Shoegazing Part Three

The Velvet Underground
After the initial first wave of bands whose careers petered out in the early 1990s, or moved in different directions, a number of bands such as Bethany Curve and Brian Jonestown Massacre were able to take inspiration from these groups and pursue new audiences. In recent years the NME has recently pointed out the shoegazing influence in a number of up and coming bands, which it has called "nu-gazing". Bands of this nature include Televise, Alcian Blue, A Place To Bury Strangers, Air Formation, Scarling., Autolux, Amusement Parks on Fire, Skywave, The Radio Dept, Mahogany, Readymade, Los Sonidos Distantes, Joy Zipper, M83, Ulrich Schnauss, Oppressed by the Line, Heroes of Switzerland, Experimental Aircraft and Engineers, and most recently Serena Maneesh. The genre is very strong within its own ranks, much alluding to the ideal "the scene that celebrates itself."

Clubs such as Club AC30 and Club Violaine, along with the support of such labels as The Gaia Project and Bella Union are supporting more and more dream-pop and shoegaze bands. There are many holdouts of devoted players and listeners on both sides of the Atlantic, and a strong following in South America.

The first two albums by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are influenced by shoegazing. There is another thread of shoegazer-influenced music, that maintains the emphasis of texture (through the use of guitar effects pedals and digital signal processing) but departs, to some degree, from the rock structures and full band instrumentation of shoegazer music. Also, there are little to no vocal elements. This “post-shoegaze” glitch and experimental electronic music has achieved some critical praise, especially the more recent releases by Fennesz and Tim Hecker. The duo Belong released an album in 2006 that also falls into this category.

Often using the digital studio of a computer, these artists focus a lot of attention on creating space and atmosphere. The Max/MSP software program is one tool that allows for guitar signals to be processed for the creation of music that is characterized as much by its textural aspects as its melodies, if not more so. The outcome tends to be compositions ranging from ambient stretches of droning tones, distorted walls of sound, and reverb-laden atmospherics. What separates this from other strands of glitch or noise compositions and places it in the realm of shoegaze are the inclusion of melodies that call to mind pop and rock music.

The genre, though derided to some extent by the music press at the time, has left something of a legacy, as the new crop of bands demonstrates. The last album by My Bloody Valentine, Loveless, released in 1991 is critically acclaimed to be the landmark album of shoegazing, with Ride's first album Nowhere seen as a close contender.