My Bloody Valentine were an Irish-British rock band best known for their creative use of guitar distortion, tremolo, and digital reverb who are considered to be the most significant band of the shoegazing movement. Sharing their name with that of a Canadian slasher film, they formed in 1984 in Dublin and continued into the early 1990s. 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.

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 awhile, 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 awhile 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. 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; in their 2003 revision of the list, however, it moved to number two, swapping places with Radiohead's OK Computer. Shields also has been described by Alan McGee as "a genius artist. A visionary.", 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."

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 2004, My Bloody Valentine were rumored to be re-recording five additional tracks in Berlin for the re-release of 1990's Glider EP; however, if anything was recorded, it has yet to surface.

As of late 2006, Kevin Shields is in the process of remastering My Bloody Valentine material and has also expressed an interest in staging a reunion tour.

Current

As reported on Pitchfork Media, Shields himself said in an interview in the January/February 2007 issue of Magnet that My Bloody Valentine will record another album "100%" . . . "unless we die or something."

Discography

See also List of songs by My Bloody Valentine

Albums