you stripped away all the rock bits and just leave the white-out guitar textures. The tracks are relatively compact and there's still a sense of "song" underneath, so the result sits right on the fence between shoegaze and ambient/drone.

 

rivetrenuck

Well-known member
well... MBV are certainly great, but i have no idea why they would be regarded as the unimpeachable tops... Shoegaze is a sound, imo, whose promise is only fulfilled through tracks scattered across the discogs of many bands... frankly i have been trying for years and am still trying to squeeze all the juice that i feel i should be able to get from the sound.


Could you share more bands that you feel that fall in the same specturm?

Loved the Medicine, Love Lush!

Great idea with the shoes!
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
@rivetrenuck;

Actually APTBS is one of the fractions. Skywave was the original band, and then two of those guys from that band formed Ceremony which is the more dreamy side, whereas Oliver formed Strangers and is more focused upon washes of sound.

I got introduced to them through a friend who was their tour manager for a moment. They were really cool, and I got to watch them do "Death Valley '69" by Sonic Youth. Coincidentally after railing against "Daydream Nation" while praising "Bad Moon Rising" to my friend.

Honestly I dislike shoegaze/post-rock because it seems like it developed into this big... guitar masturbation soundtrack. Not like say, Malmsteen or something but rather, like everything are these big guitar crescendos of passionate ecstasy and then CLIMAX! But that said, I do enjoy a lot of it when I get the chance, there's just a lot of things about it I hate. And certain bands.
 

Leo

Well-known member
i don't hate shoegaze, but one problem i have is it never seemed to develop. it is what it was, in some respects.
 
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