Beautiful Noise

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 love the scene and genre the documentary is exploring, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. It's a shame... Though if you are interested in scene it does have some from key member from the scene in interviews. Also, the time spend with bands and members are uneven, even if they are massive in the genre and scene.

I finally got around to watching my DVD of the "Beautiful Noise" documentary directed by Eric Green - and while much of it was what I expected, it was still great to hear the artists behind the music I've loved for so long discuss their influences, the scene they got lumped into and how their bands folded up shop, so to speak, as well as the current resurgence and interest in this type of music.

I question how useful or entertaining this doc will be for the uninitiated to this style of music. For the rest of us, it's a great walk down memory lane, and with interviews from rock luminaries like Billy Corgan and Trent Reznor, a validation of what we've known all along.

But my favorite part was the interviews of Kevin Shields and Alan McGee inter-cutting between each other as they talked about the recording process of MBV's "loveless" (they are basically ripping each other a new hole about the whole experience by recounting how, basically, they thought the other person was disrupting their lives, and in McGee's POV business). This just goes to show that history is determined by those who write it (or talk about it in this case).

Personally, the most important outcome of watching this documentary was that it made me pull out all of my shoegaze/dreampop CDs to rip them into FLAC format so I could revisit it all during a long trip I have coming up.

If you get a chance to see "Beautiful Noise", by all means do: the artists are interviewed in intimate settings where one gets the sense they were able to relax and really reflect upon the music they've made and their larger cultural impact. It was definitely worth the wait for this doc.

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.

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.