Shoegaze master craftsman and guitar effects wizard Kevin Shields doesn’t pop up in the news pages too often, and I like to assume it’s because he’d completed the final stage of his evolution and found some hyper-advanced way to ditch his corporeal body entirely, converting his base matter to pure energy, and make himself part of the grid for all time. You know, like that Job guy did in that unarguably fantastic 90s movie The Lawnmower Man. But… then he shows up somewhere like in NME to announce that he’s launched a new record label with his buddy or whatever, and the whole fantasy is totally blown. This had better be important, Kevin!
So let’s see here… looks like he’s set up a new imprint, and it’s called Pickpocket. Okay, so far it sounds like he could have done this from beyond the bounds of space and time. Let’s read on: blah, blah, blah, he set it up with his friend Charlotte Manionneau for the initial purpose of putting out a new EP by her band Le Volume Courbe. It was initially planned to be released by another label until, as Shields told NME, “I was like ‘I’ll just get rid of a few pedals that I’ve had lying around for ten years and we’ll start a label.’” Oh well, I guess if he’s still real enough to physically own some solid gold guitar pedals, he’s probably not out on the astral plane surfing the neuralnet yet. Shucks.
As for the prospect of new MBV music, Shields said that there’s no plans to use the label to release anything like that, although apparently he and Manionneau have recently collaborated on a new track that may see the light of day on the label. “It’s ten minutes of noise,” she said. “We thought we could put it out as a 10-inch.” Meanwhile, her band’s EP — entitled Theodaurus Rex — has been given the far-more concrete release date of November 14. Hey, while you wait, here’s the last 10 minutes of Lawnmower Man. Enjoy!
• My Bloody Valentine: http://www.mybloodyvalentine.co.uk
• Kevin Shields: http://kevinshields.tk
• Le Volume Courbe: http://www.myspace.com/levolumecourbe
