However shoegazing has come full circle, and it’s a badge of honor to be enshrined in the same auditory category as the luminaries who created it.Īfter a brief decline around the mid-nineties, the genre has had a resurgence with bands such as M83, Ulrich Schnauss, A Sunny Day In Glasgow, Pinkshinyultrablast, Amusement Parks on Fire and Deerhunter developing the idiom with modern production techniques and electronics.
Largely based in Oxford, Reading, and London this small scene of indie bands rejected the label, not wanting to be compartmentalised by idle and apathetic print media. Taking inspiration from the washy dream pop of Cocteau Twins and the new-wave Goth sensibilities of The Cure, along with the psychedelic, hypnotic noise jams of Sonic Youth, somehow shoegaze came to be. It encompasses the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Seefeel, The Jesus & Mary Chain and Ride. Coined by an NME journalist as a derogatory reference to the guitarists’ motionless performance gazing at their pedalboards (or shoes). Shoegaze is the maligned term for a sub-genre of guitar music that started in the British Isles around the late eighties and culminated in the early nineties.