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Shoegaze

79 articles

My Bloody Valentine: The Clarendon, London

Live Review by Helen Fitzgerald, Melody Maker, 16 August 1986

MY BLOODY Valentine are young and awkward and dear to the heart, their nervous system centred on Colm's ferocious rhythmic vigour as, embarrassed by having ...

My Bloody Valentine: Bull & Gate, London

Live Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 20 September 1986

(AND PLEASURE-heads must burn...). So here they are in matching mop-tops and lurex star-trek jerkins, and here I am breaking myself on their urge for ...

My Bloody Valentine: Suicide Kisses

Interview by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 15 October 1988

A YEAR AGO, MY BLOODY VALENTINE WERE LINGERING IN SECOND DIVISION INDIE ANONYMITY. THEN THEY RELEASED THEIR EXTRAORDINARY YOU MAKE ME REALISE LP AND SUDDENLY ...

The Membranes, My Bloody Valentine, The Sperm Wails: My Bloody Valentine, The Membranes, The Sperm Wails: Boston Arms, London

Live Review by Everett True, Melody Maker, 17 December 1988

"THERE IS no second encore." Sometimes, the humblest of phrases can take on unlooked-for importance. There is no second encore. What can I say? For ...

Lush: Japanese Whispers

Interview by Chris Roberts, Melody Maker, 18 March 1989

A RUSH OF BLOOD? Lush are nearly as good as their name, which is high praise indeed. ...

Lush For Life

Interview by John Robb, Sounds, 3 March 1990

After all the hype surrounding Lush, their new Mad Love EP was bound to come under scrutiny. But, says John Robb, its mixture of cunning ...

Ride: In The Land of The Riding Sons: Ride: Boardwalk, Manchester

Review and Interview by Len Brown, New Musical Express, 10 March 1990

"TALLULAH GOSH and some bloke from Supertramp" — this is the grim musical history of Oxford according to Ride. ...

Ride: The Daydream Stampede

Interview by Chris Roberts, Melody Maker, 31 March 1990

Three months ago, no one had heard of Ride, yet now they're fast becoming the most sought-after band in Britain, providing positive proof that music ...

Ride: Town Hall, Oxford

Live Review by John Harris, Sounds, 26 May 1990

THE TOWN Hall, a venue that usually forms the setting for nothing more exciting than tea dances and antique fairs, hasn't played host to amplified ...

Chapterhouse: Grooves in the house

Interview by Cathi Unsworth, Sounds, 15 September 1990

CHAPTERHOUSE have been denied their rightful place at the top of the Wah Wah Gods league by the likes of Ride and Swervedriver. But they'll ...

Ride: Nowhere (Creation)

Review by Chris Roberts, Melody Maker, 6 October 1990

BEFORE WE start, one thing: 'Dreams Burn Down', eh? What a stormer! Breathtaking, sickening, walls collapsing all around you and oh look the gazelles are ...

Bleach (UK): Bleach: The Cube, London

Live Review by Everett True, Melody Maker, 20 October 1990

SWEET AND SCOUR ...

Lush: Dear Students (Won't You Come Out To Play?)

Interview by John Robb, Sounds, 27 October 1990

Right now, a thousand acne strewn depressives are bustin' pimples to Lush's cool bedsit beat. But are they the ultimate student band or just the ...

Ride: Graduating With Honours

Interview by Cathi Unsworth, Sounds, 22 December 1990

At the beginning of the year, RIDE were almost unheard of but a series of brilliant records and an old fashioned slog around the country has ...

My Bloody Valentine: All Hail the Future!

Profile and Interview by David Stubbs, Melody Maker, 26 January 1991

For three years, the Valentines were accused of being Mary Chain rip-offs, but the Top 40 hit Glider EP scotched that and now bands like ...

Slowdive: Younger than Yesterday

Interview by Bob Stanley, Melody Maker, 2 March 1991

"A LOT OF BANDS are so precious about influences, thinking they're massively original. I don't think we are." ...

Ride, Slowdive: Forever Now: Ride/Slowdive: Academy, Manchester

Live Review by Andrew Mueller, Melody Maker, 9 March 1991

RIDE, perhaps, are just too much. Too soon, too quick, too assured, too contemporary, too praised, too openly derivative to even be insulted by being ...

Bleach (UK): Bleach: Camden Palace, London/Flip Your Wig, Brighton/Jericho Tavern, Oxford

Live Review by Simon Price, Melody Maker, 20 April 1991

MAN OVERBOARD! ...

Curve: New Cold Dreams

Interview by Chris Roberts, Melody Maker, 4 May 1991

It's all happened very quickly for Curve. Six months ago, they were languishing in obscurity. Then their Blindfold EP turned them into Buzz Of The ...

Bleach (UK): Bleach: Camden Underworld, London

Live Review by Keith Cameron, New Musical Express, 1 June 1991

THE NAME may seem sufficiently undemanding on the syllable front to vouchsafe dodgy contents within, but taken literally it speaks volumes about the nature of ...

Chapterhouse: Pillow Talk

Interview by Jim Arundel, Melody Maker, 20 July 1991

Into the dressing room of the Manchester International comes a figure in tight yellow tartan flares. "The chicks love these strides, man. Ha ha. Anyone ...

Slowdive: Dive Bomb: Slowdive: Just For A Day (Creation)

Review by Paul Lester, Melody Maker, 31 August 1991

WHEN SLOWDIVE gave us their astonishingly lovely eponymous debut single in last December, it sounded, to these ears at least, like the most auspicious debut ...

Lush: Tubular Belles

Interview by Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 26 October 1991

Are LUSH the new Mike Oldfield? Does the old Mike Oldfield reckon his fans are "twats"? Is STEVEN WELLS picking on their gurly petal rock ...

My Bloody Valentine: Loveless (Creation)

Review by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 2 November 1991

VALENTINE DAZE ...

Chapterhouse, My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive, Swervedriver: "Dream-Pop" Bands Define the Times in Britain

Report and Interview by Simon Reynolds, The New York Times, 1 December 1991

THIS YEAR, THE most popular phenomenon in British alternative rock is a wave of hazy neo-psychedelic guitar groups. ...

My Bloody Valentine: Feedback to the Future: My Bloody Valentine

Interview by Jon Savage, 20/20, Spring 1991

THERE MAY BE A HALF-FORMED thought in your head, buzzing vaguely like low-level background noise, that the language we use to talk about music – ...

Lush: Spooky (4AD/All formats)

Review by Betty Page, New Musical Express, 18 January 1992

FILLY SPECTRES ...

Lush: Hazy Daze For The Scenesters

Profile by Simon Reynolds, The Observer, 2 February 1992

Just about the only thing happening in British indie music last year was a rash of blurry, neo-psychedelic bands known as 'shoegazers' or The Scene ...

Ride: Sex And The Singles Band

Interview by Stuart Maconie, New Musical Express, 8 February 1992

They are the model '90s pop group; sensitive young men with floppy hair and languid tunes, displaying cherubic belligerence laced with existential angst. But surely ...

Curve: Never Mind The Parabolics

Interview by Stuart Maconie, New Musical Express, 22 February 1992

Are Curve the manic, desperate and unhinged prince and princess of post-Mary Chain doom pop, or just a couple of old chancers out to make ...

Ride: We Can Be Zeroes: Ride: Going Blank Again (Creation)

Review by Chris Roberts, Melody Maker, 29 February 1992

AND YOU THOUGHT Nowhere was one of the worst album titles of all time! You almost have to hand it to them for having the ...

Ride: Blank Re-Generation: Ride: Corn Exchange, Cambridge

Live Review by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 14 March 1992

YOU KNOW the future has arrived early when Ride make mincemeat of the whole sorry teen-pop equation. ...

Curve: The Bend Of The World As We Know It

Interview by David Stubbs, Melody Maker, 14 March 1992

Their single 'Faît Accompli' is storming the Top 20, their debut album's waiting to make a bigger splash and even John Lydon likes them. Is ...

The Boo Radleys: Everything's Alright Forever (Creation/All formats)

Review by Keith Cameron, New Musical Express, 21 March 1992

OF COURSE, they said it would be this good. And while The Boo Radley's stout-hearted self-opinion was a cheering presence in 1991's (complacen)sea of mumbles ...

Curve, Primal Scream: Curve: Town and Country Club; Primal Scream: Brixton Academy, London

Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 30 March 1992

THE TRADITIONAL concert is being supplanted in some surprising quarters by the rave — anything from an all-nighter in which the group are just one ...

Curve

Profile by Andy Gill, Q, April 1992

WHEN TONI HALLIDAY first bumped into Dean Garcia backstage at a Eurythmics gig, it wasn't so much love at first sight as the first inklings ...

Lush: Spooky (4AD/Reprise) ***

Review by Simon Reynolds, Rolling Stone, 16 April 1992

FOR THE past few years, British indie rock has been dominated by bands known as shoegazers (because they're shy onstage), purveying a style of music ...

Curve, The Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Shakespears Sister: Alan Moulder: Alan Be Praised!

Interview by Tom Doyle, Melody Maker, 18 April 1992

As the man behind Curve, Ride, the Valentines, JAMC and more, producer ALAN MOULDER doesn't seem to be able to put a button-pushing finger wrong. ...

Lush, Ride: Lush: Spooky (4AD/Reprise); Ride: Going Blank Again (Reprise)

Review by Jon Young, Musician, June 1992

VISIONARY ART or nouvelle junk food? Perfect masters of evocative soundscapes, Britain's Lush and Ride can create a mood quicker than you can dim the ...

Moose: XYZ

Review by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 5 July 1992

YOU KNOW, MAYBE the Scene wasn’t so bad after all. Sure, it churned out rapture by rote, but grunge has similarly turned rage into a ...

Ride

Interview by Paul Lester, Rock CD, November 1992

BOYS AND GIRLS. Musos and teenies. Schoolkids and scholars. Indie-bods and bank clerks. At the start of 1992, Ride attracted them all.  ...

Pale Saints: The Choir Invisible: Bringing Pale Saints into Focus

Interview by Susan Compo, Option, Fall 1992

THE PALEST SAINT, not unlike the prettiest star, has to be Saint Gerard Majella, an 18th Century Italian anchorite who, before his death at age ...

The Boo Radleys: Giant Steps (Creation)

Review by Paul Moody, New Musical Express, 1993

TIME FOR a rethink. At some point (just between the dreamy acoustic sway of ‘Wish I Was Skinny’ and ‘Leaves And Sand’ I think, but ...

Ride: Smile (Creation)

Review by Andrew Mueller, Melody Maker, 9 January 1993

PERHAPS MORE than any of their contemporaries, Ride encapsulate all that is right and wrong with the English music scene as she now is, or ...

Curve: Radio Sessions (Anxious)

Review by Pete Paphides, Melody Maker, 5 June 1993

THE TROUBLE WITH a lot of these session albums is that they don't appear to offer you anything tastier than slightly less slick versions of ...

Slowdive: Pitta And Twisted

Interview by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 12 June 1993

Be gone with your rich kid, shoe-gazing, dilettante prejudices about SLOWDIVE, for the kebab-loving, apolitical enemy of the Manics are shaking off those untrendy pigeon-hole ...

Curve: Present Intense

Interview by Caitlin Moran, Melody Maker, 18 September 1993

Curve's new album, Cuckoo is a blood-curdling riot of pain and paranoia. So, it would seem, are Curve's lives. As CAITLIN MORAN finds out when ...

Ride: A journey that's really necessary

Interview by Caitlin Moran, The Times, 22 April 1994

Ride were a hit, then they weren't, now they are again. No wonder Caitlin Moran still can't work out why she loves them so much. ...

Lush: From Despair to Mayfair

Interview by John Harris, New Musical Express, 4 June 1994

Beneath the all-quaffing, lager-frenzied, dreamy-weamy indie muso LUSH there's a band bristling with resentment, heartbreak and anger. Visiting MIKI BERENYI's nightmare childhood and EMMA ANDERSON'S ...

Ride: Garage, London

Live Review by Paul Moody, New Musical Express, 4 June 1994

RIDE STRIPPED BARE ...

Lush: Manchester University

Live Review by Simon Warner, The Guardian, 8 June 1994

CHALLENGED TO a drinking contest by their support band, noise merchants Blessed Ethel, Lush claimed they had chosen the easier option by returning to the ...

The Boo Radleys: Zeleste 2, Barcelona

Live Review by Johnny Cigarettes, New Musical Express, May 1995

IT IS 4.42 AM. Martin Carr and Bob Cieka of the Boo Radleys are, um, "relaxing" at the Hotel Sol in Barcelona after a suitably ...

Ride: Tarantula (Creation/All formats/Available for one week only)

Review by Paul Moody, New Musical Express, 2 March 1996

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOILS ...

Ride: Eight-legged Snooze Machine: Ride: Tarantula (Creation)

Review by Neil Kulkarni, Melody Maker, 9 March 1996

Who will mourn RIDE, now gone the way of all flesh? Not NEIL 'Bites Yer Legs' KULKARNI, that's for sure ...

Lush: Brighton Beach, Leeds

Live Review by Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 11 March 1996

Two trumps for a busted Lush ...

The Boo Radleys: Didn't Feel A Thing

Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1996

"IF YOU'RE doing music you're supposed to pretend you're something you're not, you're supposed to sound as though you come from a different planet. You're ...

Curve: Arc Psychosis

Interview by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 7 September 1996

HOLLYWOOD IN THE 1930s wasn't the ideal environment for a feisty, independent actress with an inquiring mind who couldn't stomach the iniquities of the studio ...

Lush: Britpop Bondgirls Bash Bonehead Badboys

Profile and Interview by Susan Whitall, Yahoo! Internet Life, 26 August 1997

WHILE MUCH IS made of such supposed role models for young girls as Alanis Morissette, a young woman whose deeply personal songs are co-written by ...

Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser (2000)

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 18 July 2000

Ms. Fraser on singing and singers; on being a Cocteau Twin; on her relationship with Robin Guthrie; on friends and co-conspirators like Peter Gabriel, Damon Albarn and sometime beau Jeff Buckley.

File format: mp3; file size: 72.9mb, interview length: 1 h 19' 38" sound quality: ***

My Bloody Valentine

Retrospective and Interview by David Stubbs, Uncut, February 2004

Pre-Oasis, My Bloody Valentine were Creation's greatest band. Between 1988 and 1991, they reinvented electric guitar music before vanishing in a haze of white noise. ...

Slowdive: Just For A Day (Sanctuary Records)

Sleeve notes by Ian Watson, Sanctuary Records, 2005

DECEMBER 1990: Neil Halstead, then a mere two months into his twentieth year on the planet, is talking about the legacy of Slowdive, a group ...

Slowdive: Souvlaki (Castle Music)

Sleeve notes by Ian Watson, Castle Music, 2005

NEW YORK, sometime in the early Nineties. A rough-voiced man in his mid twenties is phoning a hotel to reserve a room for himself and ...

The Boo Radleys: Boo Radleys: Find The Way Out

Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, August 2005

THE ONLY CREATION act other than Oasis to have a Number One album, the Boos were arguably the label's most eclectic signing. This 35-track anthology ...

The Boo Radleys: Find The Way Out

Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 8 September 2005

OH THE BOO RADLEYS. Sadly it appears that they have now been dealt a shite hand by history and will be forever known by most ...

Ride: A Guide

Guide by Ira Robbins, trouserpress.com, 2007

INSPIRED BY THE Manchester rave scene, Oxford-to-London art-school quartet Ride – Mark Gardener (vocals/rhythm guitar), Andy Bell (vocals/lead guitar), Steve Queralt (bass) and Laurence 'Loz' ...

Chapterhouse, Moose, My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive: Diamond Gazers: Shoegaze

Retrospective and Interview by Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 27 July 2007

AT THE START of summer 2007 a supple, shimmery thread started darning itself through a long line of euphoric-sounding albums. From Maps to Blonde Redhead, ...

My Bloody Valentine: "It's The Opposite Of Rock 'N' Roll"

Retrospective by Simon Reynolds, Spin, August 2008

In 1991, My Bloody Valentine released one of modern rock's most influential albums, then mysteriously imploded trying to surpass it. On the eve of their ...

Kelman: I Felt My Sad Heart Soar

Review by John Doran, The Quietus, 5 January 2009

I CAN’T remember any of the platitudes that I was offered, the first time I ever got my heart broken. ...

The Horrors: Primary Colours (XL)

Review by Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian, 1 May 2009

THEY LIVE! Left for dead after a hype overdose two years ago, Southend's ghost-train garage-rockers have risen again with a second album so daring and ...

Moose: …XYZ

Review by Wyndham Wallace, The Quietus, 28 September 2009

IT'S AN ACCIDENT of history that Moose are said to have inspired the term 'shoegazing'.  ...

Slowdive: Pygmalion (Cherry Red Records)

Sleeve notes by Ian Watson, Cherry Red Records, 2010

THE PRESS hated it. Let's get that out of that way at the beginning. With the UK in the midst of Britpop euphoria, there was ...

Yo La Tengo: Fade (Matador)

Review by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, February 2013

It takes four to Tengo. ...

My Bloody Valentine: Why My Bloody Valentine's mbv Has Come Too Late To Stop The End Of The World

Comment by John Doran, Noisey, 4 February 2013

SO, WHAT THE ancient Mayans predicted has finally come to pass, and only five weeks later than expected. At the end of a 5,125 year ...

My Bloody Valentine: Hammersmith Apollo, London

Live Review by Chris Roberts, The Quietus, 14 March 2013

Chris Roberts heads to MBV's final night of their UK tour and finds himself pondering linguistics and culture while stood in their volume wind-tunnel ...

My Bloody Valentine: m b v

Review by Rob Young, Uncut, April 2013

ARRIVING IN THE week the skeleton of Richard III was identified, receiving m b v is similarly akin to coming face to face with history. ...

Slowdive: Village Underground, London

Live Review by Ian Gittins, The Guardian, 22 May 2014

IT'S DIFFICULT TO recollect a more maligned musical movement than the early '90s shoegaze scene. ...

Ride (2015)

Interview by Jim Sullivan, Boston Rock/Talk, 3 October 2015

Andy Bell and Mark Gardener talk about why they've reunited; explore the nature of noise, abstraction and the blend of guitars; being back on tour, and singing songs written in their teens at 40. Oh, and they play, unplugged, a couple of tunes!

File format: mp3; file size: 38.2mb, interview length: 41' 11" sound quality: *****

Lush reunited: "We were seen as a band who'd turn up to the opening of a packet of crisps"

Retrospective and Interview by Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian, 3 December 2015

Ethereal, angelic shoegazers or boozy scenesters? Seventeen years after they split up, Lush talk about their legacy – and why they have reformed. ...

Ride: Weather Diaries

Review by Alfred Soto, Spin, 15 June 2017

Ride's disappointing comeback album lacks the things that made them great. ...

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