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