News of Slowdive’s reunion reminded me of a moment I had listening to their stuff one late night on the bus from UNSW when I was studying. I was listening to the Pygamalion Eras Demo album and I was getting seriously hooked. It was one of the first albums during my early music exploration phase which really did my head in. It also pushed me into this never-ending spiral of listening to mellow ambient music to this very day. Listening to Slowdive to satisfy my curiosity in shoegazer at the time, this particular album opened the doors to explore moodier sounds, eventually leading me to the likes of Aphex Twin’s back catalogue and Boards of Canada.
To this day, despite how awesome Souvlaki was as an album to be one of the champions of the whole shoegazer movement, Pygmalion was ground-breaking, left-field, daring and quite ahead of its time. The demos even more so. Nothing is more fantastic and satisfying than seeing a band evolve with each new album.
Some of my favourites:
This is my happy place.
Plasmo and the Infinite Sadness 