lovesliescrushing

Foreshadowing the later rush of shoegaze-inspired ambient music and joining the dots between MBV and Flying Saucer Attack and later experimentally-minded innovators like Fennesz and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Midwestern duo loveliescrushing created something enduringly euphoric and shockingly prophetic on their 1993 debut album..

It's hard to believe this one came quite so early. The ingredients were there, sure: Spacemen 3's druggy, phased feedback; Kevin Shields' master-tape warping sonic maximalism; Glenn Branca's symphonic, detuned repetitions; Robin Guthrie's chorus-drenched strums; and Brian Eno's heady long-form muzak. But nobody had spotted the connections before - it took a duo far removed from the inward-looking Thames Valley scene to unhook shoegaze's textures from its song structures. So, a year before Dave Pierce masterminded "rural psychedelia" on 'Flying Saucer Attack', multi instrumentalist and producer Scott Cortez and vocalist Melissa Arpin-Duimstra released 'Bloweyelashwish', a noisy collage of blown-out tape loops, brickwall distortions and angelic chorals that'd be remixed and repackaged for a Projekt Records reissue in 1994.

This latest reissue from Numero has been remastered and bulked out with five additional archival discoveries, bundled with lyrics and a postcard for good measure. And although loveliescrushing would perfect the formula on 1996's heartbreaking 'Xuvetyn' before going on hiatus, their debut has aged like wine, its Portastudio grit reminding us exactly what's missing from the barrage of horizontal, faintly nostalgic ambient-noise albums released each Friday. Cortez and Arpin-Duimstra were genuinely peering into the future with this one. Think of it as a concrète precursor to Fennesz's laptop-damaged 2001 classic 'Endless Summer'.