Released: 1991

Loveless is the second studio album by Irish rock band My Bloody Valentine, released on 4 November 1991 by Creation Records. The album was recorded over a two-year period between 1989 and 1991. Vocalist and guitarist Kevin Shields dominated the arduous recording process; intent on achieving a particular sound, he experimented with guitar tremolo techniques and tuning systems, unorthodox production methods, obscured vocals, and sampled percussion and feedback. The group cycled through nineteen studios and a larger number of engineers during the album's two-year creation, with total recording costs rumoured to have reached £250,000. While Loveless did not achieve great commercial success upon its release, it received enthusiastic reviews from critics, who praised its sonic innovations and Shields's "virtual reinvention of the guitar." Following the record's release, My Bloody Valentine were removed from their record label Creation Records due to the difficulty and expense of working with Shields, a factor that was alleged to have contributed to the bankruptcy of the label. In the subsequent years, the group struggled to record a follow-up album and would eventually break up in 1997. Loveless would be their last full-length release for over two decades. Since its release, Loveless has been widely proclaimed by critics as among the best albums of the 1990s, as a landmark work of the shoegazing genre, and as a significant influence on various subsequent artists. The album was reissued as a two-CD set on Sony in May 2012, containing remastered editions of the original digital tape and a previously unreleased ½-inch analogue tape. The reissues placed in several international charts and in July 2013, Loveless was certified Silver in the United Kingdom by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Read more on Last.fm.