An extract from Higher Than The Sun taking a look at the most startling piece of 'music' recorded by My Bloody Valentine...
As the year and the decade drew to a close – by which time Elephant Studios’ in-house engineer Nick Robbins had walked out of the sessions citing boredom, before recording relocated yet again to Woodcray Studios in Berkshire, a move that itself was quickly followed by three other changes of venue in such rapid succession that nobody is able to agree on which ones and in which order – Alan McGee made a surprisingly successful attempt to lay down the law, threatening to cut off funding for My Bloody Valentine's second album for Creation entirely unless the band could at least came up with enough tracks to make up an EP for release in the New Year. At McGee’s insistence, former Jesus And Mary Chain engineer Alan Moulder – now a robust producer who was well used to working with people who didn’t appear to take studio time and costs as seriously as they perhaps ought to – was installed and the sessions were moved to London’s more easily observable Trident 2 Studios; needless to say another change of venue, this time to nearby Falconer Studios, would soon follow.
Spurred on by the ultimatum and encouraged by the stricter studio regime, Shields quickly delivered four finished tracks, which duly appeared in April 1990 as the Glider EP. Although the astonishing Soon, a seven minute tour-de-force that combined bubblegum pop, searing guitars and a cheerful Toytown Techno backing hidden somewhere in the general cacophony and was the closest that any of the four tracks got to being radio friendly, was wisely chosen as the nominal a-side, the EP’s title track was remarkable for entirely different reasons. The result of a session spent experimenting with coaxing something approaching melody and orchestration out of effects-drenched feedback, the ear-splitting instrumental Glider warped, buckled, expanded and contracted as though it was tearing at the very fabric of reality, and was as close as anyone has got to capturing the sensation of a sinus infection in music. On hearing the finished track, Laurence Verfaillie was on the verge of phoning the pressing plant to inform them that the vinyl had come out warped when she remembered that she was actually listening to a cassette. Even the other two slightly more conventional tracks were still some considerable distance from conventionality; the acoustic, Eastern-influenced Don’t Ask Why sounded as though it was being performed backwards through the sonic equivalent of Venetian Blinds, while Off Your Face employed such a strange and disjointed tempo that it seemed to be missing random fragments of song. Unsurprisingly, critics were unstinting in their praise for the EP and Soon even picked up a good deal of radio play, leading to some renewed faith that the eventual album would be worth the frustratingly slow progress. Nonetheless, everyone at Creation remained acutely aware that it had taken six months and as many changes of studio – and the associated financial outlay – to produce less than twenty minutes of releasable music.
Although it would ultimately stall at a frustrating number forty one, the Glider EP certainly succeeded in generating renewed excitement over My Bloody Valentine, both in the music press and indeed within Creation itself; Bobby Gillespie and Andy Bell would both independently inform McGee separately that they considered the EP to be an outstanding and exciting piece of work. The blissed-out video for Soon– noticeably in thrall to that of Loaded, only with the inclusion of footage of Butcher dancing – became an unexpected favourite on MTV. Soon even found an unexpected champion in Andrew Weatherall, who at his own suggestion produced a remix that pushed the dancier elements to the fore and transformed it into an enormous-sounding dancefloor filler. Not to be outdone – and possibly as much out of mischief as anything resembling a statement of intent – Shields produced a 12” extended version of Glider to accompany it.
After a short tour to support the EP, My Bloody Valentine had returned to the studio; although Moulder’s confidence that the album could be completed inside a month was to ultimately prove ill-founded, it is true to say that he managed to instill something approaching a sense of discipline in Shields. A number of tracks were completed within a week of the sessions recommencing, and Creation remained hopeful of a late 1990 release for the album. However, Moulder’s extensive commitments elsewhere – including a stint reworking Ride’s debut album after the original final mixes had fallen short of Creation’s expectations – prevented him from keeping as tight a rein on proceedings as it had been hoped he would be able to. When the hugely skilled but far less disciplinarian Creation regular Anjali Dutt took over in his absence, proceedings ground to a halt yet again; Dutt would later recall that the band spent much of their studio time obsessing over a rough cut of the promotional video for Soon. The seemingly never-ending project continued to drain money from Creation, to the extent that Laurence Verfaillie was soon finding it difficult even to fund proper press launches for new releases by other acts. Eventually there was no option but to suspend the sessions and send My Bloody Valentine on another tour to ease the financial burden for a while; with the band now playing at a phenomenal volume that had caused several Creation insiders to invest in earplugs, and one soundcheck reputedly taking ninety minutes, it was rapidly becoming evident that they had arrived at a sound that was proving virtually impossible to capture in any studio.
Higher Than The Sun - the story of Screamadelica, Foxbase Alpha, Bandwagonesque, Loveless and Creation Records' first attempt at taking on the world - is available as a paperback here or as an eBook here.