‘SHOEGAZI’ TRIBUTE GIVES FUGAZI SHOEGAZER TREATMENT

An interesting move from Sao Paulo: a tribute album to Fugazi, via Shoegazer’s aesthetic, titled Steady Gaze of Nothing. This article below originally published on dangerousmind.net.

There’s a label based out of Sao Paolo called (with great self-awareness) The Blog That Celebrates Itself Records, which is (of course) an offshoot of The Blog That Celebrates Itself. This name of the operation derives from a sardonic comment made by Melody Maker’s Steve Sutherland in 1990 to describe the incestuous group of bands that was playing the Thames Valley around that time, including Chapterhouse, Lush, Moose, and Stereolab. The phrase “The Scene That Celebrates Itself” has since been taken to refer to the self-admiring shoegaze movement tout court.

TBTCI has a knack for releasing compilations—they’ve recently released tribute comps honoring Sonic Youth, Ride, the Boo Radleys, the Pale Saints, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy, among many others.

But now the label has released something truly special, a tribute album about a band that isn’t exactly in that early 1990s U.K. wheelhouse and isn’t known for tons of pedal effects on their guitar—the groundbreaking D.C. band Fugazi. Now, Fugazi’s aesthetic and that of, say, My Bloody Valentine are pretty different, but it turns out that there’s a higher quotient of swarming guitars in Fugazi than you probably remember, and that helps make the combination all the more delicious.

The obvious name for such a thing: “Shoegazi,” of course.

The compilation is called Steady Gaze of Nothing, a reference to Fugazi’s second full-length Steady Diet of Nothing. The compilation ranges widely across Fugazi’s discography with a strong emphasis on the early stuff—you’re likely to hear your favorites represented here.

You can listen to the entire compilation below, but by all means go over to the compilation page on Bandcamp and send ‘em some cash for the mp3s.

via Vanyaland; thanks to Jeff Albers!