My Bloody Valentine – Isn’t Anything

With their debut album, Isn’t Anything (originally released in

1988), My Bloody Valentine revolutionised alternative music

and heralded a new approach to guitar music for generations

to come. The album birthed a sound which became a

template for thousands of new subgenres, heralding a new

approach to guitar music and studio production. Not only was

it a new type of music, it paved the way for a new type of

journalism; inciting comparisons to elemental phenomenon,

tapping into how the music affected the psyche. Shields and

Butcher frequently sang in a similar vocal range that allowed

their voices to blend together. This had the effect of making

their gender indistinguishable, to the point where their voices

could be used as another melodic layer to complement the

vertigo-inducing sounds made by Shields’ guitars. It is a record

characterised by the ominous sense of space that inhabits

many of its songs, which veered between the harried and

propulsive, to the subdued and eerie.