May 27th sees the release of re-mastered versions of My Bloody Valentine's two classic albums and a brand new compilation of EPs and previously un-released tracks.
They will release their 2 full-length studio albums, 'Isn’t Anything' and 'Loveless', plus EP’s 1988-1991, a brand new compilation which draws together their 4 EP releases, Feed Me With Your Kiss, You Made Me Realise, Glider and Tremolo alongside 7 additional rare and previously un-released tracks.
The original studio albums have been painstakingly re-mastered by Kevin Shields at Metropolis Studios in London and Loveless comes as a 2-disc set featuring a previous re-mastering from original analogue tapes, completed by Kevin Shields but never released.
Alongside their EPs, the compilation album features a mixture of rare and unavailable and previously unreleased tracks.

Track listing for the EP collection, from To Here Knows When:

-----

Disc 1

You Made Me Realise
UK 12" Creation CRE 055T (August 1988)
01. You Made Me Realise
02. Slow
03. Thorn
04. Cigarette In Your Bed
05. Drive It All Over Me
Feed Me With Your Kiss
UK 12" Creation CRE 061T (November 1988)
06. Feed Me With Your Kiss
07. I Believe
08. Emptiness Inside
09. I Need No Trust
Glider
UK 12" Creation CRE 073T (April 1990)
10. Glider
11. Soon
12. Don't Ask Why
13. Off Your Face

-----

Disc 2

Tremolo
UK 12" Creation CRE 085T (February 1991)
01. To Here Knows When
02. Swallow
03. Honey Power
04. Moon Song

Instrumental [free 7" with first 5000 Isn't Anything LPs]
UK 7" CRE FRE4 (November 1988)
05. Instrumental no.2
06. Instrumental no.1

Glider EP Remixes
UK 12" Creation CRE 073X (April 1990)
07. Glider (full length version)

Only Shallow
CD France Les Inrockuptibles VISA 3239 (1992)
08. Sugar

PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED
09. Angel
10. Good For You
11. How Do You Do It

-----

Just placed my order for the EPs on Amazon. £8.99!

I'll get all of this stuff. I still have all of the 12"s, but this looks promising.

I'm not going to pre-order though as there have been previous false dawns and I will beleive it when I see it!

I'm going to hang on and see what the unreleased material is like.

I have the four CD singles already, along with the vinyl releases, plus one of the instrumentals that came on the free 7 inch with Isn't Anything is on the Creation compilation Pensioners on Ecstasy. I also have my own recording of Sugar, from the flexi which was given away with The Catalogue magazine in 1989. The cynic in me assumes that French copies of the Les Inrockuptibles CD release featuring that track will be going for well under a tenner on eBay, once this collection hits the racks, so I could just decide to spend my money on that instead. I know my collector self too well to pretend that I'll offload the original releases, even if I got the new set.

But I shall reserve judgment until I hear those unreleased pieces. The titles don't look inspiring, and if they're just more instrumentals then I'll hardly ever play them.

Which brings me to the other concern. I know that the Andrew Weatherall remix of Soon was an artefact of its time, and might sound both outdated and quaint now (which doesn't seem to apply for the date-stamped samples on the Instrumental single) but it's the only reason that I and other fans bought the Glider EP Remixes 12 inch (CRE 073X).



Thankfully, this can be found on the Keeping the Faith - a Creation Dance Compilation CD [*], but for anyone who's had the misfortune to sit through the short version of Glider (from CRE 073T)...



...the prospect of a version lasting three times as long (happily not on YouTube) at 10:20 might make you wonder why it made the final selection in place of that remix. I'm a MBV fan, but let's be right here: play both versions of Glider and that's nearly fifteen minutes of your life gone. If you do a spot of hoovering instead then the place will be cleaner and it'll sound much the same.


[*] EDIT: It's also on the much easier to find JBO: a Perspective CD of Junior Boys Own remixes.

Just found this on YouTube:



That sounds like an Isn't Anything out-take. I might be ordering after all...

....and to wait for the inevitable further reduction in price.

I'm still not convinced until I actually see a copy of any of these in a shop somewhere.

And even then I'll need to probably need to pick it up and give it a shake before I'm absolutely sure.

Shake and try before you buy?

Either that or ask the bloke next to you to deck you to make sure your not dreaming.

Great find..Am I alone in thinking 'Isn't Anything ' is the better of the two ..

No you're not alone. Isn't Anything was always the one for me as well. Just the pure shock of the sound on it, something that the 2nd one didn't have for me.

That's three of us, then. Isn't Anything is also much more varied than Loveless, which can sometimes blur into an amorphous mass, like those layered guitars.

For me, it goes:

1. You Made Me Realise EP
2. Isn't Anything
3. Feed Me with Your Kiss EP
4. Tremolo EP
5. Loveless
6. Glider EP

Another vote for "Isn't Anything" over "Loveless". "You Made Me Realise" is my favourite EP, for "Drive It All Over Me" and "Slow".

Bring on the first week of May!

...and Thorn!

Both versions of 'Loveless' streaming here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/may/01/my-bloody-valentine-loveless-stream

I think MBV are suffering the same fate as The Smiths, in that critical opinion has cemented their second-best album as their finest.

Loveless isn't about subtlety, or listening carefully in front of your hi-fi for instrument separation or speedy bass response. It sounded fine on vinyl, it sounded more or less exactly the same on CD and it will sound the same this time, on both discs of the new set.

And Isn't Anything will still sound better. It might even benefit from some classier mastering too, unlike its lauded successor.

Yes, Isn't Anything is more varied, but it has a less refined sound, just listen to both guitars and his effects. The full albums.

Isn't Anything scares me a bit. It's a very good album, his second song is one of my favorite songs, but the whole Loveless album got a almost perfect ambient and sound (almost, his mastering isn't perfect).

In the piece in Mojo it said there would be a new album this year.

Pull the other one, Kevin, it's got bells on.

Kevin Shields interview..


http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/8809-kevin-shields/

Here's the last MBV thread, which started in August last year:

http://ubb.mojo4music.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=431741&page=1

Entertaining stuff. We were all on better form back then. Clearly the Boards have gone to pot, and it's all Popular Opinion's fault for liking Loveless more than Isn't Anything.

Ah, those were the days!

Absolutely. You could hijack a MBV thread with Pale Saints stuff, and nobody significant would moan.

I joined in August......

Don't blame yourself. Someone will be along in a minute to point out that the rot set in far earlier, and they remember when all this was trees...

Nostalgia time!

The Guardian is running an old Vox magazine MBV interview from April 1992:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/may/01/my-bloody-valentine-interview

That reminds me. I had a Q magazine CD (I think it was Q) that had MBV covering "We Have All The Time In The World". I'm sure Mr Gladwin will tell us if this ever track ever saw release elsewhere?

'We Have All The Time In The World' is here..

. Shame this isn't on the forthcoming EP collection.

Ooooh you sensitive types. Every slight remembered.

Half-Life, Remembered?

Just heard Loveless described as "a quite good Cocteau Twins album being played in another room".

Just got home to find the "EPs" on my doormat from Amazon! Yipeee!

It's a nice package, though there are no sleeve notes or anything from Kevin. But it actually has been released, which is great!

Looking forward to hearing those unreleased tracks tonight!

It's very good. Two CDs of fun. Tremelo EP in particular sounds lovely. Honey Power, what a song. It's been a long time since the EP originally came out and it sounds as timeless as ever (which is the point of timelessness I s'pose).

Did anyone ever see MBV play live? Comedian, Stewart Lee said one MBV gig was so loud that it started his life long battle with chronic tinnitus.

I saw them at Reading in 89 but it was outside and a long way from the stage so I don't really remember it as being very overly loud to be honest.

I saw them in '92 as part of the Rollercoaster tour and then again a couple of years ago at the Roundhouse. Both times it was incredibly loud. However in '92, they were followed by Dinosaur Jr who were were probably playing at the same level, but were far more piercing. Murph's snare gave me a headache.

I wish that I had worn earplugs to the Roundhouse gig as I'm sure it would have cut out most of the surface noise and made the experience a bit easier!

I went to Reading 89 for one day, partly to see MBV, but the coach got stuck in traffic and I only saw the last two songs (I did see Sugarcubes, House of Love and New Order though!)

I saw them on the Rollercoaster tour at Whitley Bay Ice Rink. Call me a wimp, but I found the extreme noise interlude on Feed Me With Your kiss a trial more than a pleasure!

Has anyone heard the new remaster of Loveless that is out in two versions? Is there any discernible difference between the two?

Thought I'd resurrect this thread to say that I finally gave in and ordered the EP collection a few minutes ago, and that I saw My Bloody Valentine support Pixies at Rock City in Nottingham on Tuesday 27 September 1988.



As you can see, the support was meant to be Throwing Muses. Pixies setlist for the show here.

Finally listened to the first disc off EPs 1988-1991 this morning, and what I have to say is not good.

The You Made Me Realise EP has been flat-ironed until the dynamics, such as they were, are gone. The remaster also accentuates the higher frequencies, possibly in an attempt to make the vocals clearer, but the consequential effect has been to pick out the snappier percussion and to geld the bass. The whole thing retains its surging quality, but the impact of the stop/start moments is greatly reduced, to the point where Thorn just doesn't happen like it used to, when the band comes in after the dribbly guitar intro.

On Feed Me With Your Kiss, the throaty exhaust-pipe tear of the bass is utterly absent. I Believe is empty of its characteristic rumble during the verses, and I'm sure a comparative side-by-side listening session with the original EPs would only add to the list of disappointment. I was gritting my teeth, waiting for Soon, thinking that would survive this treatment. No. the single mix has always burned brighter than the album version, but not here. Don't Ask Why actually sounds OK, perhaps because there's so little percussive/bass action. Possibly the idea was to make everything sound as much like Loveless as possible, in which case I expect to start Disc Two at lunch and find the Tremolo EP very little changed.

I don't want to put off newcomers from hearing this music, and I'm sure the unreleased material later in the collection will seduce me, but fans of the same vintage should hold on to their original Creation 12" and CD singles, all of which sound better than what I've heard so far.

Shit. That's not good. I bought this a month ago or so and shamefully have still not listened to it, and to be honest I wouldn't have picked up on the differences as I'm not that familiar with the non-album material. Thanks for the update.

Well, a difference is only there if you perceive it. If you don't know those original EPs you won't notice a thing.

Like I said, I don't want to put anyone off.

Quick update. As anticipated, there was less difference at the start of Disc Two with the Tremolo EP, although the whole thing still sounds flatter and duller than before. The two instrumental pieces from the free 7 inch that accompanied early copies of Isn't Anything survive largely unaltered, but - once more - there's less going on with them. The first (titled Instrumental 2 here, although both were just called Instrumental on the single) is of course largely a loop from Public Enemy's Security of the First World with added MBV surges, so there's no dynamic range to get compressed. The second is the band in action, and is headlong flurrying stuff (pretty much the MBV equivalent of Joy Division's Incubation, you might say) and so once more there's no noticeable sonic vandalism.

I haven't played the full ten-minute version of Metal Valentine Music a.k.a. Glider since buying the Glider E.P. Remixes 12 inch from Loughborough's lamented Left-Legged Pineapple in 1990. Once is enough. But I'm looking forward to the rest of the CD, because Sugar is bound to sound better than on the Catalogue flexi, and the other songs are unreleased.

I bought this back in June but still haven't listened to it!

Clearly there was some foreboding at work here - I took over a fortnight even to think about playing it, and then allowed myself to be delayed by the impracticably-sized cardboard sleeve, which is just too big to be protected by either of the cover types that I order from Covers 33.

Has anyone actually received and/or played either of the remastered albums? I'm not going to bother with them after this, but I'd be interested to read what others hear.

Comparative listening has confirmed my impressions: the EP collection is worth having if you're new to the music, and the bonus material is great (especially if like me you prefer Isn't Anything to Loveless) but the following CDs remain essential, and most of them can be picked up cheaply at the moment:

My Bloody Valentine - You Made Me Realise (Creation CRESCD 055)
My Bloody Valentine - Feed Me With Your Kiss (Creation CRESCD 061)
My Bloody Valentine - Glider (Creation CRESCD 073)
My Bloody Valentine - Tremolo EP (Creation CRESCD 085)

Various - Keeping the Faith - a Creation Dance Compilation* (CRECD 081)

[*Includes the Andrew Weatherall remix of Soon, which isn't on EPs 1988-1991]

Here's a link that works:

My Bloody Valentine - Rough Song - Electric Brixton - Live in London - January 27 2013

I like it - a lot