My Bloody Valentine have announced their first UK shows in over a decade.
Kevin Shields’ band will play three arena shows in November, having sold out their previously announced November 22 gig at Dublin’s 12,000-capacity 3Arena – their first Irish headline show since 1992 – in a matter of minutes.
The Dublin quartet’s UK tour will kicks off in Manchester on November 24, and also feature gigs in London and Glasgow.
The reclusive shoegaze pioneers, who have released a total of three albums since forming in 1983, will play:
Nov 24: Manchester Aviva Studios
Nov 25: London OVO Wembley Arena
Nov 27: Glasgow OVO Hydro
Tickets go on general sale on April 4 at 10a, but fans can access a pre-sale by signing up here before 9am on Monday, March 31. The pre-sale will start at 10am on the same day.
One of the eagerly anticipated elements of the band’s long-awaited live comeback will be the return of the the holocaust section’ inYou Made Me Realise, which would see Shields’ band embark upon an open-ended, improvisational white noise freak-out which, on more than one occasion, caused audience members to shit themselves.
“That can happen,” Shields acknowledged in a 2013 interview with The Guardian. “But there’s always someone who’ll shit themselves at the slightest excuse.”
Talking to Ireland’s Hot Press magazine in 2003, Shields explained how the infamous musical experience came to be.
“It was like a Sonic Youth improvisation thing,” Shields explained to writer Peter Murphy. “Initially we started playing it live exactly the same as the record, and then we liked that bit and it got longer, and then it got to the point where at its most extreme it was probably 40 minutes long.
“The interesting thing was taking something that was like reality and messing with it to the point where it was so loud, basically people would imagine all sorts of things happening. It wasn’t just making noise with guitars; it was like an out-of-body thing.
“I used to watch the audience, and a certain portion at a certain point would let go of any kind of control, it was so loud it was like sensory deprivation,” he concluded. “We just liked the fact that we could see a change in the audience at a certain point, and it always happened, every night… About a third of the audience would resent it, and two thirds would like it.”
You have been warned.