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Every music genre has two things in common: 1) No two people agree on its precise boundaries; 2) Artists dislike being labeled as such.

Shoegaze is no different. It’s a particularly unusual genre in that its name describes neither a sound nor a connection to music history. This music is, above all else, a place to explore the outer limits of guitar texture. And emotionally, shoegaze turns its focus inward. The extreme noise eliminates the possibility of socializing while the music is playing, leaving each member of the audience alone with their thoughts. It’s music for dreaming.

For our purposes, we chose as a starting point for shoegaze the years following the release of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s landmark Psychocandy, when the many bands influenced by their approach to guitar integrated the noise into new pop contexts. From there, our story of shoegaze expands outward, stretching beyond its initial explosion in the early ’90s and incorporating more instrumental contexts and approaches to the style along the way. The ranch season 2 download torrent.

Offering another perspective on what it all means is Pete Kember/Sonic Boom, whose early band Spacemen 3 wielded a great deal of influence on the records that follow. https://golmango.netlify.app/photography-proposal-template-free-download.html.

WHERE WERE YOU IN ’91?
By Pete Kember

If you had told me in 1991 that, 25 years later, I would be prefacing a list on shoegaze, I would probably have told you it would never happen. Few of these bands paid even the slightest, fleeting lip service to commerciality. I couldn’t see it.

But things change; even by 1993, I was redressing my views. I played a show that year in L.A. at Johnny Depp’s Viper Room. The support band, to my complete amazement, was a shoegaze band—a Mexican shoegaze band. The thought that this music might cut through cultures with such broad swathes had never occurred to me before, but now I could see this genre might have long legs, in between that gaze and those shoes.

Drifting back further, my memory of the British hack who first coined the term “shoegaze” was that he was being derogatory. It was a put-down, no question. And when the shoegazer moniker didn’t seem to irritate enough, the same wags started referring to these bands as “the scene that celebrates itself,” based apparently on the fact that these bands dug each others' music. Dear oh dear.

The funny thing is, like most of these genre tag inventions of the media, such as “punk” or “grunge,” the term “shoegaze” stuck—and apparently, it stuck hard.

So who put the sole in shoegaze? Were the shoegaze bands solely looking to their suede for inspiration? I think not. The long bangs and fuzz pedal fever of the time made any downward-looking aim nigh impossible to pinpoint, and whilst I'm not saying these bands did not have the hippest footwear, I think it was what was underneath them that was key: the pedals. It's a lot about the pedals. Effects that could take the meekest guitar and make it roar likea doorman on steroids, or soar like jet planes in an aerobatics display. Creating sounds you could actually taste and smell.

Download game battlehand mod apk minecraft. So while we’re looking down, let’s discuss the roots. Spacemen 3 have sometimes been referred to as “godfathers of shoegaze,” and that may be true in some small part; I may not be the best judge of that. But, for my coin, it was My Bloody Valentine that held the alpha DNA.

Pete Kember; photo by Aaron B

Spacemen 3 had been asked to support the Pixies on their first big UK tour in the fall of 1988. We didn’t want to. MBV, however, did, and I went to see their show and offer solidarity at one of the local black holes, the strangely named Roadmenders Centre in Northampton. Sure, I’d seen them before at shows we’d played together, but something had changed. The whole set was epic, faultless, but one song stood out in particular: a warped, staggering guitar voyage that seemed to encompass the quintessence of psychedelia. Pulsing waves. Building elliptical loops. A reverbed synchromesh of vocals, bass, drums, and guitar. Looming to unholy crescendos, then, devastatingly, snatching them away. Evaporating into a silken heat haze to rematerialize again out of the effervescence, stronger and more entrancing each time.

That song was “You Made Me Realise.” And so a genre was born.

So, we’ve mused the spark, we’ve considered the slights. What else are the keys? Culture in the early ’90s went into the sort of elastic overdrive it tends to do once every couple of decades. Special periods of super-stimulated energies and interests, and the role of the newly emergent drug ecstasy, should not be underestimated.

But time is perception, and perception was key to these times and this music. In reality, what begat shoegaze doesn't matter a fraction as much as the records made in that period. Some of these bands went on to considerable success—the Mercury Revs, My Bloody Valentines, and Brian Jonestowns—whilst others disappeared in a cosmic flash, but left behind stellar recordings that'll be enjoyed for eons. Bands who made records people have never stopped pulling from the racks, a few of them on this list.

I think it’s fair to say the early ’90s fluoresced like neon. And at times, so did shoegaze.

Pete Kember is a musician, producer, and founding member of Spacemen 3.

• Fat Cat

Tomorrow Never Comes

2002

Of all the bands on this list, Xinlisupreme, the Japanese duo of Yasumi Okano and Takayuki Shouji, are perhaps the furthest from shoegaze in the purest sense of the term. They move between a few different sounds on their 2002 debut Tomorrow Never Comes, from industrial clang to dark-leather, Suicide-style rhythmic relentlessness. But the heart of their approach is abrasive guitar noise speckled with melodic glitter, a blast of sound that owes everything to what makes shoegaze special. Xinlisupreme’s secret is found in excess; there are many moments here where the noise saturation seems as dense as it could possibly be, and then an extra crank on the distortion knob sends it into the stratosphere. It’s music of extremes, exploring what lurks behind the wall of static. Shoegaze’s influence in metal has been well documented, but its intersection with noise music is just as significant. Tomorrow Never Comes sits squarely at that meeting point. –Mark Richardson

Listen: Xinlisupreme: “You Died in the Sea”

• Gern Blandsten

Turning Into Small

1998

Toward the end of the ’90s, shoegaze was in a lull. The majority of the original wave of bands had either broken up or morphed into something more streamlined; meanwhile, only a handful of new bands had popped up to supplant them. All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors were a bright spot in that relative emptiness; hailing from New Jersey, the outfit released its second album, Turning Into Small, in 1998. Steeped in oceanic pressures as well as stratospheric swirl, it serve as a celebration of all things My Bloody Valentine-like.

But the album is no mere act of revivalism. Amid all the traditional shoegaze signposts—cosmically blissful riffage, demure vocals, disorienting undertow—were ambitious, dynamic arrangements and studio wizardry that sat somewhere between post-rock and Radiohead. Before shoegaze came back into vogue in the 21st century, Turning Into Small not only kept the flame alive, it humbly upped the genre’s game. –Jason Heller

Listen: All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors: “Your Imagination”

• Relapse

Tired of Tomorrow

2016

In the grand turmoil of shoegaze, vocals are stretched into abstract bellows and moans, processed into strips and steam. They’re mixed to become modest conduits for the whole. Which makes the carnage of Nothing’s lyrics all the more striking, and the more insidious. The Philly band is “The Walking Dead” of gorgeous guitar rock, a troupe of former hardcore punks with a troubled, ex-con frontman whose sunny, psychedelic gloss yields to a decaying core. On the group’s second album, Tired of Tomorrow, singer Domenic Palermo’s wordplay is inversely blunt and graphic; on the sprawling “A.C.D. (Abcessive Compulsive Disorder),” his pleading to his lost love includes shuddering imagery like, “Swallow corrosive confection/Decay, rotting in your womb/I can wallow in your filth.”

Still, Tired of Tomorrow rings dreamily throughout, from insistent, anthemic guitar crescendos to Palermo’s sweeping, rasping moans that nod to Kurt Cobain. The heavy guitar squall of the title track opens with him mewling, “The train moves east/Where the mouths of Heaven/Devour me” from a graveyard. It’s as close as Nothing get to bliss, though their guitars have already offered it. –Stacey Anderson

Listen: Nothing: “A.C.D. (Abcessive Compulsive Disorder)”

• What Goes On

Taste

1989

The function of telescopes is to help people see more clearly—but in the group named after them, things get more nebulous. The band has tread between shoegaze, psychedelic noise, and shimmering pop since they formed in Burton upon Trent, England, in the late ’80s, and they’ve remained opaque throughout; the founding singer/guitarist Stephen Lawrie is either charming or maddeningly cryptic in interviews, depending on who’s telling the story. When asked by the blog When the Sun Hits what his life philosophy is, he replied simply with, “#”.

Luckily, the Telescopes’ debut album, Taste, is a sumptuous example of how music can communicate what language can’t. It was released in 1989, when shoegaze was still fledgling, and it’s a varied sampler of the eventual staples of shoegaze: zonked-out space rock, drone-laced rhythms, gossamer guitars. The divergence from the eventual genre lies in Lawrie’s vocals, which don’t so much swoon as sock you in the stomach, especially on the lysergic “Threadbare.” On Taste, that shock to the senses proves enlightening. –Paula Mejia

Listen: The Telescopes: “Threadbare”

• Projekt

Bloweyelashwish

1994

Shoegaze records can initially sound off, imbalanced; the guitars are so centered and swollen and the drums are buried so deep in the mix, the result can feel more like a manufacturing error than an intentional design. Bloweyelashwish, the debut album by Scott Cortez and Melissa Arpin-Duimstra of Lovesliescrushing, is so extreme with these elements, it almost feels like something committed to tape that was corrosive or half-melted. (Fittingly, it was initially released on cassette, and took two more years to come out on CD.) There are no drums, just loops and implied pulses, and the guitars are occasionally so processed that they escape traditional effects—the Michigan duo approach the sound of the ocean (“Dizzy”), the creak of a door in a haunted house (“Fur”), or a jet engine that is producing, deep within its frequency, an angelic tone cluster (“Halo”). Like its title, the album is a compression; Bloweyelashwish can function as shoegaze, ambient, and harsh noise. It’s a Brutalist column of prettiness. –Brad Nelson

Listen: Loveliescrushing: “Halo”

• Caroline
• Hut

Delaware

1992

In many ways, shoegaze can be considered a quintessentially British genre. Not only was its name coined by the notoriously fickle UK press, but the majority of shoegaze bands share a common geography that informs their sound—not just a cohesive physical scene, but a working-class Englishman ethos. However, in the early 1990s, a small handful of contemporary U.S. bands were melding American college rock with the main characteristics of shoegaze, taking cues from bands like Galaxie 500 and Dinosaur Jr. and marrying their fuzzed-out guitars and introspective lyrics with the more sonically expansive, atmospheric production of Kevin Shields and company.

Delaware, the debut album by Boston’s Drop Nineteens, has a confessional and poetic aura that’s completely in line with the alt-rock of the era. Singers/guitarists Greg Ackell and Paula Kelley’s assertive-yet-sweet vocals intertwine seamlessly around lyrics of mournful youths and angelic first loves. But there’s an undercutting edginess to Delaware that distances itself further from typical shoegaze dreaminess; “Reberrymemberer” spews a grunginess reminiscent of Pixies’ more experimental moments. Operating under and isolated from the shoegaze umbrella simultaneously, Delaware sets Drop Nineteens squarely in a league of their own. –Cameron Cook

Listen: Drop Nineteens: “Reberrymemberer”

• DMZ

Future Perfect

2004

If Elliott Smith had channeled his bruised musings into shoegaze, he might have sounded a bit like Autolux. On the group’s debut, Future Perfect, co-vocalists Eugene Goreshter and Carla Azar share his talent for spinning angular, affecting imagery; on the saccharine “Sugarless,” the two sing, “Leave your mask inside its box/Smile cold anatomy/Teeth like stars you start to freeze” behind steady guitar groans and Azar’s brawny drums. The album is a muscled display of songs that invert common tropes; in “Great Days for the Passenger Element,” Autolux twist a common shoegazing theme, dreaming, into more sinister territory. “We don’t know what side we’re on/Dreaming with our heads cut off,” they wail. If nightmares always sounded this pretty, we’d welcome them every time. –Paula Mejia

Listen: Autolux: “Great Days for the Passenger Element”

• Mercury

Afrodisiac

1994

Centered around the North Carolina twins Danny and Daniel Chavis (on guitar and vocals, respectively), the Veldt could never be pigeonholed, no matter how hard the world tried to put the African-American brothers and their bandmates into a box. Their full-length debut, Afrodisiac, is the great lost American shoegaze classic, with influences from Prince to Cocteau Twins to A.R. Kane to the Jesus and Mary Chain (who contributed a remix) fused into something beautiful and unique. Daniel’s sweet, beautiful singing and Danny’s shimmer and crunch just keep clicking with the help of bassist David Burris and drummer Marvin Levi. Whether it’s the lead single “Soul in a Jar,” the slow swoon of “Heather,” or the exultant skyscraping “Until You’re Forever,” Afrodisiac is packed with songs that should have been massive hits. The one-two punch of “You Take the World” and “Revolutionary Sister”—dual acknowledgements of power, struggle, and love—are anthems that demand to be heard. –Ned Raggett

Listen:The Veldt: “Soul in a Jar”

• Creation

Against Perfection

1993

The rise and fall of Adorable mirrors that of shoegaze itself. The band played their first gig in January 1991, right at the start of shoegaze’s imperial phase, and released their debut album Against Perfection in March 1993, when Suede were the new media darlings. Between these two points, Adorable released a run of singles strong enough to cement their place in shoegaze lore, including the epic hubris of “I’ll Be Your Saint” and the sky-scraping bounce of “Sistine Chapel Ceiling.” “Sunshine Smile,” in particular, exemplifies all that is stellar about Adorable: a spidery guitar riff that explodes into beatific distortion, singer Pete Fijalkowski’s languid, Ian McCulloch-esque croon, and a rhythm section that burns with the nervous energy of young love. –Ben Cardew

Listen: Adorable:“Sunshine Smile”

• Tooth and Nail

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Gold

1995

Jason Martin, the principal songwriter and sole lifelong member behind Starflyer 59, was raised in a strictly Christian household that banned secular music. Sometime in his early teens, as he snuck through his school buddies’ record collections, he discovered the explosion of British indie music that had recently washed ashore onto U.S. college radio: the Smiths, New Order, the Cure, and, most importantly, My Bloody Valentine—the band that most clearly influenced his future act.

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Gold, Starflyer 59’s second LP, is their most indebted to shoegaze but it also harbors post-grunge heaviness and gritty, feedback-laden riffs. Nonetheless, Martin’s vocals-as-instrument approach to singing and his layers upon layers of gigantic, sludgy guitars cement Gold as an essential entry in the small-but-powerful pantheon of American shoegaze, a stellar interpretation of the genre through the lens of Californian noise-pop. –Cameron Cook

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Listen: Starflyer 59: “When You Feel Miserable”