Various Artists
Feedback To The Future
(Mobilé Records)
It was just last year that Morr Music released their ode to shoegaze albums with the 2CD Slowdive tribute Blue Skied An' Clear: A Morr Music Compilation, now the German label of Mobilé is dropping what is essentially "Shoegazing For Dummies" in the form of Feedback To The Future: A Compilation of Eleven Shoegazing Songs from 1990-1992. Actually, calling it the aforementioned is probably a bit of a tossoff on my part, as the compilation is obviously well thought-out and sequenced. Not only that, but in addition to including some of the big names of the day, there are tracks by those who didn't catch quite as much press as their brethren (and several of which remain out-of-print still today).
Of course, the tracks that many people will know are the ones like "Catch The Breeze" by Slowdive and "Rave Down" by Swervedriver. The amazingly excellent (but often overlooked) Pale Saints contribute their track "Sea Of Sound" and Ride turns up with "Like A Daydream" in the era before they decided to swerve more over to the britrock side of things. All of the above tracks are real gems, but as I mentioned above, some of the tracks that are a little harder to find are the ones that make the compilation worth having for fans of the genre. Revolver opens the release with "Heaven Sent An Angel" and Blind Mr. Jones contributes the excellent, slow-building "Small Caravan." Neither of the two groups even managed to record a second full-length, but given the decline in sound of some of their contemporaries, they can be remembered for their small but solid body of work.
I've already talked about how influencial the whole Slowdive sound has been to music, so there's really no need to go into things again here. The resurrgence of interest in the music and injection of it into several different genres is proof enough. Even though I was in high-school when all these songs originally came out (and wouldn't truly discover them until a couple years later while in college), listening to this compilation and tracks like the swelling "All A Dreams" by The Telescopes take me to a bit warmer place and all I want to do is nuzzle in a warm blanket and drink some hot cocoa. There are still a lot of bands doing shoegazer music, but most of it isn't as good as the 11 tracks and 45 minutes of music you'll get here.
Rating: 7.75
