My Bloody Valentine

My Bloody Valentine were an Irish-British shoegazing rock band. They formed in 1984 in Dublin and continued into the early 1990s. Original members were guitarist/singer Kevin

My Bloody Valentine were an Irish-British shoegazing rock band. They formed in 1984 in Dublin and continued into the early 1990s. Original members were guitarist/singer Kevin Shields and drummer Colm O'Ciosoig. Lineup during heyday also included singer-guitarist Bilinda Butcher and bassist Debbie Googe.

Though they released a handful of EPs during the mid-1980s, only their two official albums Isn't Anything (1988) and Loveless (1991), are considered representative of their sound: a distinct blend of noise rock, ambience, and off-kilter pop. The thick, swirling, multi-layered guitar sound pioneered by My Bloody Valentine would later be termed shoegazer by the British press, a tag that would be applied to a number of new-coming alternative pop-rock or rock outfits of similarly heavily layered and distorted guitars and soft, hushed vocals. The songs were written by Shields and generally featured Bilinda Butcher's vocals, except for 'Touched,' a short instrumental by Colm O'Ciosoig. In 1999 Pitchforkmedia declared Loveless to be the greatest album of the 1990s, and Kevin Shields is thought by some to be a sonic genius capable of unmatched noise, all the while retaining a keen melody.