My Bloody Valentine - Albums Collecton 1988-2012 (5CD) Remastered 2012

They exist. I'm holding the CDs right now, and I can tell you, they exist. The remasters of My Bloody Valentine's Creation catalog had been announced and delayed so many times, it became a running joke to ask which would come first, the Loveless remasters or the long-awaited follow-up. The inferred punchline was "neither." Advance copies circulated four years ago, but the leaks came and went and no one was sure if they were real. Turns out they were. And now you can buy them. They're available only in the UK for now, but yes, the My Bloody Valentine remasters exist.

In addition to new masters of Isn't Anything and Loveless, there's also a new My Bloody Valentine release, of a sort. EPs 1988-1991 collects four EPs and a single issued during the band’s creative peak, along with previously unreleased (but widely bootlegged) tracks. This release provides the greatest revelation. Imbibing this material in one large gulp feels like a new window into the band's brilliance. You Made Me Realise, originally released in 1988, is a perennial on any list of the greatest EPs of all time and it vastly improves upon their earlier work. They had experimented with guitar noise, but they'd never succeeded in making something like the title track, which walked a razor's edge between bliss and terror. Kevin Shields was a great admirer of the Beatles' flair for melody, but he'd never written a tune as breezy and memorable as "Thorn". And nothing they'd done before sounded as effortless as "Drive It All Over Me". They were finally a real rock band, with pulsing bass and brisk tempos and guitars that sound like guitars.

By late 1988, Shields put together an extended single and an album that secured MBV's status as guitar-pop innovators. The untitled single that featured "Feed Me With Your Kiss" (it was also released as a four-song EP, all songs are included here) found them becoming sweeter and yet more dissonant, essentially pushing every which way in the general direction of "more." If "Feed Me With Your Kiss" and "I Believe" can't quite match anything on Realise, they at least hinted that an even wider emotional range was within this band's grasp.

Isn't Anything, a singular item in the My Bloody Valentine discography, is the fulfillment of this promise. For some fans, it's the band's pinnacle. It's alternately dark and slow and joyously effervescent; on fast-tempo songs like "Nothing Much to Lose" and "Sueisfine", drummer Colm Ó Coísóig adds Keith Moon-like fills to the end of every bar. On slower songs like "Lose My Breath" and "No More Sorry", the guitars clang and rattle and MBV seem effortlessly dark and goth, having finally found a way to convey mood without forgoing song.

Even more than the greatness of the individual tracks, Isn't Anything crystallizes MBV's unique dynamic. It's an essential document in the noise-pop sphere that was by then already called shoegaze, and much of MBV's influence can be found here rather than on Loveless. But it's also distinctly the work of this one band. At the heart of My Bloody Valentine was the mixture of the crushing power of Dinosaur Jr. and Hüsker Dü and the delicate vulnerability of indie pop; the masculine/feminine dynamic was accomplished not through the brilliant interplay between Kevin Shields and singer/guitarist Bilinda Butcher (whose voices complement each other but often sound quite alike) but by the effect of their voices against the guitar noise. My Bloody Valentine offered a new expression of androgynous sensuality in pop, crafting deeply sexual but also abstracted music, short on specifics but heavy with feeling. And Isn't Anything is where this combination came into full flower. The swooning drone of "All I Need" points directly at what was to come on Loveless, but Isn't Anything needn't exist in relationship to another record. If they had stopped here, My Bloody Valentine's reputation would have been assured. Fortunately, they didn't. Another landmark was around the corner.

But before they got there, MBV offered two more EPs, both found on the 1988-1991 collection. Glider, from 1990, displayed a massive shift in sound from anything they'd done before. The opening single "Soon" was a sensation, famously described by Brian Eno as "a new standard for pop. It's the vaguest music ever to have been a hit." That vagueness is the key to all that would follow, because Shields was taking his early ideas and seeing how far he could push them into the realm of texture and pure sensation. So "Soon", with its drum break and chord changes and melody, sounds like a "song" on the one hand, but everything is blurred until it seems more like a ghosted memory of a song. And this mistiness happens without losing any of its propulsive force or the shock of the noise when the guitars enter. Clearly, things were very different for My Bloody Valentine.

Glider was rounded out by the instrumental title track, which serves as a showcase for how Shields was using phase shifts and disorienting rhythm tricks to create an underlying sense of unease mixed with awe. It sounds slightly "wrong" but also gorgeous, and like little else that had come before. MBV's following EP, Tremolo, upped the ante further. It stands as the true companion to Loveless. Opening with the staggering "To Here Knows When", it takes the woozy disorientation of "Glider" and mixes it with a vocal from Butcher that is impossibly ethereal. It feels constantly on the verge of breaking apart, which imparts a deep feeling of tension, as bruising distortion meets child-like coo. Both "Swallow", with its looped hand drums and Celtic synth line, and the crushing "Honey Power" match the best of Loveless for sheer beauty.

As you might imagine, a perfectionist like Kevin Shields isn't the sort to have unreleased greatness lingering in the vault, and that holds true for the bonus material that fills out the EP collection. "Instrumental 1" mixes drum breaks and guitar noise and sounds less like indications of a possible new direction and more like a tame example of a lot of the music it inspired. The 10-minute-long version of "Glider" is welcome, as it's built on the sort of hypnotic repetition you wish would go on forever. But better are the crunchy pop tunes at the tail end of the disc– "Sugar", "Angel", "Good for You"– which complement to the superior material on the EPs.

Tremolo came out in March, leaving a seven-month wait before Loveless made it into the world that November (six weeks after Nirvana's Nevermind). To say that anticipation for Loveless was high would be an understatement, and it delivered in every conceivable way. Few pop albums are routinely described in religious terms but this is one of them. It's partly because, like any scripture worth its salt, it leaves itself open to interpretation. Going back to that Eno quote, there's no telling what many of these songs "mean," even after you've read the lyrics. They bypass the language center of the brain and head for other areas– where memory, tactile sensation, and emotions lie. It's an album you feel more than one you understand.

By this time, Kevin Shields was less a bandleader than a mad scientist, constantly developing and tinkering with new sounds. He played virtually every instrument (the lone exception being Ó Coísóig's minute-long "Touched") and obsessively tinkered with the smallest details. And the genius of Loveless is its mix, the exact proportions of one sound to the next. The highlights that led off the two EPs are the tentpoles, but really, Loveless is all highlights. I've heard many thousands of albums in my life and it's one of the few that strikes me as being essentially perfect. It's also the album that has turned two generations on to the wondrous possibilities of sound as sound. It's hard to imagine someone like Fennesz getting anywhere near as much traction among indie music fans if Loveless hadn't taught them how to listen for the emotional possibilities of texture. It remains a landmark that hasn't aged a day.

Which leads to one of the many strange and ironic things about this particular reissue: Perfection is offered in two competing versions. Loveless comes in a 2xCD set, one remastered from the original DAT and one from the original analog master. We may never fully understand the reasoning behind this unusual decision. As has been pointed out elsewhere, it's possible that the two discs are mislabeled, and that the half-inch analog master is identified as coming from the DAT and vice versa. Which is neither here nor there when you consider that no one in their right mind would ask themselves, "Which Loveless remaster should I listen to tonight?"

Shields says that the effect of the differences is cumulative and best understood over the course of a full listen. Having listened to the CDs on three different pairs of headphones and two different stereo systems of varying quality, I can say that they are slightly different (one is just a hair louder) but the qualitative distinctions are extremely minimal, at best. And there is a digital glitch on "What You Want" on one of the remasters, which seems both comical and tragic considering how long these have been in the works. So I guess I'll be listening to the one without the mistake, then.

Aside from that detail, the remastering across all three sets is well done. Loveless was famously and appropriately one of the quietest "loud" records of all time. Listening on your iPod, you always have the volume close to max and you never feel like you damage your hearing. And this breathing room pays off in spades in the dynamics of the record; when the guitars surge on "Soon" and "Only Shallow", it can still shake you to your core.

The most important thing is that this music exists and probably sounds as good as it ever will. As a band and as an idea, My Bloody Valentine stand for many things: sonic perfectionism, outsized ambition, excess. But the quality they embody above all is patience. They make you wait– for the follow-up to brilliant albums, for the remastered versions of those brilliant albums, for that D-chord in the extended live versions of "You Made Me Realise" to finally come to an end. Some bands give you everything you want right when you want it; with My Bloody Valentine, you have to come to them and experience the music on their terms. But the demands they make don't preclude generosity. In fact, they reward your commitment many times over. For years, Kevin Shields has discussed his difficulties in following up Loveless. The talk often centers around money– how he was not given what was promised, how he lacked the resources to bring the music to life and get it out into the world. These releases will set you back a few bucks, but My Bloody Valentine's output during their miracle years between 1988 and 1991 also stands outside of commerce. It feels like a gift, still.

10/10 Review by Mark Richardson, Pitchfork

2012 digitally remastered digipak edition of this seminal 1988 album from one of the most influential British guitar bands of the '80s and '90s. The original line up of the Shoegazing legends, with their awe-inspiring mix of feedback guitar and indistinct lyrics, have influenced countless bands since this debut. 12 tracks including 'Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)', 'All I Need', 'Lose My Breath' and more.

Digitally remastered two CD edition of this seminal 1991 album from one of the most influential British guitar bands of the '80s and '90s. This double disc version contains a second previously unreleased version of the album, which has been mastered from the original analogue tapes. The original line up of the Shoegazing legends, with their awe-inspiring mix of feedback guitar and indistinct lyrics, have influenced countless bands since their 1988 debut, Isn't Anything. Loveless, the long-delayed follow-up performed well beyond anyone's expectations and has remained one of the most cherished releases of it's time.

2012 compilation which draws together the influential Indie band's four EP releases, Feed Me With Your Kiss, You Made Me Realise, Glider and Tremolo alongside seven additional rare and previously unreleased tracks. My Bloody Valentine remain one of the most unique and thrilling bands of the last 25 years. Sonic pioneers, they stood alone in the late 80s / early 90s, their two albums sounded like nothing that had gone before.