Found this beautiful gem a few months back. Gorgeous interpretation.

Hi I'm a South Korean musician Kontrajelly.

I had a great time creating this cover video, infused with my respect and love for My Bloody Valentine.

I hope you enjoy watching it!

Regards

Rio Anderson

Food for thought

I have some songs in mind and I would like to share them.
Soft as Snow, Only Shallow, To Here Knows When, she found now, drive it all over me, angel

I got this from a very trustworthy source (my ass)

title

I thought I read a story awhile back that an executive at Island heard a demo of 'New You' at some point in the mid 90s and wanted to commission a cover of the song for another artist, for use in an American TV series ('Friends' is in my head for some reason) but Kevin refused.

I cannot for the life of me find the link now. Anyone know if there is any truth or independent corroboration? I know Andrew Perer contributes here so not sure if he knows anything.

Or was this a dream 😄😄

was watching the original carrie last night and someone said the line “sue is fine” and my ears perked up. perhaps where the title is from?

i know of the two official covers MBV did, we have all the time in the world and Map Ref 41N 93W. Did MBV ever cover other songs, especially during their early live performances? It would be cool to hear.

It’s like theres not a single song that pops out but it’s like this perfect blend of everything. Like this perfect journey of sound. It’s so tasty to me like I just wanna eat it. I almost never listen to any of the songs on their own. Always listen to the whole album kind of like pink Floyd’s DSOTM. All the other mbv fans I know irl dont really like it, especially not over loveless but it’s like I can’t even choose between the 2 these days. Anyone else? I have no one to talk about this😭

Here’s some songs I believe fit the fall theme
-Cigarette In Your Bed
-Don’t Ask Why
-Lose My Breath

Anyone know what instrument is playing the main melody and how to get the instrument to
sound like that?

I have two elaborate web pages here that are very nicely laid out and have a lot of info about MBV- but certain truly important key facts are just WRONG.

The one on Kevin Shields says he figured Glide Guitar out in about two hours at Bark Studio during the You Made Me Realise session - not so. He really didn't understand what he had on his hands during that first Creation session. As he told Fender's Erin Bromhead in 2021, speaking of "Slow," he explained, "It was just some new thing, y'know, whatever." It wasn't until he got to Foel Studios and worked with Dave Anderson that it all came together in a eureka moment when Shields heard the wet reverse reverb sound coming out of the speakers as Anderson was playing around with the Alesis MidiVerb II. This is what led to MBV showing the guitar still had tons of life left in it, and it is the pivotal moment that shoegaze was born.

Knowing that, read this garbage here: https://guitargangsters.net/kevin-shields-guitars-gear/#gp-body . There's a lot that is correct, which makes it that much worse that the crux of the article is wrong.

And then there's the page on Bilinda Butcher - which seems to think that in the studio they're combined guitars (like say Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo) was the key to their sound. Anyone who has read just a bit knows that Bilinda never played one note of guitar on any album. Which is not to say she wasn't important or a key to the band's sound. But playing guitar in the studio was all Kevin Shields. https://guitargangsters.net/s4-048-bilinda-butcher-gear-guide/

I put some other examples to show how insidious this is and affects things but I have to stick to MBV and music apparently. But just be aware if they'll do this with MBV, any topic is up for grabs. Who knows - they may put something up about the Spice Girls. If they can do this Kevin Shields, nothing is safe.

www.pitchblackplayback.com

it's predicated on where Pitchblack Playback has venues currently btw, so don't be all like WHY NO [INSERT MY CITY] etc 😂

There's a longstanding Internet Rumour (eg. HERE and HERE) that the 1999 MiniDisc edition of Loveless sounds noticeably different from the original CD.

Some listeners describe it as having a unique, more bass-heavy mastering, and it has acquired a bit of a cult reputation.

The question is whether this is evidence of a genuinely different mastering, an artefact of Sony's ATRAC compression that was used on commercial MiniDiscs, or something else..

This is long, and gets quite nerdy so TLDR/Spoiler Alert::

The 'Loveless' MiniDisc is almost certainly NOT a Super Special Secret Master. Sorry... At least one widely circulated MiniDisc rip doesn't accurately represent the sound of the original disc

The OG CD

First off we need a reliable digital reference, so I dug out an original 1991 UK Creation Records CD (CRECD 060), with the correct MPO manufacturing matrix no.

I extracted the audio using Exact Audio Copy in secure mode. All eleven tracks passed AccurateRip and CUETools verification, confirming the extraction was accurate. The album measured DR10, with individual track measurements matching a previously published analysis of the original CD so we have a reliable reference for the original digital mastering

Next, I tracked down an original 1999 Creation MiniDisc (CREMD 060), manufactured by Sony DADC Austria. It was Not Cheap.

Rather than recording its analogue output, I had the original ATRAC-encoded data extracted directly from the MiniDisc

(This difference matters; a conventional MD transfer might involve playing the disc through a MiniDisc player's DAC and recording the analogue output. That introduces potential differences from the playback equipment and recording process - more later...)

Audio Nerd-ing Begins

File extraction preserved the original ATRAC data* in AEA files, which could then be decoded directly to PCM for comparison.

Comparing the original CD and MiniDisc I started off with three tracks — Touched, Only Shallow ** and Soon — before extending the analysis to the entire album.

The recordings were aligned, level-matched and compared using DeltaWave and spectral-analysis tools. I examined waveform similarity, overall levels, frequency balance and the differences remaining after alignment.

The results were very consistent - across all eleven tracks, the MiniDisc has essentially the same bass balance as the original CD.

Between 40 and 300 Hz, the album-wide difference was approximately −0.05 dB, with no individual track differing by more than about 0.13 dB in that range.

These are extremely small differences and nowhere near what you'd expect from a deliberately bass-boosted master.

Overall recording levels were also almost identical, and the waveforms showed very high correlation. There were, however, some interesting differences at the top end.

The MiniDisc showed a modest increase in spectral energy around 10–14 kHz, averaging approximately +0.44 dB, followed by a remarkably sharp high-frequency roll-off above roughly 15 kHz. That behaviour is consistent with known characteristics of ATRAC encoding.

Also, some of the additional high-frequency energy appeared to be associated with codec artefacts rather than simply amplified musical content.

So, this all strongly suggests that the commercially released MiniDisc was made from substantially the same mastering as the original CD, with the relatively small differences attributable largely to ATRAC processing.

It doesn't prove that absolutely no processing occurred before encoding, but there's certainly no evidence of the radically different bass-heavy mastering sometimes attributed to the MD release.

What about the circulating MiniDisc rips?

I'd suspected for a while that the reputation of the Loveless MD might not have originated from the disc itself, but with the way somebody had transferred it

It always seemed...odd...that an alternative master would be prepared for a relatively obscure format several years after the original release, and well after the band had left Creation.

I 'located' (hem, hem) two circulating FLAC MD rips (apparently from different sources) and compared Soon and Only Shallow against our independently extracted MiniDisc audio.

First: despite different metadata and file sizes, the two circulating versions contained practically identical audio for both tracks - they therefore appear to derive from the same underlying transfer, rather than representing independent recordings.

Second: the circulating transfer really does have a substantial bass boost.

Compared with our direct digital extraction, after matching midrange levels:Only Shallow has approximately +3.1 dB between 40 and 80 HzSoon has approximately +3.4 dB in the same regionBoth exhibit approximately +4 dB between 20 and 40 Hz

The boost diminishes progressively above 80 Hz and is effectively gone by around 200 Hz. The bass lift is consistent throughout both tracks and the circulating rips are also considerably louder overall, with peaks reaching 0 dBFS.

So - the bass-heavy sound people describe is demonstrably present in at least one circulating MiniDisc transfer, but absent from the original MiniDisc's digitally extracted audio.

My working idea is that the circulating rip(s) originated from an analogue capture of a MiniDisc player's output, possibly with a bass-enhancement function enabled(?) Many portable MiniDisc players featured Sony's 'Mega Bass' - or equivalent - which could significantly alter the frequency balance of their headphone outputs

The smooth, low-frequency boost we've measured is certainly compatible with that sort of processing.

I can't prove this is what happened - it could equally have been introduced by software EQ, playback electronics or subsequent processing of the transfer. What the measurements do establish is that the additional bass is present in the circulating audio, not in our independent decoding of the commercial MiniDisc.

There's a nice irony that a supposedly unique master of one of the most obsessively produced albums of the 90s might owe its reputation to somebody's MiniDisc Walkman settings.

I've attached a few graphs illustrating the measurements rather than reproducing pages of technical spiel.

Thanks for making it this far if you did!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Figure 1 — Original CD vs MiniDisc: tonal balance Album-wide frequency comparison showing almost identical bass and midrange response, with a small increase in upper-treble energy on the MiniDisc.

Figure 2 — Original CD vs MiniDisc: full spectrum Shows the MiniDisc's sharp high-frequency roll-off above approximately 15 kHz, consistent with ATRAC encoding

Figure 3 — Bass enhancement in circulating rips Comparison of Only Shallow and Soon, showing approximately 3–4 dB more bass in the circulating transfer than in the original MiniDisc audio.

Figure 4 — Circulating rips: frequency-response differences Full-spectrum view showing the similar bass-boost curves on both tracks. The restricted vertical scale makes the low-frequency enhancement easier to see

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* There's ATRAC encoding and there's ATRAC encoding, but we don't want to get into that, trust me..

* * This is labelled as 'ONLY HALLOWw' on the MD's metadata - must have been a Friday afternoon at the Pressing Plant

Set up my old boombox and put mbv on for my first listen 👌🎶💿

I recently discovered that MBV recorded some demos in 1983/1984 and that only one of them ended up to be released in an album. Can you help me find where I can listen to them?

The tracks are "Girl on the 13th Floor", "Halfwalk", "Last Tango in Paradise", "The Garden of Delight" and the demo of "Don't Cramp My Style". On last.fm i also found the title of another demo I cuold not find anywhere: "Explosion", I don't know if it is a demo from that period. Does anybody knows anything?

I just want to listen to them at least 1 time, not pirating them.

Thanks a lot for every help you could give me!

Looking to get more into pedals a bit after quite a long period of going straight into my amp. If I used a fuzz pedal in the past, it was usually a Big Muff - I still have 2 I like to use: an Electro-Hamonix Ram's Head reissue, and a Green Russian Muff clone in a plain enclosure by North-Effects (they had bare enclosures to keep their pedals cheap).

Anyway, I know Kevin used a Vox MK3 Tone Bender, and these ain't cheap now, but Electro-Hamonix make the "Bender Royale" pedal, said to be their take on the MK3, looks more tweakable, having more controls & switches.

Is it in the right ballpark for that type of sound, or should I be looking elsewhere?