Post Up: What Is(n't) Shoegaze?

[I ponder loud thoughts, and hopefully kill crappy terminology, for my homeys at Wired. Long live the unclassifiable.]

Post Up: What Is(n't) Shoegaze?
"Shoegaze is a dumb term made up by clueless NME idiots," argues Mogwai's Stuart Brathwaite, a My Bloody Valentine fan as well as a friend of its architect Kevin Shields. "It's pretty demeaning as well. If someone called us shoegazers, I'd be pretty unhappy."

For good reason. During the late '80s and early '90s, the term reductively compressed the dense feedback, droning riffage and ethereal soundtracking into slang and slag, especially in the British press. No doubt, its employ was a byproduct of the British press having fallen in love with the derivative Britpop of Oasis, as much as America had fallen in love with the derivative metal of grunge.

But in the end, it was used to describe bands like My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Swervedriver and pretty much anyone else, like drone minimalists Spacemen 3, who didn't fall into the comfortable confines of easily classifiable music... MORE @ WIRED