{ Monday, February 16, 2004 }
My Bloody Valentine is reportedly releasing two anthologies and a DVD in 2005. This is huge. And last night I watched Lost in Translation, which was shot through with beautiful MBV. Oh, and if you weren't aware, Loveless is the greatest album of all time.
LINK | 2:14 PM | TB
Second greatest album of all time, actually. Top honours go to Nurse with Wound's "Rock and Roll Station."
Your mileage may, of course, vary.
Matt Shepherd | February 17, 2004 5:32 PMThat is very exciting news - although this box set has been mooted for what must be five years now. Kevin Shields is not a man of swift and decisive action.
jpb | February 18, 2004 5:40 AMThere's a scene in Lost in Translation where a stunning looking book can be seen on the coffee table in the hotel room for a good 10 seconds. It's Issue #8 of McSweeney's Literary Journal.
My girlfriend made that beautiful book. :)
So very cool to see it in a movie.
Caterina, I love you. My ears are still ringing from the one and only MBV gig I went to, back in 1992. The last update I heard about Kevin Shields was that he was content to sit in his Brixton house and smoke dope all day. And to be honest, he deserves that privilege.
nick | February 19, 2004 8:57 AMToo bad I can't get their albums here in India. Not even from my usually reliable vendor of esoterica.
Perhaps someone would host a torrent seed ? :P
Vanlal | February 20, 2004 1:15 AMMy Bloody Valentine:
There's no such thing as a good band with a girl in it!
My Bloody Valentine are band who are largely known for one album, 1991’s “Loveless.” It’s one of those rare albums that really sounds like the album cover looks: it’s an indecipherable blur of noise and distorted guitars. It boggles the mind that so many goofy hipsters are so in love with an album with so little to offer. All of the songs sound basically the same, and you really have to pay attention to figure out where one ends and the next begins. The lyrics are so incomprehensible that they might as well not even be there at all. Although there are certainly noises on this album that have never been made before or since, none of them are particularly interesting noises. In most cases, it’s the sound of several guitars playing a couple of chords with a few layers of grinding and feedback in the background. Sure, it probably took quite a bit of time and money to make those sounds, but are they particularly interesting? No, not really; when it’s all put together, it just sounds like a waterfall of sludge running through your speakers.
After “Loveless,” My Bloody Valentine managed to top themselves in the only way they knew how: by doing absolutely nothing for ten years. There still hasn’t been another album by them, although “sonic genius” Kevin Shields has done a couple of minor projects since Loveless, such as production, remixing, joining Primal Scream, and getting monstrously fat. This year marked his return to making his own music: he added four songs to the soundtrack to “Lost In Translation,” one of which sounds like a significantly devolved My Bloody Valentine song and the rest of which are immeasurably boring instrumentals. Was it worth the wait? Nobody cares, because they’ve all forgotten what they were waiting for.
Chris Chaudruc | February 20, 2004 9:34 AMUmmm that preceeding screed was from somethingawful.com - I did not pen it.. just thought a dissenting opinion would be funny. I actually own two MBV cds and plan to dig them out this weekend to see what I missed the first time around....
Chris Chaudruc | February 20, 2004 9:36 AMLoveless DOES rule. I wanna see MBV
tour with Slowdive. Then life would be
complete
Chris, if you didn't already figure it out, the MBV article is a parody. Something Awful is a internet humor site (and a really funny one at that). The author of the article is admittedly an MBV freak. He probably knows more about Kevin Shields, that Kevin Shields knows about himself.
Mike | February 22, 2004 1:32 AMSomethingAwful.com is a parody site? NFW!
BTW I dug out Loveless this weekend, got to track 4 and my kids and wife shut it down.
Hard to be a goofy hipster in my house.
Chris Chaudruc | February 23, 2004 9:36 AMI remember meeting Kevin Shields back in 1991 when we were both in NYC for the CMJ Music Marathon. He was a bit of an enigma. His sister was there too, and she was really friendly and kind. That music was the thing for me at that time because I also saw Slowdive play on that trip. I was a huge My Bloody Valetine fan in those days, and overall their (MBV) music has dated well.
The thought of a box of "outtakes and alternate versions from the band's better-known 1988-1991 period" fills me with horror though. Maybe it'll be cool, but outtakes by their very nature are sketchy and unformed--hence, not that interesting. I'd be a lot more interested in a disc of new material than retreads of the (distant) past.
Daniel | March 5, 2004 4:14 AMhttp://www.sbktechnology.com/jewsusmusic/wwwboard/messages/9323.shtml currentmontgomerypause
confessed | April 19, 2006 2:33 PMhttp://www.bx19.com/wwwboard/messages/2709.htm complimentwhosewondered
adept | June 7, 2006 1:02 PM{ Post a comment }
Emphatic Yes!! Lost in Translation actually only has one MBV song in it, though. Kevin Shields, the creative and perfectionist mastermind behind MBV, contributed four songs to the soundtrack, though, which was very encouraging, since he's been a virtual recluse since Loveless came out. Thanks for being the bearer of good news!
James | February 17, 2004 1:08 PM