In the mid-1980s, a political atmosphere of seemingly never-ending conservative government of both sides of the Atlantic saw many idealistic young people disengaging from the mainstream. With progressive ideals dropping away from political reality and radical music largely unable to penetrate the pop charts, the underground music scene became a haven. In time, a new psychedelic music emerged to soundtrack this period of anti-politics and withdrawal: shoegaze. In Still in a Dream , acclaimed author Simon Reynolds (whose book Rip It Up and Start Again is unquestionably the definitive account of the post-punk era) explores this cultural phenomenon, from its glorious sonic innovations to the darker side of its dream-your-life-away resignation. From My Bloody Valentine to Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth to Slowdive, Reynolds tracks the sound of shoegaze from its origins in post-punk through to its eventual crash into the mainstream in the form of grunge and Nirvana.

Autorentext

Simon Reynolds

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The definitive story of the slackers and shoegazers who reinvented rock.

'To devote a book to a set of wilfully amorphous and hazy bands, many of them long-forgotten outriders, is an act of love, commensurate with the saturated thrum of much of the music' OBSERVER

Twenty years after his acclaimed postpunk best-seller, Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds tells the tale of what happened next: the underground explosion of noisepop, shoegaze, slacker rock and grunge that reverberated through the mid-Eighties into the early Nineties.

Capturing the musical exhilaration of the era along with the alienation of youth during a period of ascendant conservative politics and glitzy mainstream pop, Still in a Dream celebrates a golden age of guitar reinvention, a second psychedelia of mind-blowing sounds pioneered by bands like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. In Britain, groups like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive escaped into shimmering dreamworlds while American underground rockers like Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement blended apathy and urgency into thrilling noise.

A propulsive and personal account from a journalist who covered this music in real time from the frontlines, Still in a Dream vividly recreates a period that was the last blast for the analogue culture of vinyl records and music papers, before the Internet changed everything.