My Bloody Valentine
My Bloody Valentine formed in Dublin in 1983 and spent years going nowhere in particular. Lineups shifted, gigs came and went, and nobody involved thought of it as a career. "We were not really a proper band," Kevin Shields recalled. "We just did gigs and rehearsed occasionally. It was basically just noise." The band found its footing in 1988 with the You Made Me Realise EP, then signed to Alan McGee's Creation Records, where Shields began developing the guitar techniques—tremolo-bar manipulation, layered tracking, tones chased for weeks at a time—that would come to define an entire genre. Shields has since pushed back on the tidiness of that genre's internet-era story, noting that American contemporaries like Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth shaped the band's sound as much as anything happening in the UK, and that acts such as House of Love rarely make it into the shoegaze narrative at all, as he told Mixdown. His own account of the Loveless years is calmer than legend suggests: not trauma, he insisted, just an unwillingness to finish something too soon.
At a glance
- Active
- 1983–1997, 2007–present
- From
- Dublin, Ireland / London, UK
- Records in the issues
- 3 (1988–2013), 1 of them a Start here pick
- Original labels
- Creation Records and mbv records
- Listening guide track
- “Sometimes”
Listen
In the Shoegaze and Dreampop listening guide: “Sometimes”
In the issues
- Shoegaze and DreampopPrincipal · 1982-1997
Shoegaze and Dreampop is a genre from Thames Valley and London, UK, 1982–1997. Its principal artists include My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride and Cocteau Twins. This issue covers 10 essential albums and 16 dated events.
Records
Isn't Anything
1988 · Go deeper in Shoegaze and DreampopOriginal release: Creation Records · CRELP 040 CD · CD · UK 1988Isn't Anything is the record where My Bloody Valentine found their own language. Released in 1988 after the band signed to Creation, it introduced Kevin Shields' tremolo-bar guitar technique—bends and pitch-shifts that made the instrument sound liquid rather than struck—and set the template other shoegaze bands would spend years chasing.
Listen on SpotifyLoveless
1991 · Start here in Shoegaze and DreampopOriginal release: Creation Records · crelp 060 · 12″ Vinyl · UK 1991Loveless is shoegaze's magnum opus, recorded over roughly two years at nineteen different studios at a reported cost of £250,000. Released in November 1991, it set the production standard the genre would be measured against for decades. Kevin Shields would record a guitar part, listen back, decide the tone was wrong, and start again—a process that nearly bankrupted the label that funded it.
Listen on Spotifym b v
2013 · For the obsessed in Shoegaze and DreampopOriginal release: mbv records · mbv cd 01 · CD · UK 2013m b v arrived 22 years after Loveless to near-universal acclaim, proving the wait had been worth something and that the sound Kevin Shields pioneered still had somewhere to go. Released in February 2013 with no advance warning, posted straight to the band's website, it crashed the servers within hours. Some of its sessions dated back to 1996 and 1997, additional instrumentation layered on by Shields himself years later rather than recorded fresh with the full band, a fact Shields has discussed candidly in later interviews. As of 2021 he was still promising more new music was coming.
Listen on Spotify
Family tree
Bands that shared members with My Bloody Valentine, and who.
- Primal Scream1982–Kevin Shields
Places
- Protocol StudiosLondon · 1980s-1990s · Shoegaze and Dreampop
One of 19 studios where My Bloody Valentine recorded Loveless, becoming central to Kevin Shields' perfectionist quest for revolutionary guitar tones. The studio witnessed Shields' all-night experimental sessions that nearly bankrupted Creation Records.
- Creation Records OfficeLondon · 1983-1999 · Shoegaze and Dreampop
Alan McGee's label headquarters became the epicenter of shoegaze as he signed My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Slowdive, giving them artistic freedom despite the financial risks that nearly destroyed the label.
Voices
Quotations from the issues, each matched word for word against the source it links to.
“There's been an internet retelling of things that leaves out all of the American bands, you know, like bands like Dinosaur Jr were very influential at the time… Sonic Youth as well, to the UK bands.”
“We did a tour in 1991, and by the end of it, it was declared by the NME in a big headline – this band has killed shoegaze. We weren't even considered part of shoegaze at the time.”
“You've gotta remember that everything we sound like was set in stone before the first so-called shoegazing band had even put a record out. We are that. If we sound like them, it's because they sound like us.”