The whole shoegaze thing passed me by in the 90s. The music I was listening to at the time (particularly the guitar music) was a lot heavier and more aggressive. Fast forward many years later, shorn of the teen angst and prickly tension of those earlier days, I was in a different place entirely. It was then that I discovered 'Loveless' for the first time, thanks to the same friend who introduced me to Suicide.
This same friend let me borrow his CD which I played solidly. What got me about this album was the same thing that gets everybody: the dense, textural sounds, the wispy vocals and dreamlike ambience, the sounds that do not resemble guitars (and whatever else is buried in that mix) in any discernible way. As records go, 'Loveless' is truly not of this earth, and noise has never sounded more beautiful.
'Loveless' is yet another album that influenced the architecture of my own music. What Kevin Shields et al did with guitars, I later attempted with electronics: toy keyboards, drum machines and strange, homemade loops fed through a myriad of effects pedals. I can safely say that my music would've followed an almost entirely different trajectory had I not been introduced to this album.
An obvious choice perhaps, but seriously, what's not to like?
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