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Artist:

My Bloody Valentine

My Bloody Valentine

Formed:
1984 in Dublin, Ireland

Representative Songs:

"Soon," "Only Shallow," "Feed Me With Your Kiss"

Representative Albums:

Loveless, Isn't Anything, Ecstasy and Wine

Similar Artists:

All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors, Amp, Lenola, Fennesz, Half String, The Telescopes, Lilys, The Verve, Medicine, Th' Faith Healers, Spiritualized, Catherine Wheel, Sugar, Ultra Vivid Scene, Swervedriver, Slowdive, Pale Saints, Moose, Mercury Rev, His Name Is Alive, Chapterhouse, Yo La Tengo, Spacemen 3, Ride, The Primitives, Pixies, Lush, Loop, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Hüsker Dü, The Flaming Lips, Dinosaur Jr., A.R. Kane

Influences:

The Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, The Durutti Column, The Cramps, Cocteau Twins, The Birthday Party, The Beach Boys

Followers:

Joy Wants Eternity, Foxtail Somersault, Maps, Tulsa, Tsk Tsk, Thrushes, Mezzanine Owls, Soundpool, Love of Diagrams, The Jealous Girlfriends, Place to Bury Strangers, The Year Zero, The Manhattan Love Suicides, LoveLikeFire, Working for a Nuclear Free City, Hototgisu, Terra Diablo, A Shoreline Dream, Fields, Brief Candles, Howling Bells, Panda & Angel, Brightblack Morning Light, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, Serena Maneesh, Psychic Ills, Roommate, Belong, New Buffalo, Sybris, Amusement Parks on Fire, Silversun Pickups, Benoît Pioulard, Darker My Love, Engineers, Oslo, Boy in Static, Vanishing Kids, The Slow Signal Fade, Lopops, The Violettes, Human Television, Julian Fane, Autolux, Asobi Seksu, The Legends, Tyko, The Ponys, Lansing-Dreiden, Aenone, Fksche, On!Air!Library!, Giant Drag, Koushik, Argentine, Scarling, Run Run Run, The Meeting Places, Pacific UV, M83, Ambulance LTD, Cardia, Cardenales, Eluvium, Mew, Shelby, Lab Partners, Guitar, All the Queens Men, (The Sounds of) Kaleidoscope, Glifted, Stella Luna, The Raveonettes, Schizo Fun Addict, The High Violets, Xinlisupreme, The Big Sleep, Gemma Hayes, Mercurine, Division of Laura Lee, Cruiser, Waterline Drift, Now It's Overhead, Divided Body, The Emily Rock Group, Bunsen Honeydew, The Man I Fell in Love With, Film School, Big Heavy Stuff, Electric Birds, Ester Drang, Manitoba, My Vitriol, Polar, Isobella, Early Day Miners, Paik, Moonbabies, The Helio Sequence, CKY, Corcovado, Slumber Party, The Melody Unit, Deardarkhead, Clearlake, Study Of The Lifeless, Sneakster, Accelera Deck, The Microphones, Duraluxe, Macha, The Gloria Record, Salomé, Sweet Trip, Miss Bliss, Mazinga Phaser, Mahogany, isan, Grimble Grumble, Bethany Curve, All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors, Alison's Halo, The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa, Bon Voyage, Piano Magic, Abunai!, Frank Lenz, Cornelius, Delightful Little Nothings, Cherry Smash, The Christines, Mogwai, Kid Million, Broadcast, Shift, Amp, King Black Acid and the Womb Star Orchestra, Lenola, The Third Eye Foundation, Lusk, Getaway Cruiser, Amnesia, Fennesz, Rocketship, The Apples in Stereo, Half String, Plexi, Bowery Electric, Starflyer 59, Birdbrain, Garbage, The Chemical Brothers, Hum, St. Johnny, Ninotchka, Seefeel, Velocity Girl, The Swirlies, Soda Stereo, Majesty Crush, Whipped Cream, The Verve, The Hair & Skin Trading Company, Lulabox, Spirea X, Catherine Wheel, The Boo Radleys, Cranes, Chapterhouse, The Smashing Pumpkins

Performed Songs By:

Colm O'Ciosoig, Kevin Shields, Bilinda Butcher
  • Genre: Rock
  • Active: '80s, '90s
  • Major Members: Kevin Shields, Colm OClosoig, Deb Googe, Conway, Dave, Blinda Butcher, Tina

Biography

Like the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, and the Jesus & Mary Chain before them, My Bloody Valentine redefined what noise meant within the context of pop songwriting. Led by guitarist Kevin Shields, the group released several EPs in the mid-'80s before recording the era-defining Isn't Anything in 1988, a record that merged lilting, ethereal melodies of the Cocteau Twins with crushingly loud, shimmering distortion. Though My Bloody Valentine rejected rock & roll conventions, they didn't subscribe to the precious tendencies of anti-rock art-pop bands. Instead, they rode crashing waves of white noise to unpredictable conclusions, particularly since their noise wasn't paralyzing like the typical avant-garde noise rock band: it was translucent, glimmering, and beautiful. Shields was a perfectionist, especially when it came to recording, as much of My Bloody Valentine's sound was conceived within the studio itself. Nevertheless, the band was known as a formidable live act, even though they rarely moved, or even looked at the audience, while they were on-stage. Their notorious lack of movement was branded "shoegazing" by the British music press, and soon there were legions of other shoegazers -- Ride, Lush, the Boo Radleys, Chapterhouse, Slowdive -- that, along with the rolling dance-influenced Madchester scene, dominated British indie rock of the late '80s and early '90s. As shoegazing reached its peak in 1991, My Bloody Valentine released Loveless, which broke new sonic ground and was hailed as a masterpiece. Though the band was poised for a popular breakthrough, it disappeared into the studio and didn't emerge over the next five years, leaving behind a legacy that proved profoundly influential in the direction of '90s alternative rock.

Born in Queens, New York, Kevin Shields' family moved to Dubin, Ireland, when he was six years old. In his teens, he became obsessed with pop music, eventually playing in Complex with his childhood friend Colm O'Ciosoig. In 1984, Shields and O'Ciosoig formed My Bloody Valentine with vocalist Dave Conway and keyboardist Tina, taking their name from a slasher horror film. The group relocated to Berlin, where they released the Birthday Party-influenced EP This Is Your Bloody Valentine on the Tycoon label in 1985 to little notice. The following year, the band moved to London, where they added bassist Debbie Googe. By the summer, they had signed to Fever and had released the EP Geek!, which again was ignored. Later that year, the group moved to Kaledoscope Sound, releasing The New Record by My Bloody Valentine EP, which illustrated a Jesus & Mary Chain influence. The following year, the band moved to the Primitives' Lazy Records, releasing Sunny Sundae Smile early in the year. That EP was the first My Bloody Valentine record to mesh airy melodies with grinding guitars, but the two EPs that followed in 1987 -- Strawberry Wine and Ecstasy -- were more focused and acclaimed. Conway left the band by the end of the year and was replaced by vocalist/guitarist Bilinda Butcher, whose breathy vocals fit the group's evolving sound more appropriately.

My Bloody Valentine's new sound coalesced with the group's first full-fledged album, 1988's Isn't Anything. Released on Creation Records, Isn't Anything was greeted with enthusiastic reviews in the U.K. music press and the band's following increased dramatically by the end of the year; in fact, their reputation had become large enough to attract the attention of Sire/Warner Bros. in the U.S., who became the group's American label. Two other EPs, Feed Me With Your Kiss and You Made Me Realise, were also quite popular, and by the beginning of 1989, bands that based their sound on My Bloody Valentine's droning swirl began to appear. The group retreated to the studio in 1989 to record its follow-up, which meant that only one EP, Glider, was released during that year. By the spring of 1990, it was becoming clear that the follow-up to Isn't Anything wouldn't be appearing anytime soon, and reports about Shields' growing perfectionism began to circulate in the U.K. weekly music press. Soon, it became apparent that the band's lengthy recording sessions were crippling Creation Records, but the group's audience was still passionate despite the inactivity: the Tremolo EP was released at the end of 1990 to considerable acclaim, and managed to climb into the U.K. Top 40.

When My Bloody Valentine's second album, Loveless, finally appeared in late 1991, it was greeted with uniformly excellent reviews and it became a hit within the U.K., reaching number 24 on the charts. In America, the group made significant inroads, particularly by supporting Dinosaur Jr. Despite the band's acclaim and growing audience, Loveless didn't sell in numbers to recoup its reported 500,000 dollar recording cost and Creation dropped the band from their label roster; Creation wouldn't fully recover until 1994, when they signed Oasis. My Bloody Valentine signed with Island and entered the studio at the end of 1992 to record a new album. In 1993, the group contributed a James Bond cover to a charity compilation.

And then...nothing happened.

Shields built a home studio with his Island advance and reportedly completed two separate albums, but scrapped them both. Often, the studio ran into technological problems. Between 1993 and 1997, both Googe and O'Ciosoig left the band, leaving only Shields and Butcher; after driving a cab for about a year, Googe formed Snowpony in 1996. There were signs that My Bloody Valentine were emerging from hiding in 1996, when the group contributed to the Wire tribute album Whore and Shields played on Experimental Audio Research's Beyond the Pale. Still, no new My Bloody Valentine material appeared. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
 
 
Wikipedia: My Bloody Valentine
This article is about the music group. For the movie, see My Bloody Valentine (film).
My Bloody Valentine
Clockwise from top right: Kevin Shields, Debbie Googe, Colm O'Ciosoig, Bilinda Butcher
Background information
Origin Flag of Ireland Dublin, Ireland
Genre(s) Alternative rock
Shoegazing
Post-punk
Noise pop
Dream pop
Years active 1984–1993
Label(s) Creation
Sire
Members
Kevin Shields
Bilinda Butcher
Colm O'Ciosoig
Former members
Dave Conway
Debbie Googe
Tina (last name unknown)

My Bloody Valentine were an alternative rock band formed in Dublin, Ireland in 1984. Sharing their name with that of a Canadian slasher film, the founding members were guitarist/singer Kevin Shields and drummer Colm O'Ciosoig. The band's lineup during their heyday also included singer-guitarist Bilinda Butcher and bassist Debbie Googe. The band's use of guitar distortion, tremolo, and digital reverb placed them as part of the shoegazing movement.

History

Early history

O'Ciosoig and Shields met in the late 1970s as teenagers when they both answered advertisements placed by another musician. The two joined the band in question, The Complex, and soon discovered they shared an interest in punk rock. The pair quickly became friends and played in many bands around Dublin over the next six months, including a band with Liam Ó Maonlaí, later the lead singer for Hothouse Flowers.

Toward the end of 1983, the two formed their own band with Dave Conway. The band was filled out by various members and split up and reformed on several occasions during 1984. Also during this period, Conway was travelling through Europe and, on the strength of the band's home recordings and the contacts he made on these travels, had managed to book the band a concert in Holland. The three recruited Conway's then-girlfriend Tina to play keyboards; adopted Conway's suggested name, My Bloody Valentine, for the concert; and moved to Holland. They stayed in Holland for three months before a dearth of opportunities and a lack of correct documentation meant they had to leave. The band then chose Berlin as their next destination, where they recorded the mini-LP This Is Your Bloody Valentine for Dossier Records. The record failed to have the expected impact, and, after four months, the band left Berlin, returning to Holland briefly before settling in London around the middle of 1985.

Settling in London

After a period when My Bloody Valentine members lost contact with each other as they looked for places to stay, the band regrouped and decided to audition bass players. The band lacked a regular bassist; they relied on keyboards to fill out the bottom end of their sound. However, Conway's girlfriend had decided to leave the band, not feeling confident in her abilities as a keyboard player, and as the band had taken to using a bassist towards the end of their stay in Berlin, they felt recruiting one was vital to furthering the band. Having been given the telephone number of a bass player in London, Debbie Googe, they invited her to audition, and, ultimately, to join the band, fitting in rehearsals around her day job.

At this point the band were rehearsing at Salem Studios, which was connected to the record label Fever Records. Impressed by what they heard, Fever agreed to release an EP. On the strength of this, Googe left her job, and the EP, titled Geek! was released in December of 1985. The band soon began to play on the London gig circuit, but the record failed to make as much of an impact as the band had hoped. With the band's slow progress, Shields contemplated moving back to New York, where some of his family were living.

However, Joe Foster, an associate of Creation Records, had decided to set up his own label, Kaleidoscope Records, and persuaded the group to record for him. The EP, The New Record by My Bloody Valentine, was the result, released in early 1986. The band also began to step up their live appearances, developing a small following and venturing outside London for gigs.

The band's next record was Sunny Sundae Smile, an EP released in February of 1987 by Lazy Records, which also managed The Primitives. The label had been interested in My Bloody Valentine for a while, and the band turned to them this time due to Foster's indifference. The band then spent a few months performing in London and managed to secure a support slot with the Soup Dragons. During the shows with the Soup Dragons, Conway announced his decision to leave the band; he had been ill for a while and felt he was not reaching his potential with the band. Conway has since pursued a career as a writer.

Conway departs; Butcher joins

Conway's departure left the band without a vocalist, a situation they decided to remedy by placing advertisements in the music press. This process proved torturous, Shields noting, "It was pretty dangerous, I made the mistake of mentioning The Smiths because we liked their melodies, the whole thing was disastrous and excruciating, you should have seen some of the fruitballs we got."

The band eventually turned to recommendations and experimented with having two vocalists: Bilinda Butcher and a male vocalist named Joe. It soon became apparent that Joe was unsuited to the band, and Shields took on second vocalist duties alongside Butcher, whom he noted "sounded all right and she could sing one of our songs which sounded fine, we just had to show her how to play guitar."

Under pressure from Lazy Records to produce an album, the band compromised, citing the need for time to stabilize their line-up. The band agreed to record an EP followed by a mini LP. The EP, Strawberry Wine, consisted of three tracks and was released in August of 1987. The mini-LP, titled Ecstasy, followed soon after. The EP has been described as "certainly the better of the two releases." Ecstasy has been criticized as showing "a group who appeared to have run out of money halfway through recording," which was indeed the case. Ecstasy also suffered from production difficulties, as Shields described errors in mastering the recordings. These hardships were not surprising as the band were paying for the recording. The deal with Lazy was that they do the promotion, the band pay for the recording. Nonetheless, the tracks 'Strawberry Wine' and '(Please) Lose Yourself In Me' were their own versions of 'C86', carried by Butcher's backing vocals. Another track 'Clair', reminiscent of Jesus and Mary Chain, was an indication for their noisy, heavier sounds in their future releases.

Creation Records

The band was approached by Creation Records and, upon being told "not to worry about anything, just do it," they signed, entered the recording studios, and emerged eight months later with the EP You Made Me Realise, which was the band's breakthrough release and was voted 6th in John Peel's Festive 50 and 2nd in Melody Maker's editors' poll for 1988. The group followed with the EP Feed Me with Your Kiss and the LP Isn't Anything (1988), which married shimmering guitar distortions to ethereal folk-pop. The thick, swirling, multi-layered guitar sound developed by My Bloody Valentine would later be termed shoegazing by the British press because of the band's tendency to look down while performing in order to manipulate effect pedals. (See Kevin Shields individual entry for an explanation of how he achieves his band's unique sound) The tag was applied to a number of new alternative pop-rock or rock outfits of similarly heavily layered and distorted guitars and vocals similar to those of Butcher or Shields. Around this time, Shields said in an interview with Melody Maker that he really liked Suzanne Vega - that he even found her sexy, which might explain their tendency towards soft singing, despite Shields claiming in another interview that he sang softly as he was not confident. Again, the track 'All I Need' suggests their new direction towards ambient, abstract sounds which was to fully blossom in their next release.

The follow-up LP Loveless (1991), the best known LP of their career, is generally considered representative of their sound: a distinct blend of warped, effects ridden guitar sounds, ambience, and folk tunes. This time the main vocal duties were taken by Bilinda Butcher.

In 1999 Pitchfork Media declared Loveless to be the greatest album of the 1990s;[1] in their 2003 revision of the list, however, it moved to number two, swapping places with Radiohead's OK Computer.[2] Shields also has been described by Alan McGee as "a genius artist. A visionary.",[3] while an NME review of Loveless declared, "...however decadent one might find the idea of elevating other human beings to deities, My Bloody Valentine, failings and all, deserve more than your respect."[4]

In late 2006, Mike McGonigal, founder of Chemical Imbalance fanzine, wrote a book on Loveless for Continuum Books' 33 1/3 series.

Post-Creation

After leaving Creation Records in 1992 and signing with Island Records, the band did not produce another release, and their final recorded song made available for release was a cover of "Map Ref. 41N 93W" by Wire, appearing on Whore: Tribute to Wire in 1995. Rumors spread among fans of albums being recorded and then shelved. Debbie Googe left the band to form Snowpony. Colm O'Ciosoig eventually left and recorded an album with Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star. Shields collaborated sporadically with other artists, most notably Experimental Audio Research, Curve, Dinosaur Jr, Sugar, The Civilians and Primal Scream. He claimed in an autumn 2003 NPR interview that Island Records had stopped financing My Bloody Valentine after they had spent half a million pounds of Island's money.

Later rumors

In an interview in the January/February 2007 issue of Magnet, Shields claimed that My Bloody Valentine will record another album "100%" . . . "unless we die or something."[5]

In August 2007, internet rumors claimed that the band were negotiating a performance at the 2008 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival or were planning a world tour. Vinita Joshi, Kevin Shield's manager, said that "there are no confirmed shows at all."[6][7][8]

Discography

See also List of songs by My Bloody Valentine

Albums

Isn't Anything - November 1988, Creation Records

Loveless - 4 November 1991, Creation Records - #24 (UK)

EPs

This Is Your Bloody Valentine - January 1985, Tycoon records

Geek! - December 1985, Fever

The New Record by My Bloody Valentine - September 1986, Kaleidoscope Sound

Sunny Sundae Smile - February 1987, Lazy records

Strawberry Wine - August 1987, Lazy records

Ecstasy - November 1987, Lazy records

You Made Me Realise - August 1988, Creation records

Feed Me with Your Kiss - November 1988, Creation records

Glider - April 1990 UK #47, Creation records

Tremolo - February 1991 UK #29, Creation records

Compilations

Ecstasy and Wine - November 1989, Lazy Records (Compilation of Strawberry Wine and Ecstasy EPs)

Singles

Year Title U.S. Modern Rock
1992 "Only Shallow" 27

References

  • Brown, Nick. "My Bloody Valentine" Spiral Scratch, February 1991.

Notes

    External links


    My Bloody Valentine
    Kevin Shields | Colm O'Ciosoig | Bilinda Butcher | Debbie Googe
    Albums
    Isn't Anything | Loveless
    EPs
    This Is Your Bloody Valentine  | Geek!  | The New Record by My Bloody Valentine  | Sunny Sundae Smile 
    Strawberry Wine  | Ecstasy  | You Made Me Realise  | Feed Me with Your Kiss  | Glider  | Tremolo
    Compilations
    Ecstasy and Wine
    Labels
    Creation Records | Island Records | Sire Records
    Related articles
    Shoegazing | List of songs by My Bloody Valentine

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