Friday 21 November 2008

2008: The Year That Shitgaze Stole My Heart

Seriously: Shitgaze

The sobriquet "shitgaze" is an amalgamation of the name of another indie rock genre, shoegaze, of which shitgaze shares some common elements, and the word "shit", presumably because shitgaze recordings and performances regularly "push the needle in the red", i.e., they stretch the limits of their amplifiers to produce distorted sounds. In, other words, according to San Diego CityBeat, "it sounds shitty"


I already had more than half the albums listed so I ordered Magic Flowers Droned (which is a mess, but in a good way)

Not sure I agree with the name, can't really argue with the shit part but just what "common elements" does it have with shoegaze, except that they've decided to lump A Place To Bury Strangers in there despite them not really fitting. Times New Viking certainly don't deserve that, I was just listening to the Shred Yr Face tour 7" and I'm pretty sure that hidden under an ocean of noise TNV's contribution contains the best pop song of the year.

p.s. Yeah, long gap since the last post, been a bit depressed recently and not felt like it but Milk is Politics and Have You Ever Heard The Lovely Eggs? turned up in the post today and I ended up digging out a few other 7"s I'd bought this year* which has cheered me up enough for long enough to get this far.

*I'd forgotten how good The Boat Song/Temptation single is, David Holmes has some competition for single of the year after all...

2 comments:

dunc said...

I love living in the age of infinite genres, chordgazing or cuddlegrunge being a personal favourites. This one must be more real though cos it has it's own wikipedia.

Isn't Milk Is Politics lovely :)

NRG said...

I'm sure I saw a post on Sweeping the Nation the other day which said "indie-pop as opposed to indiepop"

Milk Is Politics is fantastic, I must get my housemate to show me how to work his mp3 ripping usb turntable so I don't have to keep going downstairs. I'd figure it out myself, but its connected to a mac and I don't like to touch it unless absolutely necessary.