MBV (2013)

m b v is the third studio album by Irish rock band My Bloody Valentine, self-released on 2 February 2013. Produced by the band's vocalist and guitarist Kevin Shields, m b v was the band's first full-length release of original material since Loveless (1991), over two decades earlier.

Recording for m b v began prior to My Bloody Valentine's breakup in 1997, but was shelved until 2006 when the band was reunited, with further recording occurring after 2011. The album received critical acclaim and was named among the best albums of 2013 by numerous publications.

Recording

Following their departure from Creation Records after the release of their second studio album Loveless (1991), My Bloody Valentine signed with Island Records in October 1992 for a reported £250,000. The band's advance went towards the construction of a home studio in Streatham, South London, which was completed in April 1993. Several technical problems with the studio sent the band into "semi-meltdown", according to vocalist and guitarist Kevin Shields, who was rumoured to have been suffering from writer's block. Between 1993 and 1996, the band recorded and released two covers: "We Have All the Time in the World" by Louis Armstrong for Peace Together, and "Map Ref. 41°N 93°W" by Wire for the tribute album Whore: Tribute to Wire.

Rumours spread that several albums worth of material had been recorded and shelved prior to the band's 1997 breakup. In 1999, it was reported that Shields had delivered 60 hours of material to Island Records, and vocalist and guitarist Bilinda Butcher confirmed that there existed "probably enough songs to fill two albums". Shields confirmed that at least one full album of "half-finished" material was abandoned: "It was worth dumping. It was dead. It hadn't got that spirit, that life in it."

Recording sessions for m b v began in 1996, after bassist Debbie Googe and drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig had left the band. Shields began recording guitar riffs to tape, laying the foundations for several songs. He said that when the sessions concluded in 1997 the album was "half-finished". Shields recorded most of the instrumentation. In an interview with Drowned in Sound, Googe said that the drum parts had "been added then taken off at least once", with Shields' brother Jimi Shields recording beats for sampling and Ó Cíosóig recording final live tracks.

In 2006, Shields resumed recording at the time when the band was reunited, combining recordings from the 1996 and 1997 sessions with additional instrumentation. Final vocal, bass and drum tracks and overdubs were recorded in 2011 and 2012. "She Found Now" was the only song recorded "completely from scratch" in 2012.

The album was recorded and mixed on analogue equipment, as with My Bloody Valentine's earlier albums. It was recorded on 2-inch 24-track tape and mixed on half-inch tape. Mastering was completed on 21 December 2012, after four months of mixing and editing in late 2012. The post-production process involved no digital processing, according to the band. The band recorded additional material at Grouse Lodge in County Westmeath, Ireland during January 2013.

Music

m b v's music has been described as shoegaze, and noise pop. In an interview with The Quietus prior to m b v's release, Shields said it was "not going to sound like Loveless where it's like looking into another world ... more like Isn't Anything, where it seems to be of this world, but with one foot in another world ... the songs on Loveless had more in common with folk-blues music to me, just a verse and an instrumental passage, circular" and described the new material as "more elongated" and "raw".

The Beach Boys' unfinished album Smile was an influence on the composition. According to Shields, he "wanted to see what would happen if I worked in a more impressionistic way, so that it only comes together at the end." He later expanded on his comments, stating that he was "purposefully not trying to write songs with a beginning, middle, and end." He mentioned drum and bass as an influence on one of the album's songs, and jungle music had influenced some of the original material recorded in 1996. Commenting on unreleased songs from m b v's recording sessions Shields said "there's probably about three more [songs] that will come out sometime."

In 2007, describing the apparent imminent release of a new record, Shields expressed his vision that "It sounds like what we sounded like—different but not radically different" and revealed that the album was composed based on "[the] '96/'97 record half-finished record finished [sic], and then a compilation of stuff we did before that in 1993–94, and a little bit of new stuff."