My Bloody Valentine - Peel Session 1988
When My Bloody Valentine walked on the stage of feedback-pop, something truly magic was finally created in the realm of psychedelia. The mini-album Ecstasy (1987) explored the ambiguity that would make their mature sound so haunting and devastating: ecstasy and terror were two faces of the same moon, and that moon shone day and night. Daydreaming and nightmare became the same state of mind as guitars enveloped naive melodies and drums smashed vocal harmonies. Isn't Anything (1988) went one step further than Jesus And Mary Chain, in that it renounced punk's violence and harked back to the most dilated forms of acid-rock. Kevin Shields' "shoegazing" guitar fullfilled Jerry Garcia's and Jimi Hendrix' galactic bliss, and helped the sweet litanies grind their way into a transcendental trance. Electronic keyboards joined guitar noise on Loveless (1991), the ultimate exploration of textures in rock music. Its stunning chaos can be viewed both as an enraptured "om" to the universe or as a deranged scream in a madman's cell or as a terrified paralysis in the face of a supernatural force. The album changed the meaning of the word "music" by proving the equivalence between "noisy" and 'symphonic", the same way that Einstein proved the equivalence between inertial and gravitational mass.