My Bloody Valentine frontman Kevin Shields famously takes his time on his musical projects; the band’s third album, MBV, took 22 years to get to fans, thanks to label problems, eccentric behavior, and Shields’ ongoing, obsessive efforts to remaster the band’s 1991 masterpiece, Loveless. This week, though, Shields confirmed that a new album is on its way next year (just as soon as he finishes an entirely different Loveless remaster, in any case).
Shields confirmed the news at the end of a longer Pitchfork interview this week, stating, “Oh, we one hundred percent will,” when asked if the band would have the new material—which Shields said “started off as an EP, and I realized it has to be, like, a mini-album, because it’s going to be at least 40 minutes long”—available in 2018. That lines up with a festival blurb that surfaced back in September, which mentioned that the band was currently recording new music.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of the interview concerns itself with the latest efforts to remaster Loveless, this time using only analogue techniques. (It involves high-level math, custom engineering techniques, and a whole lot of tape.) It’s actually pretty fascinating stuff for music wonks, tracking the 54-year-old Shields’ ongoing relationship with his work, his process, and his own sense of sound.