Aim: To better acquaint myself with drone-like and ambient music staples of the rock idiom. These albums were often characterized by monorhythmic percussion, heavily layered instrumentation, and supersaturated guitar effects. Vocals were routinely deadpan with lyricism lost amidst waves of guitar feedback (in the case of male vocals), or, in the case of female singers, presented as ethereal musings transcending language and literal interpretation. Key genres include shoegaze, space rock, noise rock, and selections of post-punk and minimal/no wave. This strong ambient quality makes shoegaze a sensible bridge from my more familiar territories of The Berlin School and 20th-century classical musics into the less-familiar realms of rock and pop. The largest deterrent I’ve encountered in rock is the egocentrism and hypersexualization of the iconic rocker “frontman” and I hope that through the heroin-inspired apathy and social disconnectedness of shoegaze that I can find a more amiable listening experience.
Albums will be surveyed in their entirety, as these are not genres built of hit singles, but instead of album-length works created in the spirit of
“taking drugs to make music to take drugs to.” My explorative starting point will be
The Scientist’s Shoegaze volume of RYM’s Ultimate Box Set series, which offers a chronology of shoegaze, beginning with Cocteau Twin’s ethereal masterpiece, Treasure from 1984.
Further listening suggestions are welcome.
