Kevin Shields- whats the fuss?

Johnnyseven

ICBM said:

I must admit that having now corrected my mistake of never having heard him and listened to Loveless…

Hmmmm. It's OK. I don't dislike it, but it does seem rather aimless. I'll give it another go.

A big surprise given the reputation for ear-bleeding volume is that it's actually quite a quiet album. I'll try it louder.

It's one of those albums that takes a few listens to get into it, but is worth it when you do. But then some may just not be into it.

I'm a fan of MBV but prefer Isn't Anything to Loveless, like someone said earlier - it's got great songs played with a ton of noise over the top. The Creation era ep's record is well worth a listen if you don't get the textural songs on Loveless, a number of the tunes are more 'song-like'.

Like what he does or not, Kevin Shields created a different way of using the guitar to create interesting sonic textures - that's why he's held in such high regard. Some people just get tired of listening to guitar heroes widdling over everything and want to hear something different, but if you only like widdling guitar players you may find MBV doesn't do it for you - but that's fine, each to their own and that.

meltedbuzzbox

I dont know if its just me but textural seems to mean a shit load of fuzz and reverb?

GavRichList

...and the layering of 200+ guitar tracks

meltedbuzzbox

GavHaus said:

...and the layering of 200+ guitar tracks

all with fuzz and reverb? :-P

GavRichList

Im in!

ICBM

Johnnyseven said:

ICBM said:

I must admit that having now corrected my mistake of never having heard him and listened to Loveless…

Hmmmm. It's OK. I don't dislike it, but it does seem rather aimless. I'll give it another go.

A big surprise given the reputation for ear-bleeding volume is that it's actually quite a quiet album. I'll try it louder.

It's one of those albums that takes a few listens to get into it, but is worth it when you do. But then some may just not be into it.

I'm a fan of MBV but prefer Isn't Anything to Loveless, like someone said earlier - it's got great songs played with a ton of noise over the top. The Creation era ep's record is well worth a listen if you don't get the textural songs on Loveless, a number of the tunes are more 'song-like'.

Like what he does or not, Kevin Shields created a different way of using the guitar to create interesting sonic textures - that's why he's held in such high regard. Some people just get tired of listening to guitar heroes widdling over everything and want to hear something different, but if you only like widdling guitar players you may find MBV doesn't do it for you - but that's fine, each to their own and that.

No, I absolutely don't like widdling guitar players, at all! I generally prefer guitar as a sonic textural instrument rather than as a lead instrument.

I just didn't hear very much in the way of structure or songs, it all seemed a bit aimless. That said, I will certainly listen again.

Drew_TNBD

Gotta be honest... MBV aren't one of the bands that really mean much to me, even though they're kinda one of the founding bands in the shoegaze genre.

ICBM

I have to admit that having listened to Loveless three times now and Isn't Anything twice, I just don't really get it either. Ah well. It was worth trying...

I don't even hear why they were so original - The Jesus & Mary Chain were doing very similar-sounding stuff a couple of years earlier at least (Psychocandy was from 1985) - but with better songs. And which I do like, a lot. They quickly progressed into much more melodic, structured songs though.

Plukky

ICBM said:

I have to admit that having listened to Loveless three times now and Isn't Anything twice, I just don't really get it either. Ah well. It was worth trying...

I don't even hear why they were so original - The Jesus & Mary Chain were doing very similar-sounding stuff a couple of years earlier at least (Psychocandy was from 1985) - but with better songs. And which I do like, a lot. They quickly progressed into much more melodic, structured songs though.

Fair play for giving it a go.  The way I see it is that I am massively fond of it in my 40s because it was part of my 20s.  I wouldn't necessarily be expecting anyone coming to it now to be amazed.

Personally, I don't see much connection with JAMC, they were much more song orientated from the start IMO.

ICBM

There's a lot on Psychocandy that's a similar sort of wall of fuzz, reverb and feedback which I thought bits of Isn't Anything in particular sounded like, although I admit that was about the end of it - the J&MC changed pretty much straight after that, Darklands is much more candy than psycho .

thermionic

I went to see JAMC play PsychoCandy live a few weeks ago and it was marvellous. 30-year old albums shouldn't sound that great!

 

I bought the MBV albums at the time, and it's interesting to see who they developed into the logical end point of Loveless. It's a bit like Piet Mondrian's abstract expressionist coloured squares - they started off as warehouse windows in the Amsterdam canalside scenes of his early work, gradually becoming more stylised and abstract over time.

Heartfeltdawn

Everything outside of Loveless in the MBV catalogue can be burnt as far as I'm concerned. Isn't Anything sounds crap. There's such a huge innovation jump between that and Loveless. 

ICBM said:

I don't even hear why they were so original - The Jesus & Mary Chain were doing very similar-sounding stuff a couple of years earlier at least (Psychocandy was from 1985) - but with better songs. And which I do like, a lot. They quickly progressed into much more melodic, structured songs though.

JAMC = the Velvet Underground with a wall of reverb and distortion. Never understood why they got hailed as being so wonderful. 

There is the talk of Loveless being all reverb and fuzz which is wrong. There's very little reverb on it. Most of the guitar tracks were very dry and recorded in mono. A lot of sounds went through effect processors, recorded clean, and then reamped through distorted amps. There's a lot of messing around with graphic EQs to put movement into the recorded sound, like using an LFO on a synth line to make the sound move around a bit. There's a lot of sampling in Loveless going on and I can see why a lot of electronic musicians got into it and why a lot of the regular guitar folk don't really get into it. It's way more complex than just 'Jazzmaster into fuzz pedal into reverb and hit record'. 

 

Johnnyseven

There is a lot of reverse reverb with whammy bar action though, the Early Reflections setting on the Yamaha SPX90 - I think that's the one he uses. His board is mostly different flavours of fuzz/dist with a load of eq pedals and a fair few auto wahs.

Heartfeltdawn

Johnnyseven said:

There is a lot of reverse reverb with whammy bar action though, the Early Reflections setting on the Yamaha SPX90 - I think that's the one he uses. His board is mostly different flavours of fuzz/dist with a load of eq pedals and a fair few auto wahs.

The Early Reflections setting is very different from actual reverse reverb. It's more like a multi tap delay setting. I spent a long time with the SPX50D trying to duplicate the effect there using an SMMH in Multitap mode and got it pretty spot on. I then switched up to Hofa's IQ-Reverb and the Liquidsonics Reverberate plugin, both of which have full reverse modes and they're totally different to the Early Reflections sound.

Recording Loveless, there weren't anywhere near the same number of pedals seen now on his board. This interview with Alan Moulder gives a few of the tricks out, like recording two amps with tremolo at different rates to get this powerful moving sound. I suspect that's not too much different from Johnny Marr's trick on How Soon is Now, that getting everything in sync is the key to creating this big powerful wash of sound. Another interview (can't remember the link) details how some tracks used EQ on recorded tracks to give a wah-wah type effect rather than using a wah. It's all dem ickle details

Having sat down with the SPX50D and compared it to the Multi tap setting on the SMMH, it's very similar. 

Reverend

https://fbcdn-photos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xta1/v/t1.0-0/11265323_10153338618319459_2415476578273263595_n.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&oh=a70e5aae84dbd6bb32ae5fa74480760e&oe=5608B23D&__gda__=1439807856_49b63938409c9248565c96f71806ab27
His tech just posted this in my Facebook.

meltedbuzzbox

are those pink hiwatts?