Missed Opportunity


I was one of many Kickstarter backers that helped get this project up. These are the bands and music I love. Unfortunately this doco just skims the surface. It's comprehensive in that it touches on most of the bands from the time but it feels like little more than a checklist. There's no real depth to the interviews. Just a roll call of people saying shoegaze, 'sounded really different' or the band members themselves saying 'we didn't really know what we were doing'. There were some touches of positioning the music within the context of the time, especially how it was MUCH more inclusive of woman, but no examination of the point of reference for creating this 'new' sound. What were the musical influences from the past? Some mention of the Velvets but nothing of Suicide, Spaceman 3 or others. No mention of psychedelia, Indian ragas or binaural beats. Not even an examination of how the use of effects pedals massively contribute to the sound, which to my mind is essential. After awhile it just dragged on and on and repeated itself. Soooo disappointing and such a missed opportunity. I think you could get just as much out of searching youtube for archival interviews and music videos.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

reply

Some mention of the Velvets but nothing of Suicide, Spaceman 3 or others.


Well, at least they did have Sonic Boom in it.

reply

I agree. The film should have been at least 2 hours long, because once they started to talk about the records from the 90s, the movie started to feel rushed. When they displayed the list of bands influenced by the style, it felt like the filmmakers just wanted to get it over with.
Also, while the obscure vocals are a staple of the style, ironically its not so great when at least 50 % of the documentary is unintelligible, either because of bad sound mixing choices, or the low sound quality of the interviews.
Overall, though I am disappointed, the movie did give me a better understanding about the scene. The only thing I hope is that somebody with enough finances decides to do this properly, or, at the very least, make mini-docs about the bands individually. I would love to know something more about the history of MBV, Slowdive, Chapterhouse and their approach to sound.

"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity." - George Carlin

reply

I would love to know something more about the history of MBV, Slowdive, Chapterhouse and their approach to sound.


Okay, I'll start you with Slowdive. They come from Reading. They bought a Yamaha FX500. Plugged a guitar in to it 🎸. Set it to programme number 40 🎼🎡🎢🎡. The rest is history 😎

"I know it looked like I fell... but it was all part of my plan!"

reply

Yeah that's all there was to it!

reply

My copy has finally arrived and you've pretty much encapsulated my thoughts. It does feel like a BBC4 attempt at "Shoegaze Britannia". Not that that's bad in itself, but the people likely to fork out to import the DVD to the UK are more likely to want an in depth analysis and this only scratches the surface.

Use of contemporary interviews might also have been more revealing than a looking back "wasn't it all great" approach. There's an interesting Cocteau Twins interview from 1996, for example, which seems to put a nail in the 4AD "family" angle presented.

That said, I'm not sure given the broad scope selected that they could do anything other than what they did, but this (see link below) Slowdive documentary perhaps shows what could have been done if the individual subjects were given more time.

Slowdive - Souvlaki - Pitchfork Classic https://youtu.be/Sjr6esFXJl4

"I know it looked like I fell... but it was all part of my plan!"

reply