Maybe this is the long-awaited new MBV album? Perhaps Mr. Shields, "genius" that he is, built some sort to time-shifting code into the CD, and now you're hearing MBV circa 2002... I think you've deciphered the name of the new material as well: "Staticiness" -- Actually, I've no idea what the source of the problem is... but someone else probably knows. ???

Dave- in another it doesn't sound like much else. It sounds like it's supposed to.

You got your copy from the library, mine didn't have it but I got loads of sixties rock/pop and blues from there.

Is there a vacuum cleaner element to the sound?

Ned'll be here before long but... yeah, it's supposed to sound like that.

You are fine, it is the sound of that ole LOVELESS album.

Mayhaps this particular copy was once owned by an excitable Ned who soiled it. That might explain the perceived deficiency.

Ned'll be here before long

*swirls of smoke, lightning and thunder*

I AM SUMMONED.

As noted, very much meant to sound like that, queasy, collapsing and weird. Try listening to "To Here Knows When" in isolation to get a sense of what Mr. Shields is aiming for, then extrapolate from there to the rest of the album.

an excitable Ned who soiled it

Don't project your perversions onto me! HMPH!

But I have never heard a CD sound like the speed is off. (Is that even possible?)

I'm not sure if this exactly answers your question, but sometimes CD players can play too slow or too fast, which I didn't know before (assuming, of course, that the technology was near-perfect or something). I found this out when I played Outside the Dream Syndicate on a shitty Aiwa system (hey, it's what I could afford then) to a certain musician-who-won't-be-named who was, you could say, a lot more familiar with the sound of that album than I was. Said musician claimed the sound was all wrong, and having bought the album and another CD player, I'd have to say said musician was right. So CD players aren't infallible.

But in the case of Loveless, I think it's just supposed to sound that way.

I remember convincing a friend of mine to buy Loveless some years, and she rang me after she'd had it a week to complain that it was 'warped'. Fantastic!

And yes, there should most definitely be a 'vacuum cleaner element' to the sound! It's brilliant!

At the risk of repeating what everyone else has basically said, I slapped the cassette of LOVELESS into my Walkman sometime after I'd heard the majestic "Only Shallow". I, too, was completely convinced that there was either something seriously wrong with the tape -- or that my Walkman was "rolling." Not until I acquired the compact disc did it dawn on me that it was *SUPPOSED* to sound like that. Color me duped & stupid, I guess.

The only Loveless track I think I still like is "To Here Knows When". Unlike most else on the album, it's noise (GR#woosh@KX*o*) augmented with pop (coo), not the reverse.

What, and "Sometimes" isn't that way too?

I'm also having trouble getting this Oval CD to play normally. Help!

Thanks, y'all. I wasn't sure whether I should like it or not. I mean, I liked it in a perverse way, and I thought that if it weren't on purpose, it would be a cool idea. But then I thought that if it was defective, I might be missing out on something.

The idea wears thin after awhile - although I need to listen to it on a real stereo, instead of little headphones.

Ned: nu uh. The underlying indie (oops, erm, read guitar) dirge is clearly audible in "Sometimes". Then comes the woosh. Sonicallym "Loomer" comes closest to "THKW", I think. (Side-note: I wrote "girl" for "dirge" the first time I typed it. No points for guessing what's on my mind.)

You lech you, thinking about Bilinda that way. ;-)

".. your red button, falls from my mouth ... " = burning ears when I was in highschool.

Adding to the chorus. I got it and thought it was defective, like the hole was punched slightly off-centre on an old turntable, or something. My first reaction was to take it back, which I did. I think your inclination to listen to it on a proper stereo is the right one--when you get to hear it in full detail, it sounds less off-kilter, speed-wise, and more what it is: glorious tremolo arm abuse. Imagine it as sheets of sound divebombing your ears and it starts to make much more sense.

oh jesus, do i have to spell it out for everybody?

that 'sound' you are hearing is indeed supposed to be on the record. you can even make this sound at home without any recording equipment.

1. buy a fender jazzmaster or a fender jaguar. make sure the tremolo arm is intact. no other guitar will do. these guitars have a very unique tremolo that raises and lowers vertically into the body of the guitar instead of angling back and forth.

2. take the tremolo arm out and put it back, but don't screw it in, affix it with a piece of tape or some other adhesive. this way, the tremolo arm can rest against the palm of your hand while you strum.

3. tune your guitar to an alternate tuning... kevin shields' tunings can be found on a number of fanpages and tablature sites. otherwise, you can make your own or rip one off from sonic youth. try to stay away from any tuning that highlights the flat seventh interval. gross.

4. buy a boss delay pedal, learn how to plug it in and do. turn up your overdrive and reverb (and the delay pedal).

5. play some chords, and as you're playing, slightly increase and decrease the pressure of your palm on the tremolo arm of the guitar. you can do it in time with the song, even.

6. release a couple of unbelievably good albums, have some sort of bout with hallucinogen psychosis and disappear off the face of the planet. inspire scores of admirers and imitators, remix a couple of tunes, play a bit of guitar here and there, smoke joints in front of the television.

the guitar setup and technique can be seen on a video for um, swallow? shallow? soon? one of those songs.

rob

sorry sean, didn't see your answer till i'd typed mine in.

I have the same problem with my Loveless CD. Also the guitars sound way too distorted and you can barely hear the drums...

All my beach boys albums have their stereo mastering fuXoRed up.

Every Black Crowes song I've ever encountered has all this horrible noise over various interpretations of John Cage's "Silence."

I always liked that album that MBV released when they were called the Lilys. Much more tuneful than Loveless.

Anyhoo, is anyone else very excited about the new KS recordings on that upcoming Geographic compilation? I'm wondering how old the recording is, and whether "will this do?" was said at any point.

Much more tuneful than Loveless.

I'd like to hear the Lilys circa 1992 even try to replicate "You Made Me Realise" live...

Lilys weren't really a "rock" band though... ITPON is a pretty but really rather twee take on the MBV sound.. and Kurt/Wally may be a great plagiarist but he's no maverick.

So I listened to it on a 'proper' stereo. Marginal improvement. Same general result ==> annoyed after 10 minutes. It's an OK piece of work - maybe for devoted fans only. It was interesting, but I would not listen to it again.

Speaking of YMMR live - the couple of times I saw MBV live during the loveless period they actually made reality have the strange speeding up slowing down sort of thing.

It wasn't a trippy drugs thing it was just, um, something else. I've never felt like that during a pop concert before - but I was once in Mexico City during a 7.5 earthquake. It wasn't destructive because it travelling from deep in the ground up the way, rather than the building shaker lateral travelling shock wave. But the very air felt very strange, sort of greasy and soupy - everyone around started rubbing their fingers feeling the air. Apparently thats because there are very loud and very low frequency noise going on and thats what makes everyone feel weird.

Anyway thats what MBV live were like.

Though its quite disillusioning to read and loose tremelo arms and stuff I actually thought the disturbed reality feeling was much less mechanical, that if you looked at loveless with an oscilloscope you wouldn't see the wobble because the wobble was in the music not in the notes (umm, *I* know what I mean here, even if the reader probably doesnt)

Theres a great Bridget Riley exhibition on at the Hunterain Gallery in Glasgow at the moment and looking at some of them has an equivalent effect.

It's a classic album.. a seminal album... a perfect album... Kevin Shields is a genius!!!

One hopes that any new MBV stuff is more interesting than Bridget Riley's more recent output.

Seeing MBV live was the second most physically taxing concert experience in my life, and I had earplugs in. Amazing. Dinosaur Jr. had to follow them, it was a bad joke.

Oddly enough, Pale Saints were the most painful concert experience I've ever had, not because they're so bad, but because I was right next to the woofer and it threw off my heartbeat.

it never once occurred to me that Loveless sounds like it is playing wrong. Anyway, CD players can only sound "staticy" if there is a problem with the output stage or something else wrong with the stereo it's played on. A CD can theoretically go bad (e.g. all those discs made by PDO in the UK in 1989-1990 that oxidized), but doesn't really sound like static, maybe a little but then the disc starts skipping and eventually won't play. A non-defective CD that is damaged will skip, not sound like static. Also, I guess you could master a CD wrong and have static or digital distortion (which doesn't sound at all like static) but that's not the case with loveless. Finally, CD players can't really play the wrong speed like a turntable or something.

I dunno...there was this Grapes of Wrath album that I rushed out to get, and I took the CD home and...static. All other CDs sounded fine, so I took it back and replaced it. Static. Another one. Static. Different static for each disc, too. After going through twenty-some copies, I finally found one that sounded okay. Still haven't figured out what the problem was.

You're quite a sport, going back to the record store twenty-some times.

Well, after the third time we ended up just shelling the CDs right in the store and putting them into the store player to check 'em. I may have been a bit foolish to try THAT many, but not foolish enough to lug em all home one at a time.