Bleep

My Bloody Valentine's debut studio album inspired an entirely new approach to recorded music, inspiring countless acts in the following years. If 1991’s Loveless was My Bloody Valentine hurling themselves into an amniotic abyss of sound, 1988’s Isn’t Anything originally released on Creation Records represents the mounting vault before the plunge. A hugely ambitious debut album in its own right, all the consummate pieces of Kevin Shields and co’s ruthless experimental sensibilities are on monumental form throughout Isn’t Anything, succeeding in sounding completely singular over 30 years later.

From the opening snare thuds and the very first liquid metal guitar squall on ‘Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)’, My Bloody Valentine state their claim to Sonic Youth’s jagged crown, but as the joint vocal deliveries of Shields and Bilinda Butcher unfold across this precious trove of avant-rock gems, a lovelorn pop sensitivity akin to Teenage Fanclub and The Jesus and Mary Chain shines through, paired with the discordant chord turns and flurrying sweeps of ‘Lose My Breath’ and ‘No More Sorry’. Resonances of the latter can be heard in subsequent works, but the song presented here shows that My Bloody Valentine’s intimate knowledge of how to turn pedal effects into limitless moments of splendour was already fully-formed.

Lucid experiments and pioneering production techniques are cemented on this seminal shoegaze release from one of the genres pioneers.