How My Bloody Valentine's Loveless Was Actually Recorded
My Bloody Valentine's Loveless was recorded between February 1989 and September 1991, across nineteen studios in and around London, and released by Creation Records on 4 November 1991. Kevin Shields produced it and played almost every guitar on it. Most of the drums were built from samples of Colm Ó Cíosóig's playing, the vocals were often sung at dawn behind a curtain, and the mastering alone took thirteen days. This article covers how the record was actually made, the three myths that get repeated about it, and what a band recording now should and should not take from it.
The fact that matters most, and the one most writing about Loveless leaves out: that enormous wall of guitar is made of very few guitar tracks.
Loveless at a glance
Recorded: February 1989 to September 1991, with long breaks for touring.
Studios: nineteen in total, including Blackwing in Southwark, The Elephant in Wapping, Woodcray in Berkshire, Trident 2, Britannia Row, Eastcote, Protocol in Holloway (the main base from May 1990) and The Church in Crouch End, where it was finally mixed.
Producer: Kevin Shields, with Colm Ó Cíosóig producing "Touched".
Engineers: Alan Moulder and Anjali Dutt did the most, with a long list of others credited.
Released: 4 November 1991 on Creation Records. It reached number 24 in the UK.
The follow-up: m b v, released in 2013.
Why it took nearly three years
The simple answer is that the band did not arrive with a finished record in their heads and a set of demos. Songs, parts and lyrics were worked out in the studio. Shields has said the actual studio time was about a year and four months once you take out the months spent touring, spread over a period of nearly three years. The early rooms cost around £200 to £250 a day, and the final two months ran at about £600 a day.
The engineers came and went. Alan Moulder was there early and mixed "Soon", which came out first on the Glider EP in 1990. Anjali Dutt took over in spring 1990 and worked on vocals and guitars. More than a dozen other engineers are in the credits, and in spring 1990 the band went through several studios for a single day each.
The other part of the answer is Shields himself. He was chasing a sound that existed only in his head, and he was the only person who could play it. Bilinda Butcher said later that she never played guitar on the album, and Debbie Googe is credited on bass but did not play on it, and has said she felt superfluous in the studio. That is not a band recording together. It is one person building a record, with help.
Myth one: Loveless bankrupted Creation Records
The story everyone knows is that Loveless cost around £250,000 and nearly destroyed Creation. The figure came from a Melody Maker estimate, and Creation's founder Alan McGee repeated the story for years.
Shields has disputed it just as long. He has put the real cost at about £160,000 at most, and later at around £140,000, with a large share of that being living money for the band over three years rather than studio bills. He also points out that Creation was already in financial trouble when the band went back into the studio in September 1989, and had hits on the chart by the time the album was finished. His interview with Magnet is the most detailed version of his side. Creation's Dick Green, on the other hand, thought the Melody Maker number was, if anything, on the low side.
We cannot settle an argument between a label and an artist from 35 years away, and we are not going to pretend to. What nobody disputes is the time. Nearly three years, nineteen studios, thirteen days of mastering. The money is a detail. The time is the story.
Myth two: the wall of sound is hundreds of guitars
Of the three, this myth does real damage, because bands copy it. The assumption is that Loveless sounds so dense because Shields stacked dozens of guitar takes on top of each other. He has said the opposite, more than once: the average My Bloody Valentine track has one or two guitar tracks on it, fewer than most people's demos.
The density comes from somewhere else:
The tremolo arm. Shields held the arm while he strummed and bent the whole chord slightly in and out of tune as he played. That is the "glide guitar" sound, and it is a playing technique, not a studio trick.
Reverse reverb. A reverse reverb setting on a rack unit, most often reported as a Yamaha SPX90, puts a swelling wash in front of every chord. Shields has said the band avoided the usual chorus and flanger pedals entirely.
Loud amps and distortion, so the guitar sustains and fills space on its own.
Mono. A lot of the record sits in the middle of the stereo picture, guitar in the centre, which makes it feel like one huge instrument instead of a wide spread of separate ones.
If you are mixing your own shoegaze record and adding a sixth guitar layer to get "that Loveless sound", stop. You are making mud, not a wall. We make the same point in our guide to mixing shoegaze: width and weight come from fewer parts with more movement in them.
Myth three: the vocals were whispered
Bilinda Butcher and Kevin Shields's vocals on Loveless sound breathy and half-asleep, and people assume they were sung softly. Shields has said they were singing as loud as they could, in a very controlled way, and that the breathiness is simply what Butcher's voice sounds like when she pushes it.
Some of the conditions were strange. The pair hung curtains between the control room and the vocal booth and communicated with engineers by signalling from behind them when a take was good. Lyrics were often not written before the session. Butcher described being woken to sing after only just falling asleep, often at half past seven in the morning, and writing down words she thought Shields might have been singing on his guide vocal.
On "When You Sleep" the vocal is layered, and Shields explained that too. After twelve or thirteen attempts at a single perfect vocal, the process had become boring and destructive, so they stopped chasing it and used the takes together instead. Even on the most perfectionist record of its era, the answer to take fourteen was to stop doing takes.
The mixing lesson is real and useful: a vocal can sit inside the guitars as a texture and still be sung with full commitment. Burying a timid vocal sounds timid. Burying a committed one sounds like Loveless. Whether your vocal should sit up front or inside the band is a decision to make before the mix, not a way to hide a weak take, and the dream pop guide covers the opposite case, where the voice is the subject and the atmosphere is the room around it.
The drums were mostly samples
Colm Ó Cíosóig was unwell for much of the recording. Instead of waiting, the band recorded him playing the patterns he could manage and built most of the drum parts from those samples. Only "Only Shallow" and "Come in Alone" have live drum takes, and "Loomer" has live tom overdubs. Shields's view was that the parts were exactly what Colm would have played, they just took longer to put together.
It is the least live-sounding decision on the record, and it works for one reason: the feel came from the drummer. The samples were his playing, his timing and his touch, arranged. A drum machine programmed by someone else would have made a different album.
Shields also sampled guitar feedback and played it back from a keyboard, which is where several of the record's strangest melodic sounds come from. He has said most of the samples on the album are feedback.
Mixing and mastering Loveless
The final mix happened at The Church in Crouch End, the nineteenth studio. At one point an old editing machine, previously used for cutting film dialogue, put the whole album out of phase, and it had to be fixed. Then Shields spent thirteen days mastering a record that would normally get one.
That last number is worth sitting with. Thirteen days of mastering is not someone polishing a finished record. It is someone still making decisions about it. Mastering is the stage for the whole-record picture, and Shields treated it as another place to shape the sound, not a final coat of paint.
Our take: Loveless is the exception people use as an excuse
Loveless gets quoted as permission. Permission to spend two years on a record, permission to stack parts until it feels big, permission to keep going until it is perfect. We think it proves the opposite.
Look at what the record actually is: one guitarist, one playing technique, very few guitar tracks, most of it in mono, a vocal treated as texture but sung at full strength, and drums made from one drummer's hands. The identity of the record is simple and it is decided. The years went into getting a very specific idea exactly right, not into finding out what the record was.
Most bands who spend two years on an album are doing the second thing. They are avoiding decisions, and the extra time lets them keep avoiding them. Unlimited takes and unlimited tracks remove the pressure to commit, and the result is a record that sounds correct and dead.
The test is simple. If you can describe exactly what your record should sound like, and you can hear the gap between that and what you have, take the time. If you cannot describe it, time will not tell you. Nineteen studios did not tell My Bloody Valentine what Loveless was. Shields already knew. And even he stopped at take thirteen.
What to take from Loveless into your own record
Commit to a guitar sound before you record. The technique and the amp are the sound. Do not plan to find it in the mix.
Fewer guitar tracks, more movement. Pitch movement, a tremolo arm, a swelling effect. One moving part beats four static ones.
Try the middle. Put a big guitar in the centre in mono for a song and hear what it does to the weight.
Decide where the vocal lives before the mix, and sing it with full intent either way.
When a take has been sung twelve times, stop. Use what you have, or change the approach.
Leave the mastering engineer room, and give them the whole record to listen to as one piece.
Loveless FAQ
How long did it take to record Loveless?
Recording ran from February 1989 to September 1991, nearly three years in total. Kevin Shields has said the actual studio time was about a year and four months, with the rest lost to touring and breaks.
How much did Loveless cost to make?
Melody Maker estimated about £250,000. Kevin Shields has disputed that figure for decades, putting the real cost at around £140,000 to £160,000, much of it living money for the band rather than studio time.
Did Loveless bankrupt Creation Records?
Shields says no, and that Creation was already in financial trouble before the band resumed recording in 1989. Creation's founders told the story differently, and the argument has never been fully settled.
How did Kevin Shields get the Loveless guitar sound?
Mostly with playing technique: bending chords with the tremolo arm while strumming, through loud amps and a reverse reverb effect. Shields has said the average song has only one or two guitar tracks, often in mono.
Were the drums on Loveless programmed?
Mostly, yes, but from samples of Colm Ó Cíosóig's own playing, recorded while he was unwell. Only "Only Shallow" and "Come in Alone" use live drum takes.
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