easycure

Finally, as usual, you are making gender considerations based on just one group, so as usual you are making misleading claims: okay, in My Bloody Valentine (as well as in, for instance, The Jesus and Mary Chain) the vocals are overshadowed by the guitars. But NOT in Ride, NOT in Spacemen 3, NOT in Loop, Lush, Swervedriver... So yes, it is a stylistic choice, but of the MBV, NOT of Shoegazer.

Your consideration of the SY is completely illogical. What does it mean if an element is present in both B and A that the music is the same? That makes no sense. Chronologically, the SY cannot be Shoegaze; moreover, not even physically, because Shoegaze is a predominantly European genre and the SY are American. They have entirely different foundations, they were born and developed in another period, and, a factor that is much more significant and consequent to the others, they have a completely different expressive approach... the SY don’t care at all about representing an inner world in which to close themselves off and get lost; theirs is not introspective and internalized music, they are beautifully angry, their antecedents are the New York NO wave, their music is chaos, maximum heterogeneity of genres for maximum stylistic homogeneity... they have nothing to do with it at all, you are relying on completely superficial factors in your comparison.

Meanwhile, in the SY’s music, for the most part, the guitar plays riffs and phrases; it doesn’t play full chords, so it can’t have the same fullness as Kevin Shields, who instead played beautiful, rich chords... Secondly, on a purely sonic level, the difference is vast: In My Bloody Valentine (as in most Shoegazer bands), the guitars have: overdrive + distortion, which already creates an incredibly saturated sound + reverb + delay full of feedback (not the usual feedback, but feedback that results from the delay, practically filling the delay with additional reverb), + various other effects like tremolo, but not always. Now, do you have an idea of what happens when you add delay full of feedback to overdrive and distortion? You can’t understand a damn thing anymore, exactly like you can hear in any Shoegaze album. This does NOT happen in SY, where instead the guitars are very defined; even when they create noise, they have highs that stand out. They don't have a sound that’s equally muddied because they do NOT use two sources of distortion layered, they do NOT use delay, or if they do, they do it with much less feedback (I mean delay feedback as I already explained), they do not use various effects like tremolo that would contribute even more to making everything incomprehensible, or if they do use them, they do so in phrases purely for sound purposes, not for expressive reasons.

Yes, but there remains a fundamental point: Evol is from '85 and therefore cannot have been influenced by Shoegaze. Moreover, you rightly say that in New Wave the rhythmic part becomes integral to the composition. I completely agree, but only the bass. Because the drums in a lot of New Wave become absolutely marginal. But you could respond: not always. And I would then say: you're right here too, because if I listen to the Feelies, the drums have a huge role in the expressiveness of the piece, but it's a role very similar, and here you don't convince me at all, to the one that has in many pieces of Slowdive (e.g. Catch the Breeze) or Ride (e.g. Polar Bear). Ultimately, the conclusion is: it definitely cannot be an issue of genre.. also because the fact that the guitars overshadow the voice and the rhythms, sorry but that's a load of nonsense: of course they overshadow the voice and the rhythms, that's how they're made: saturated, massively distorted, full of delay and reverb feedback.. I dare anyone to let the rest of the instruments shine through.. I understand that the Shoegaze influence is the only one you don't accept, but if Billy Corgan said so, and you can’t fault him on the sounds, what can I say? :)

mmmm, very interesting : )

seee seee, a thousand times better than this post-Islands King Crimson.. at least Corgan as a conceited person is entertaining, Fripp is annoying

Well, Caz, but regardless of whether you liked them or not, would you prefer to see Britney Spears instead of Smashing Pumpkins on MTV? :) Actually, let’s be honest, you watched MTV back then precisely because they played stuff like Smashing Pumpkins instead of Franz Ferdinand! ;)

NGW, I did NOT say that dreamy atmospheres + distortions make Shoegaze, even though I admit that your ongoing exclusion of adjectives from the term shoegazer makes it hard for me to understand what constitutes this genre for you. In fact, I mentioned very specific bands... however, I don’t know where you find "dreamy" atmospheres in Sonic Youth's Evol.. Starpower maybe? I don’t know.. and what does "totally non-existent rhythm section" mean? It can mean everything or nothing, and it’s historically incorrect because this sonic and interpretative idea of a rhythm section is actually taken entirely from the New Wave, since not all bands, and not necessarily, had repetitive and standardized rhythms as you imply by saying they are non-existent... and what about the drumming of Slowdive then? And My Bloody Valentine’s "Isn't Anything"? Moreover, you literally said: "where would these dreamy atmospheres accompanied by distortions be?" referring to the Smashing Pumpkins; once again I tell you: I’m not making anything up, you should instead read what you wrote more carefully. :) ..furthermore, you are insisting on the MBV when I have cited them from the beginning as ONE of the reference components of the SP, not necessarily the most important and certainly not the only one.

Alexander, the difference between me and a politician is that I don't talk nonsense... tell me if any of the things I've said are false and I'll spit in your eye ; )

Finally, if you don't feel dreamy atmospheres + distortions in the Smashing Pumpkins, it means you haven't really listened to the Smashing Pumpkins, and that would explain a lot. Listen to Siva, Rynocheros, listen to Mayonaise, listen to the wonderful B-side Starla, or the equally wonderful Set the ray to Jerry, listen to Today, Soma, Hummer, Porcelina, Here is no Why, the previously mentioned Thru the eyes of ruby... it's all there in the records, just listen to it.