My Bloody Valentine is one of the most perfect and important albums of the 90′s, right up there with Nirvana’s Nevermind and Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over the Sea. But who cares how “important” Loveless is, the album is just straight up great shoegaze listening.

On a side note, apparently the name “shoegaze” was used to describe this 90′s genre because when performed, band members fidgeted with their effect pedals the whole time, appearing to be gazing at their shoes.

Listen to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless album

Want more crusty shoegaze greatness? Download Dead Mellotron’s Ghost Light Constellation EP.

From the depths of CD hell today I am resurrecting The Flaming Lips’ 1997 album Zaireeka to look back at one of the most interesting and bizarre experiments in recorded music history. The story goes like this: The Flaming Lips wanted to make something for their hardcore fans and fellow artists to play with. The project was called Zaireeka. The album contained 4 compact discs, all of which were intended to be played at exactly the same time, theoretically creating a symphony of sound in your living room.

There were obvious problems with this experiment, though. For starters, you needed to have 4 CD players in proximity of each other. But you also needed to have friends… friends who were willing to put up with your Flaming Lips obsession and hang out for an afternoon of synchronized button pushing. Pitchfork’s music critic Jason Josephes hated the concept so much that he gave the album a “0.0″ rating in a review.

I wonder how an experiment like The Lips’ Zaireeka would work today? Synchronizing four MP3 files in four Windows Media Player windows kind of defeats the purpose. Everyone brings their laptop to the party and plays a different MP3, maybe? But really, if people didn’t have the patience for Zaireeka in ’97, I would anticipate a highly cynical reaction to a Zaireeka-like experiment in ’09.

I have never had the pleasure of partaking in a Zaireeka listening party, probably because I was only 8 when it was released. However, a quick e-Bay search tells me that it’s pretty easy to come by a brand new 4-disc copy of Zaireeka at a fair price. Friends willing to humor me will be hard to find, though.

Wikipedia has a pretty good sample and mashup set for Zaireeka if you’re interested in listening.

Damian of the band Fucked Up sat down with Wavves at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago to talk about Nathan’s broken wrist, Barcelona meltdown stories, the media and Nathan’s hotness.

Pitchfork.TV interview with Wavves