The reinvention of shoegaze

I've always been a sucker for those dreamy, belly-picking, soundscape bands that in the late 80'es early 90'es got characterized as "SHOEGAZE" bands.

But so much has happened from that period of time up till now, where some of the new breeds of the shoegaze scene have come out.

Some have been here for years and some are new. I would like to come up with a couple of recommendations on very interesting post-shoegaze bands, that I personally enjoy listening to.

But to set the scene, let me just start off with a couple of bands from the original shoegaze era that have had a lot of influence on that post-shoegaze scene.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

My Bloody Valentine. The band that kind of introduced the shoe-gaze world to me.

Their twangy guitars, their kind of slacky drums, the walls of noise totally outplaying the long and dreamy vocals of Kevin Shields and Deb Googe, was what made me listen to their breakthrough EP "You Made Me Realise" and the album "Isn't anything" over and over and over again.

Everything they play is served with a lazy, almost drugged feel, with themes circling around suicide and depression, in that way took over in a good way from the scene that had been occupying up till then. The more goth and new wave scene, that circled around these themes as well.

My Bloody Valentine has always been in my favourite list of bands, and I got everything they have ever released. But everyhing has been a bit quiet around them since their last regular album release - the beauitiful and sonic "Loveless" from 1991. But now they're back and touring this summer, this will be quite interesting, although I do fear a disappointment coming in.

SLOWDIVE

Another important band from that time is Slowdive.

A lush and more bright dreamscape band, that more have roots in the Cocteau Twins sound, but nonetheless just as effective a band as My Bloody Valentine.

The band ceased to exist in 1995, but since then Neil Halstead & Rachel Goswell has continued making lush, but way more country and singer/songwriter songs in the really good band Mojave 3.

Even though My Bloody Valentine has been a huge inspiration for many. Slowdive have had just as much influence, and tributes are plenty. For example the elegnat electronia tribute Blue Skied & Clear. A nice electronica tribute with contributions from Manual, Future 3, Lali Puna, Ulrich Schnauss to name some.

Slowdive evolved very much during their relatively short career. The first full length album "Just For a Day" had some of their best songs in my opinion, with one smash hit "Catch The Breeze" a song that I've listened to a lot of times.

But at the time they had reached the last album : Pygmalion, it was a more complex Brian Eno'ish sound that surrounded them, almost electronic at times.

SWIRLIES

The last band I am going to name from those days are the US band The Swirlies.

One can discuss whether this band really fit in the shoe-gaze bowl, but I think they have some of the lazyness and dreamy guitar stuff that My Bloody Valentine also has. So in my head, they fit fine here.

The Swirlies were just quite more experimental than the two other bands I've wrote about above here.

In my opinion the band were best when they released the album "They spent their wild youthful days in the glittering world of the salons", which has the good heavy twangy guitars, combined with a fat sound.

One really remarkable thing about this band is that they have chosen upon giving away their full albums, so every release they have made, you can simply download from their website here.

Thats a lot of music completely for free.

One more side information that is quite interesting is that their lead vocalist produced the first Mew album, and that the drummer is now very active in the excellent rhythmic indie band Mice Parade.

BACK TO NOW

Today, the original shoegaze bands, have had so much influence on so many bands.

You can hear the remains from the old shoegaze bands just reinvented in new forms. There's a huge amount of bands that has taken the influence from the dreamscape bands that I named above and mixed it together with their own sound universe making the reinvention of shoe-gaze, sometimes all the way and sometimes only with small ideas here and there.

I will come with a couple of examples on interesting bands that I think uses the influences of these bands more directly.

ULRICH SCHNAUSS

Ulrich Schnauss has a very interesting different approach of using the shoe-gaze sound, using pure electronica sounds to really reinvent the sounds of shoegaze.

When I listen to Ulrich Schnauss it's very much the My Bloody Valentine & Slowdive feeling I get, and it's excellent driving music, we've used it on a lot of tours, driving on the autobahn :-)

What makes the sound of Schnauss best, is that he uses a lot of up tempo beats, to drive the songs, and is not afraid to just make a song last for 7-10 minutes, repeating themes again and again. It's very addictive to listen to.

Below is a song from his last album.

Ulrich Schnauss – Look At The Sky (Rob McVey)

RUMSKIB

This is a danish band that I personally like a lot and even have had the pleasure to tour with in Denmark. Rumskib is also very electronica influenced, but uses a more traditional setup, with guitars, bass and drums.

Rumskib (Danish for spaceship) takes a lot of the sound as you know it from My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins and mixes it in to their fine own version of a lush and beautiful shoegaze. It's very bright, very up-beat and very catchy.

The first Rumskib album was made together with another danish electronica act : Manual , which is a bit more like the Ulrich Schnauss stuff, pure electronic, but with guitars. Another act that i do enjoy listening to.

These three actually played a show together recently in London.

A small side bonus information, is that the other guitarist - Peter - from my own band "Late Night Venture", used to be guitarist in Rumskib.

The frontman from Rumskib also has his solo project in his own name, which is a lot like Rumskib, you can visit it here : Keith Canisius.

Listen to the excellent song Dreampoppers tribute just below, this is in my opinion one of their best songs, where Tine really hits it off vocally.

Rumskib – Dreampoppers

SOUNDPOOL

This is a pretty new act in my mind.A band that I haven't known for so long, but happened to stumble over, on MySpace and I really enjoy their sound.

Soundpool is a bit like Swirlies were more experimenting, also more experimental. I think they have a more psychedelic approach, where they mix elements from 60's and 70's pop songs with the infernal sounds of My Bloody Valentine and on top of that adds the long and wavy sounds from organs and high pitch synths.

Below here I've added a live video of the song "On High" from a show they played at ALOFT in NYC



But there's also a kind of interesting darker version on YouTube , that sadly can't be embedded but you can see it here.

M83


So last recommendation and example for this post is the french band M83.

Again one band that uses a lot of electronics, but kind of change forth and back when they are pure electronic and when they are not.

The most resemblant part of M83 sound, that points me towards the shoegaze, is their use of keyboards which I think have some of the same lush and vivid space as you find on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless album.

Specially the song, I've posted a video for here : Don't Save Us From The Flames has that very broad synth played with excellence.



And as a bonus here's an alternate version than the official video. I think I actually prefer the unofficial one .-)



ROUNDING UP

There's so many bands to mention in these post-shoegaze days and I've tried, to cover up some of the new interesting show gaze bands, that I personally like to listen to, but the list is long.

There's so many "new" bands that use the beautifulness of the original soundscaped shoegaze. So here's just a couple of quickies:


Serena Maneesh , The norwegian psych, garage, shoe gaze rock band.
Manual, As I've mentioned above briefly
Secret Shine, UK retro-gazers
Blonde Redhead, which I think have a lot of shoegaze sounds on their last album

And then also all the bands that uses elements here and there in their music.

My own band Late Night Venture is definately using some of the elements you know from the originals.

For example try listening to this song from our coming album.

Late Night Venture - Skylights



I remember recording the guitars on that song, where I used the tremolo arm all the way through the chorus, to make that wavy sound.