Creation Records expected My Bloody Valentine to record their second album in five days. The Irish band took two and a half years, burned through nineteen studios, and left the label's owner so exasperated that he dropped them the moment the record was done. The record finally reached the public on November 4, 1991.
The record was Loveless, released on November 4, 1991. It climbed to number 24 on the UK Albums Chart, and critics greeted it as a landmark — one of the great records in popular music — a key work of shoegaze, the guitar-drenched genre that defined the turn of the 80s into the 90s.
Blackwing, The Elephant and a silent vision
The trouble started in February 1989 at Blackwing Studios in London. After several unproductive months, the group moved to The Elephant in Wapping and spent eight weeks there with nothing to show. Kevin Shields, the band's guitarist and producer alongside drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig, had a vision he never explained. Staff engineer Nick Robbins recalled being told he was there only to press buttons.
Shields was chasing a sound built on his 'glide guitar' technique — rocking the tremolo arm while strumming so chords bend and shimmer. He layered digital samples, unusual tunings, and obsessive production methods. Rumours put the final cost at 250 thousand pounds, though Shields himself said the real figure was closer to 160 thousand. The band often spent a single day in a studio before deciding it was wrong for them. The work was not a group effort in the usual sense. Alan Moulder, brought in to mix the song "Soon" at Trident 2, later said Shields had a clear vision but never explained it. Shields called Moulder the only engineer he trusted with tasks like placing microphones on amplifiers. In spring 1990, Anjali Dutt took over from Moulder and helped record vocals and several guitar tracks.
Mixing at The Church and the vocal curtain
The album was finally mixed at The Church in Crouch End, the nineteenth studio on the journey. Engineers Dick Meaney and Darren Allison edited the tape on an old machine built for cutting film dialogue back in 1970; its computer knocked the entire album out of phase. Shields reconstructed the recording from memory, but mastering took thirteen days instead of the usual one. The vocals were recorded at Britannia Row and Protocol in May and June 1991, the first time singer Bilinda Butcher took part in the recording. Shields and Butcher hung curtains over the window between the control room and the vocal booth, speaking to engineers only when the curtain opened to signal a good take. Engineer Guy Fixsen said they were not allowed to listen to the vocals and had to watch the tape machine's meters instead.
When Loveless finally appeared, the praise was immediate. Critics called it a virtual reinvention of the guitar. But Alan McGee, the owner of Creation Records, had had enough. He terminated the band's contract, finding Shields too difficult to work with. That decision reportedly forced the label into a co-ownership deal with Sony Music just to stay afloat. It followed the group's previous release, Isn't Anything. Before Loveless, the EPs Glider and Tremolo had introduced "Soon" and "To Here Knows When", songs that later appeared on the album.
What Creation couldn't survive, the album outlived. Loveless became the reference point for shoegaze and influenced a generation of artists. The band struggled to record a follow-up and broke up in 1997. Loveless remained their last full-length album until the reunion and the release of m b v in 2013.
Thirty-five years on, the album still sounds like a private weather system. The vocals of Shields and Bilinda Butcher sit low in the mix, heavily pitch-shifted, more texture than voice. Shields wanted the sound to be a single guitar hit straight down the centre — no chorus, no modulation effects. He said people imagined hundreds of guitars on the album, though the guitar tracks were fewer than on most bands' demos. What he built in those nineteen studios was nothing less than a new way to hear a guitar.
Thirty-five years on, the album still sounds like a private weather system.