What happens when you take the production of Phil Spector, drench in pyschadelic 60’s reverb and match it with breathy and harmonious vocal melodies all done in a seemingly effortless fashion? You get the grandiose genre of Shoegazing that has been one of Pop’s best subgenres in it’s history. The original impulse for these creative masterpieces came from many different places. With Kevin Shields in My Bloody Valentine it came from wondering what it would sound like to put 50 Marshall stacks in one room and have a guitar connected to all of them with 5-10 different delays and reverbs pedals going. For Andy Bell formerly of Ride it came from an epiphany one day listening to The Beatles with a loud fan on. Combining the over layered fan with the melodies he heard on the radio gave him an impulse for noise and melody. Wherever the creative impulse came from, it always seemed to work in creating new musical experiences upon every listen.
10. The Catherine Wheel – Black Metallic
Catherine Wheel were always going to be an underrated band. The vocals weren’t a traditional timbre and the style was always just too pop to be considered “credible” by underground publications but too indigenous to ever become a high selling pop band. Existing in-between this line is a difficult way to success, if that’s even what The Catherine Wheel wanted in the first place. With the delivery of “Black Metallic” though, one could tell that Rob Dickinson and co didn’t really care. Whether they cared or not, this slice of guitar wash and perfect pitched vocals created a space for Catherine Wheel as a band that would be looked upon nostalgically forever. When listening to this song, you will always be forced into previous memories.
9. Chapterhouse – Pearle
Chapterhouse is often forgotten in the Shoegazing crowd for worse. They created a collection of songs that would all be signatures of the Shoegazing genre. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than on their album “Whirlpool”; specifically on the song “Pearle.” The vocals are as dreamy as Shoegazing vocals ever became. The drumbeat is hypnotic, the lyrics are quixotic, and the song is overdubbed with anything that could possibly create a pure atmospheric experience. In some ways, “Pearle” is Shoegazing in it’s most cliché, but that is to it’s credit because the song was executed sincerely; meaning this is a good place to start off for anyone wanting to invest their musical experiences in the Shoegazing genre.
8. Oasis- Columbia
Shoegazing found its best bastard child in Oasis, especially the Oasis of their first album Definitely Maybe. Any number of songs on Definitely Maybe could be considered Shoegazing classics, but it was “Columbia” that inherently understood the musical hypnosis of Shoegazing and gave it a blistering rock vocal delivery and Bolan swagger combining the pomp of past rock and the nuance of the Shoegazing genre. There’s no space for dynamics in this song; which is the heart of most great Shoegazing songs. The marginalization of the “need for dynamics” that was always privileged was destroyed by Shoegazing. Along with Rave culture in the late 80’s, the never ending Ecstasy filled groove became the hallmark of musical spirituality. Oasis took these styles and filled them with Lion’s teeth.
7. My Bloody Valentine- Only Shallow
In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 20 years, My Bloody Valentine is the first and foremost recognized band in the Shoegazing movement and deservingly so. Without My Bloody Valentine, there would be no Slowdive, Lush, or Chapterhouse, regardless of the fact that either of those later bands may have written better songs than My Bloody Valentine. When Loveless came out it was one of the most unique musical experiences to ever be heard in the pop music medium. Everything was faded into each other. Nothing was spaced out. Everything was pushed into an atmospheric medium that at any moment sounded like it was going to explode, and it did explode on “Only Shallow”, the title track on Loveless. Listen to this enough times in your car with speakers up and you will lose your hearing before your 30. See this song live and you will become physically sick by how much headroom the music takes up. Talk about musical experience.
6. The Telescopes – The Sleepwalk
The Telescopes were a band who started off as a band basically sounding like Spaceman 3. It were punk vocals and sped up songs that tried to mesh punk with psychedelic, without the inherent privileging of psychedelic over punk that Spaceman 3 always operated under. As The Telescopes career moved on though, they got the beat, literally and figuratively. They expanded their sound into a massive guitar clash that was more raw than dreamy combined with beats as grooving as songs off The Happy Mondays “Pills, Thrills, and Bellyaches”. It was a perfect combination of dance, caustic vocals, and massive guitar production. They were the only band to accomplish this and it’s perfectly exemplified by The Sleepwalk. Their was a band from California (in the name of Casper) who recently was making music like this without even knowing about the Telescopes, but their want for stardom turned their beat into a Killers copycat. If they only knew, and if they only begin to realize what they once had, stardom would pale in comparison to the music that they once created, which was a new form of The Sleepwalk.
5. Ride- Vapour Trail
The shamelessly romantic “Vapour Trail” always had to be on the best Shoegazing songs of all time list. It’s hard not to be hit by this song in a profound way. It’s hard to not believe in the un-believable and culturally relative concepts of love when listening to Vapour Trail. It sounds more meaningful than any explanation of what the sentiment could ever convey in words. It’s distance, it’s confusion, it’s problems with a romantic musical accompaniment serving as the background to arguably Andy Bell’s best vocal delivery. If there has to be the one song that epitomizes a vigor to traditional romantic love, it would be Vapour Trail. It’s expansively heartening without sounding unctuous. It’s a true accomplishment for a concept that has become so consigned to meaninglessness.
4. Lush – Monochrome
When listening to Lush, one really feels that credit first has to be given to the Cocteau Twins for creating a genre (without their wanting to) in the name of “dream pop” which sometimes can be seen synonymously with Shoegazing, but not quite. This is proven best with Lush’s best song from Spooky and arguably their career. “Monochrome” is a perfect dream with perfect vocals and when the song hit’s the pure instrumental at 2:39, one can’t help but feel that the northern climates will always have a more profound spirituality than any of the southern climates regardless of our history. The world begins in ice, water and snow. The dance of the world begins with primordial ice skaters figure-8ting a sweeping design in the world bestowed upon what was once nothing. This feeling for northern spirituality has never been captured as perfectly as this masterpiece by Lush.
3. Slowdive – Allison
The first song from their “Souvlaki” album, the song starts off in an instrumental haze. The vocals come in that are even more hazy. It’s almost like someone took the tape machine and used a tool to slowdown every track on the record, or it was a band who was operating under a disposition of “just floating”. The haze slowly pushes into a chorus that’s one of the most catchy in the Shoegazing genre. Sisters are spinning, but she’s just fine, she’s just out there somewhere. It’s this sentiment that perfectly captures the spirit of the Shoegazing genre; absolute vagueness but a realization that something is still going on that is always on the verge of barely being understood, to eventually understand it’s superfluous to even try to get by the “barely-being-understood” and the vagueness that points to a more grounding reality than one of reason and enlightenment could ever hope for.
2. Swervedriver- Duel
This song is never even recognized in the Shoegazing genre and it’s more powerful than most every song in the genre. Maybe it was because the guitars were too overdriven with masculinity, maybe it was the masculinity of Adam Franklin’s voice that made this song seem more rock than Shoegazing. Either way, both genres were always closely touching each other. This is nowhere more recognized than on Swervedriver’s Mezcal Head and Oasis’s Definitely Maybe. But with Swervedriver’s “Duel,” Shoegazing was taken into something that was even more transcendent than the laters previous forms. It was taken to an affirmative space where the nebulous center of Shoegazing was no longer falling into a relaxed complacency; it was taken to ages beyond itself, still going for a thousand years, going to the absolutely general “marketplace”. This song was not just the negation of the world that Shoegazing found in it’s most stoic and dreamy acceptance, it was the negation of the negation; it negated the fact that there will ever be a point in which a “pure” reality will ever be realized. The circularity of eternity found it’s most perfect musical example in “Duel” by Swervedriver.
1. Ride- Leave them all Behind
Everything perfect about the Shoegazing genre was found in Ride’s “Leave them all behind.” This is their second place in the list and they earned the number 1 spot for this beast of a song. Listen to it once and you know something’s going on. Listen to it two or three times, and for some reason you listen to it a 4th and 5th time. It’s that 5th time that this song becomes absolutely addicting and hypnotic without utilizing the traditional modes of pop music. This song is grand in sound and lyrics. What starts off as a simple synth turns into a massive wall-of-sound guitar cornucopia. With Mark Gardener and Andy Bell’s duel vocaling, the vocals sounds as hypnotic as the music itself. Like all great songs, the vocals match the vibe of the song. It’s in space, in purgatory, and the vocals match this perfectly. This space though is not something that just sounds “floaty.” It’s heavily intense and commands the listeners attention at every second. The lyrical sentiment speaks for itself and is arguably the most profound in all of Shoegazing proving this time that laconic style, when done right, trumps detail and complexity. This song ends in an explosion and the listener is left with nothing left than something that has just happened to them.
Will you mother fuckers please start writing about games again,enough with the god damn music articles!
GAY
Yes Cody, we know you are. Nothing to be proud of, fag.
I’m too bored to write anything offensive this time.
Sorry.
Good points but you guys should stick with games
fuck you delta,and i am straight for your information.
fuck you delta,go read your cock sucking comics about fags wearing spandex underwear and having sex with farm animals.
Wow, what a comeback cody. No thank you on the fuck you, no matter how much you claim otherwise, I know you cream your pants to the thought, cum-guzzling fagot slut. Or is it whore, do they pay you a nickle to bend-over and take it? Of course few can feel anything since you’ve gotten to fisting level.
Well, I guess you break INTO prison so you can hope to “accidentally” drop the soap. Makes your day, doesn’t it?
people can we stop with these gay ass fuckin list about motherfuckin music whatever ill come back in a year
I agree with cody
finally somebody agrees with me on the stupid music articles and delta “sigh” I know longer feel like arguing,so truss or not.
You no longer feel like arguing cody, because you’re a dumbass who gets tired from 30 seconds of thinking.
And, I’m right. You just dream of dropping the soap, don’tcha?
And it’s spelled “truce.” You were so far from getting it correctly that I didn’t even recognize it at first.
And can ya use the shift key?
Delta you are a donkey raping shit eater and no I don’t dream about dropping the soap,but because your mentoning dropping the soap so much I think you dream about getting it in the shower by Big bubba,but that’s what I think,no let me take that back I KNOW you dream about it,and who gives a fuck about spelling a word wrong,you fucking nerd.
I shall continue this arguement tomorrow,I am going to sleep,don’t choke on dick delta,good night.
Hi, guys,
As some of you have noticed, we’ve stopped writing about the video games. Not too long ago we were writing 3 video game lists a week, and now we’re writing none. The reason being that we felt our video game lists were starting to get a little stale. I think I can speak for Destructomaximo and Sage when I say we were all burnt out. We were writing a lot, but the quality was starting to suffer. But we’ve been playing a ton of games lately, and we plan on getting back to video games in a couple of months. If you feel you can’t wait that long, quite honestly we’re not going to lose any sleep over it. We’re not doing this site to become popular (in case anyone didn’t notice). For those of you who like our other lists, we still have plenty of them coming up. And for those who like our video game lists, in the not so distant future you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see that we’re going to be writing about a lot of different games than we have in the past. We’ve mostly been re-visiting the old two player games from our past (WWF Royal Rumble for the SNES, Bomberman 1 and 2, Contra 3, Super Smash TV, and Secret of Mana) so despite the long wait, we’re sure some of you will appreciate the new “freshness” this break will bring to our video game lists. Also, we plan on doing a lot of Comic Book VS articles in the near future as well, you guys just have to be patient. Keep in mind we don’t get paid for this, this is a hobby for us, and all three of us have lives outside of OW.
Old-Wizard will be with you…always.
Of course, if anyone wants to start paying us, then that will be a different story.
Fuck you.
I’m surprised Jeff can spell “fuck”.
jeff’s spelling isn’t that bad. (?)
Okay,zeromage as long as you write video game list’s in the future,I can wait.
Wow cody, fagots like you give them a bad name, even for them. Your spelling, grammar, and punctuation all suck more than you do. Your attempts at comebacks are so pathetic, you are getting far more than you deserve for me to even acknowledge your existence. You’re less than sub-human, and you’re a dumb fuck that makes Paris Hilton look like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawkings combined.
If you’re going to rip-off my insults, at least try to improve on them, instead of doing a terrible job emulating them. Though I know for a retard like you, that’s impossible. You can’t even hope for a decent job of stealing my dissing.
And you should care about spelling. You want to trick people into thinking you’re nearly competent so they don’t point-out your obvious faults and failures and rip you apart. And this isn’t an argument. You’d have to provide an adequate attempt for it to even be considered one. This is just the equivalent of you getting gang-raped and beaten. And liking it.
Speaking of liking getting gang-raped, just shut the fuck up you dumbass little kid, I’m tired of hearing your whining while I’m fucking your mom. You just make me hurt her more so her crying can drown-out your’s.
spelling? what is so bad about his spelling? his GRAMMAR is not that great? but his spelling?
meant ”His GRAMMAR is not that great.”
Actually I would say Jeff’s grammar is probably better than his spelling.
Maybe a few run on sentences and some misplaced semicolons but other than that fine.
I meant Cody Floyd.
Delta you bore with with your rants.There actually so stupid they made me laugh because there not even close to the fucking truth but what I said seems to have struck a nerve so maybe I’m right about what I said about you.Also your a cock-sucking transvestite and I bet your mom fucked you in the ass with a strap-on and if you think that I’m taking your insults serious you’re wrong.I actually thought they were funny.So Delta go to hell and suck on man jizz,we all know you like it.
Nope cody, you pathetic little wannabe boy. You’re just a little bitch.
You say my insults are stupid but can’t even get “there” and “they’re” correct. Bitch all you want, it just shows you’re nothing but a pathetic retard.
You’re just making it way too easy for me to win. Of course someone as worthless and stupid of you is not a win to brag about, but you’re still amusing. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll finally read THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD on your own. Your mommy reading it to you after all the stretching I’ve done to her ass has probably upped your confidence and made you think you’re actually worth something and could possibly win.
Tell her to stop reading it, ‘cuz you’ll never amount to anything. You’ll always be a worthless fag, and you can’t win against me. Deal with it, bitch.
Delta do you think your winning just because you write longer insults?Keep it short and sweet.Nobody likes reading your long-ass rants about how your life sucks and 1 more thing I’M not actually retarted,believe it or not.So shut your damn dick-sucker and get back to sucking your dads dick off.I can’t wait to see the next gay thing you type,it will surely be about you making me seem stupid,while I’m actually smarter than you.Your imsults do not phase me so give me your best shot bitch boy.
lmao How can you be smarter than me when you fuck up as much as you do?
You want it to be short and sweet? OK.
You’re a retard dumb fuck. I’m better than you. And that’s that.
Really, you are very, very stupid, kid. You can’t even spell “retard” or “retarded” right. I guess you need to think you’re relevant, or you’ll cut yourself.
I’m winning because I’m actually capable of not completely destroying the English language when I type, unlike you. Me making them longer is just due to the fact that I can understand and spell more words than you. You can’t even spell what few words you know correctly about 35% of the time.
Waiting for your next pathetic attempt at a pathetic attempt at a pathetic attempt to amuse me, idiot.
So, cody, do you have your mommy proof-read your sad attempts at insults, or do you work really, REALLY hard to try to make something look decent, and still fail?
And so what if my grammar sucks I’m not trying to do it good but if it’s that important I might actually try to have the proper grammar and yeah I did have “there” instead of “they’re.I made a mistake and it probaly won’t happen again.People do make mistakes you know execpt you of course.You’re just sooooooooooo perfect,execpt being a cock mongler,among other things.
No I just think of insults you know.Whatever comes to mind.
No cody, you didn’t make a mistake, your grammar is TERRIBLE. I never expected perfect grammar from you, but if you want to be taken seriously, you might want something decent. Even though that’s beyond your capability to obtain.
I never said I was perfect, nor do I think of myself as that. And I know people make mistakes. After all, you were born.
Good job on writing something that doesn’t take 30 minutes to read.1 more thing, do you check everything everybody writes to make sure everything is right because if you do it’s just sad.
I’ve never been good at grammar for some reason ,and If I was a mistake ,which I’m not, who cares I’m here to stay until I die,which I’m sure I’ll die by guns one way or another.
I AM AWESOMENESS
I should tell you cody, that it only takes 30 minutes to read for people who have an IQ that’s below 50. So don’t blame me when you’re trying to sound-out a word that’s more than 2 syllables. Uh-oh!! There’s a word you’re gonna try to spell-out!!
And nope, don’t check everything people write. And even if I did, and it were sad, it’s not as sad as you attempting to be relevant. Your attempts to discredit me won’t work well.
I can see you dying because of guns. You’re stupid enough that you’d somehow manage to accidentally shot yourself…..with the safety on…..and the gun unloaded.
And you’re awesomeness? OK, whatever you wanna tell yourself. I bet you get giddy when you get a high-five for expressing yourself. Wait a minute, Peter’s smarter than you, too.
Oh and cody, it’s not that you’re not good at grammar, it’s you’ve been generally TERRIBLE. I mean so bad you’ve made me think you’re either inbred for 3 or 4 generations or Ebonics is your third or fourth language.
The 30 minute thing was sarcasm stupid and having bad grammar doesn’t make me stupid and I’m not from kentucky so I’m not imbred so shove glass up your ASS dildo licking fairy.Oh yeah you’re such a fairy I’ll call you tinkerbell.
You think I don’t know that you were being sarcastic? But the point still stands, it’s only a long read for you because you’re a retarded dip-shit moron.
Having bad grammar makes you below-par in intelligence unless English isn’t your first language. But how poorly you use grammar is what makes you more than just stupid. If I only called you stupid, it’d be a compliment you’re undeserving of.
And you don’t need to be from Kentucky to be inbred. There’s plenty of other states that have that stereotype. Of course you don’t even need to be from one of those stereotyped states to be inbred, you could be an experiment to see how stupid one can become and yet still be capable of advanced enough brain activity to blink, breath and have your heart beat at once.
Whatever you say tinkerbell.I don’t even remember why we started to agrue.What was it again?I can’t continue this argument until I remember how it started.
::YAWN:: You think Tinkerbell is a decent attempt at a decent attempt at an argument? It failed miserably.
And it’s because I pointed-out how you admitted you’re a fag, and told you it’s nothing to be proud of.
If you weren’t so stupid, you could’ve looked it up on your own, ya know. I simply remembered, though.
I hate you and this is my last post on this article so here it goes.I fucking hope you get raped by mexicans,you suck dog dicks you are what makes earth suck.I hope everybody in your family dies of cancer.You should die doing your favorite thing and that is chocking on dick,which I bet that’s how you’re going to die.I hope to agrue on another article in the future.So go to hell you fucking piece of shit.Also tinkerbell is not an insult it’s your new name because your FUCKING FAIRY.
lmao You’re so pathetic cody. And just to let ya know, since you never caught-on, I’m purposely not using your name as a proper noun. Since fagots like you don’t deserve recognition, so I’m giving you so much more than you deserve.
And you rant because I’m better than you. You just failed so terribly, I bet your head nearly exploded as you typed all that out.
So to make it short and sweet, I’m better than you, you’re an idiot, and once again you lose. Not that I was even TRYING to win, that’d be more you deserve. You’re just that bad.
Sorry forgot something.I’m straight not gay like you but straight.THIS is my final post on this article so fuck you.
lmao Keep claiming you’re not a fag. Looks like you’re not so confident in your sexuality to so strongly defend your claims to being straight, and to keep saying I’m a fagot. Like you.
I thought this site was about videogames (??) I used to like this site, now it Sucks (notice the capital S). Not coming back. If I wanted to listen to somebody’s opinions about music I don’t listen to I’d read Rolling Stone. Piss off.
because you’ve defended your claims that he’s gay!
(sarcasm.)