Beautiful Noise

I was ridiculously excited for this documentary, which features some of my all-time favorite bands. I bought the blu-ray (as I didn't know how else to see it) and turned it on feeling giddy as a fervert young chappy. And very soon it became disappointingly clear that this was not the documentary I'd been waiting for.

If you are familiar with these bands you will learn nothing new and most of the interviews are cheek-slappingly banal. And even if they weren't, the cinematography is distractingly subpar: bad lighting, often out of focus, low definition. Why in the heavens is there a blu-ray edition if nothing was shot on HD!? Crappy SD footage will not look better on a blu-ray, but it sure costs more to the excited fans/suckers!

I essentially felt that I would have derived a richer experience surfing YouTube watching old interviews and live performances of the bands, as I'm sure I could find higher quality and more interesting clips that weren't either far too brief or featured for way too long.

And for a documentary about the shoegaze movement, the word "shoegaze" is never uttered, just "this period" and "these bands." I essentially felt more informed than the filmmakers.

I feel that the shoegaze movement was one of the most fascinating periods of music history and deeply deserves a fresh, beautiful, illuminating documentary. Sadly, this is not it.

Moody, dreamy, noisy, loud, gentle, feminine, insular, withdrawn, antisocial; Shoegaze was an anomaly in the glitzy and colorful Rock scene of the late 1980s - early 1990s when it emerged as a maligned and misunderstood oddball who nevertheless was impossible to ignore. With its nerdy outcast-looking band members who stood on stage and stared at their shoes (hence the name) while creating and conjuring whirlpools of ear-numbing noise the scene certainly wasn't primed for the big time but it's unique appeal left a lasting legacy that endures to this day. "Beautiful Noise" covers that crucial period in Rock history when the tide turned and the changing of the guard ushered a new and far superior phase in Rock with Shoegaze right in the middle of it. The genre's luminaries like Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine and Ride are given their proper space while stars like Robert Smith, Trent Reznor and Bily Corgan share their memories and views on the music's profound impact on them. Historic footage of the band's are shown highlighting the blistering and deafening power of the music. The film could have been better if the roots of the genre were shown (basically the bands are Velvet Underground offshoots) and the presentation of the bands less chapter-like. Nevertheless it's good to see a well-done doc on the fascinating and influential genre. May there be more to come.

BEAUTIFUL NOISE is a documentary about shoegazing, the 1980s/early 1990s genre of pop music that emphasized guitar flange and vocals buried in the mix. Though Eric Green began work on the documentary in 2005, it was only released in 2014 after crowdfunding could help secure rights to the huge amount of music used in it.

The documentary mainly consists of presentations of the most prominent bands in this scene: Cocteau Twins, Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive, Chapterhouse, Pale Saints, Lush, and Medicine. The first three get the most time dedicated to them, while the rest are covered more briefly. Their stories are told through a mix of archive footage and recent interviews of the band members. To show the wider impact of these musicians, there are also interviews with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, Robert Smith of The Cure, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Adam Franklin of Swervedriver, Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, 4AD label head Ivo Watts-Russell, Ulrich Schrauss, Rob Dickinson of Catherine Wheel, and Creation label head Alan McGee.

The documentary then moves on to short bits on various aspects of the scene in general: experimentation, the predominance of female vocals, the image of shoegazers are shy, uncertain performers, their rocky reception in the press, "the scene that celebrates itself", and finally the collapse of the shoegazing scene due to changing economics or bands' internal squabbles. The document ends with a mention of the "resurgence" of the shoegazing aesthetic in new post-millennium bands like M83 or A Place to Bury Strangers and the reunion of some of the classic bands.

The downside of this format is that while it provides a great deal of exclusive live footage and interviews to thrill fans of this music, it offers no straightforward narration that would inform viewers unfamiliar with this movement in musical history. Also, to fit into a 85-minute format, material naturally had to be cut, but it is disappointing how the perennially overlooked band AR Kane is so prominently mentioned at the start of the documentary, but we get only two brief shots of band member Alex Ayuli.

I had always heard of many of these bands all through my listening career of the 80's' and early 90's, but never really had a chance to have a proper listen to any of them, or, perhaps I did, but was unmoved. When I first heard Lush's De-luxe, I knew instantly that I liked this band and their sound. And that was my introduction to the "shoegazing" movement. I delightfully explored their whole back catalog.

So, over the years I tried numerous times to get into some of the other shoegazing bands covered in this documentary. And no matter how I tried, I always came up with the same conclusion; 'there is a reason none of these bands ever made it big, they all suck'.

Incorporating noise, feedback, distorted guitars etc. into rock n roll was nothing new in the 1980's, as this documentary would have you believe. The Beatles first famously used feedback from George Harrison's guitar amp at the beginning of I Feel Fine. Later The Velvet Underground fully incorporated noise into their sound and did it masterfully. In the 80's, the band that was experimenting with noise but also retaining a keen sense of musicality and songcraft was Sonic Youth, who, no surprise, have had much more success and longevity than either Cocteau Twins or My Bloody Valentine.

This documentary has a kind of amateurish, half-assed feel to it, kind of like the Beautiful Noise scene it's portraying. So my predisposition to the whole movement was pretty much reinforced while watching it. Unfortunately Lush gets only a brief bit of covarage for their contributions. At least they used one of their very beautiful compositions "For Love" over the beginning of the Girls and Guys segment.

In conclusion, unless you're a real die hard fan of this scene or any of the bands covered, there is very little reason to watch this show. Even if you are a fan, they cover so many acts in such a short amount of time, you can't possibly sink your teeth into any of them to get a good handle on their music or their message. Do yourself a favour and buy a Lush album instead.

After months of anticipation, BN is finally available for download! As a long-time fan of the early dream pop, and having read all the great comments on Facebook, I had pretty high expectations for this film. Unfortunately, the film is bit of a let-down from my perspective. I had hoped for an in-depth look into the music and history. (I.e. cultural landscape, influences, studio techniques etc.), but instead, the film is comprised mostly of light interviews and a bit of old footage.

Considering this thing was 10 years in the making, the filmmaker seems to have done very little research, or made any attempt to build a connection with the artists. I appreciate the ambitions here to cover a big spectrum of the music, but spending 2-5 minutes on each band definitely left me wanting more. He would have been better off focusing on one or two artists, like last year's "Made of Stone", which I enjoyed very much. The other issue I have with this film is the shallow interviewing. It seems that everyone who appears in the film was asked the same questions: When did you first hear about the band, and why do you like them? I would have learnt more if the artists were asked about their favourite food and colour :)

This film is worth a viewing for anyone new to the genre, but any hard-core fan like myself will already be well familiar with the band chronology, and the music's dreamy, ethereal quality :/