Wall of Sound - Shoegazing

Shoegazing

Shoegazing, a style of alternative rock, is influenced by "Wall of Sound". Shoegazing emerged from the United Kingdom in the early 90s and lasted until the mid 1990s, peaking circa 1990 to 1993. Common musical elements in shoegazing are distortion, delay, and chorus effects, droning riffs and a "wall of sound" from noisy guitars. Typically, two distorted rhythm guitars are played together to give an amorphous quality to the sound. Although lead guitar riffs were often present, they were not the central focus of most shoegazing songs.

Vocals are typically subdued in volume and tone, but underneath the layers of guitars is generally a strong sense of melody. While the genres which influenced shoegazing often used drum machines, shoegazing more often features live drumming. Chapterhouse and Seefeel utilised both samples and live drumming. The Jesus and Mary Chain and Cocteau Twins are often regarded perhaps the initial exponents of the style, appearing at the beginning of the 1980s and continuing into the style's heyday a decade later. The Jesus and Mary Chain's debut album Psychocandy is widely hailed as a landmark. My Bloody Valentine's 1991 album Loveless is perhaps the best-known example of meticulous Wall of Sound-influenced production in the shoegaze genre; featuring heavy processing on vocals and guitars, it is tipped to have cost £250,000 to produce over a 3-year period.