In Another Way: Some of the stranger cultural reverberations effected by the release of a new My Bloody Valentine record

Just over two weeks ago My Bloody Valentine would release M B V, the much awaited follow up to Loveless, some 20 years in the making. The actual content of the music has by now been discussed and dissected ad nauseum, and though a suitably sensual yet caustic follow up to what has gone before, I feel something else has also been produced outside of the record in the process of its inception towards the public, something also worthy of consideration. From fan to critic, M B V seems to constitute a moment of cultural significance, at least within a certain domain, producing reactions as intriguing as the exotic sounds of the record itself. Opinion and conjecture seems to swarm to and from this M B V, fluctuations and reverberations discharged into a digital public sphere that mirrors the very spectrum of sounds that are endlessly deferred by the unlocatable, enshrouded core of My Bloody Valentine’s infamously obtuse sonic space.

You’ve probably already heard this one. A week almost turned into an eternity for many, as Kevin Shields announced onstage that a new My Bloody Valentine record was immanent in a much paraphrased ‘two to three’ days’. In classic Shields fashion that record did not appear in two to three days, leaving a somewhat testy and anxious fan base that took to social media channels to voice their disapproval at a dude not delivering on time, as if this work of art was a courier package gone mysteriously awry and they needed someone at a call centre to throw some complain words at. Shields talents for procrastination are widely documented, so it becomes bemusing that now of all points to find some of his audience tearing the seats out of the auditorium, demanding their aural pound of flesh. My Bloody Valentine has largely been a patient and considered project, see the amount of time it took to produce Loveless, how long it took them to reform and further still the announcement between the M B V album in question (itself largely composed of unfinished material post-Loveless) and its materialisation. Part of the allure of the My Bloody Valentine project is the sincere and painstaking attention to detail, even at the cost of any sort of prolificacy.

This delay has apparently caused a section of the audience to feel like indignant and aggrieved customers, waving receipts in hand as evidence of some material exchange that was due to take place yet did not. My Bloody Valentine, like many other artists before and present, is not a shop. If you’re unhappy with the service then you can’t really go to the customer service desk and ask to see the manager. Undoubtedly, the artist needs to eat, so you should be willing to financially support their work. But the purchase of a few CDs does not entitle a pre-industrial patron/patronage exchange system between artist and audience either, whereby Kevin Shields is on a retainer to consistently produce work, and within the parameters of a certain time frame. It’s great that you brought the Isn’t Anything re-master and a ticket to the reunion show, but what that doesn’t mean My Bloody Valentine are now contractually obliged to deliver a record within the stated 2 – 3 days, lest you take to twitter and vomit an indignancy of 140 characters into the great cultural echo chamber. If the whole thing is that much of a hindrance to people then I suppose the best option is to exercise the most eminent of capital rights and just not buy? Perhaps I have read this all wrong, that all there is here is a few overzealous fans who have waited some 20 years for a record from their favourite band. It just a trend that concerns me whereby fandom feels they can henceforth dictate and/or dismiss the terms of the artists output, as if any other capitalist based material transaction.

The eventual release late on a Saturday night, direct from the recently redesigned-as-storefront My Bloody Valentine official website, saw the whole thing temporarily crash and break down, such was the demand for M B V. Instead of physical copies making their way to record stores in the usual conveyor belt fashion, complete with publicity campaign in full swing, Shields chose to circumvent this for the contentious direct to digital consumer base method. MP3’s were initially offered for download with physical CD and vinyl copies being posted at a later date. The record shop (chain, independent or otherwise) was forgone here in favour of a direct transaction between band and fan. This novel means of commandeering the economic transaction between artist and audience is not particularly new (see Radiohead’s In Rainbows, and more generally the Bandcamp website), but in My Bloody Valentine’s case, was certainly effective. The anxious nashing of teeth but a few days before was metered by people gracious to receive finally receive the work. The more paranoid amongst us might suspect Shield’s infamous ‘two or three days’ was a deliberate ploy to stir up consumer fervour, though I’d personally hope to believe it was more likely due to the methodical ‘when it’s ready’ work ethic he has employed throughout his career, a more consistent feature of his character than his productivity.

Within less than 24 hours, established indie music sites, such as the NME and The Quietus were not only covering the release but posting track-by-track analysis as if unfolding news event. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with the music press supplementing the excitement of the audience, many of them probably being avid My Bloody Valentine fans themselves. The problem is, when the record is already easily available for the audience to listen to, are they going to really want to read someone else’s on the spot immediate determination of it, when they can go and listen to a copy for themselves? I know which option I went for. This must have been a vague source of irritation for the gatekeeping tendencies of the music journalist. Normally the record review is out either before or at the very least the actual day of release, offering a chance for proper critical appraisal before public dissemination.

In the case of M B V, the music press seemed to be one step behind the audience in a bizaaro reversal of role. With the eager public already loaded up on the intricacies of M B V, the actual review becomes somewhat after the fact. The release held a tangible quality of cultural harmony, as no advances were sent out, and the release was presumably straight from Shields to the My Bloody Valentine website (to here knows when?). Everyone got it at exactly the same time. And as actual reviews would start appearing some 48 hours later, it was hard not to be somewhat suspicious as to the critical sincerity of these pieces. God knows Loveless was not a instantly accessible record, its rewards lying in deliberate appreciation of its various components over repeated listens. M B V seems little different from what I have so far digested, composed of the same sonic textures that submerge the inner qualities to be later unlocked in repeated listens. Under these conditions, I find it doubtful that a critical review produced in such immediate amount of time could actually deliver a properly precise opinion, and not some hasty glance over the material in order to keep up with the hyperspeed of internet based cultural consumption. The fragility of the music industry release structure becomes briefly illuminated. What is revealed is not so much an audience looking upon high for a venerated approval of cultural property, but rather an anxious critical base seeking to assert its own authority over a consumer increasingly outrunning the old guard as they travel great distances both vertical and horizontal across cyberspace.

It would be naïve to suggest this situation is either new or the case universally going forward. A great narrative of the 21^st century thus far is the challenge of new media to old. How new systems are both circumventing and supplanting the latter to produce new pathways (the dubious neo-liberal properties of this process are perhaps a discussion for another time, though it could equally argued the political terrain in question is still there for the taking). It should not be forgotten that M B V is a record released by an established band under with a huge demand wagered by the temporal distance in between previous releases. Though it has been an unmitigated success by My Bloody Valentine, new bands would not find it so easy to employ similar tactics. Bandcamp exists as a similar self-release model for such acts, though the attention and profit attracted is not nearly so substantiated. The success of M B V in attaining both attention and profit would suggest that the self-release model is perhaps a useful one for consideration as the music industry gradually shifts away from the mechanized industrial one. The biggest obstacle at the present time for such acts yet to blossom is waiting for the damned infrastructure to catch up.

In spite of this criticism, M B V seems significant as an event within contemporary popular music. Outside of the record itself, an arrangement of various actors become drawn towards it as if it were a black hole like vacuum and not a grouping of songs. From the audience claiming their material demands before release, to the critical establishment being undermined by the very act of distribution, we see how an autonomous object with no sentient life to call its own, can still have the power to organise and affect beyond its own intrinsic properties. This is perhaps the most interesting and fundamental thing to have been unconsciously effected by M B V, the overt indication of upheaval underway within the hegemony of the record distribution and consumption structure.