My Bloody Valentine Touring Again

The shoegazing, alternative Irish rock band has booked its first dates since a 2009 festival appearance, with three shows in Japan scheduled for early 2013.

My Bloody Valentine formed in 1983 and then became inactive in the early ‘90s after releasing 1988’s Isn’t Anything and the critically acclaimed 1991 follow-up, Loveless. The band announced it was reuniting in 2007 and played its first live shows since the hiatus in June 2008. The group last took the stage in December 2009 at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival “Nightmare Before Christmas” in Somerset, United Kingdom.

The new Japan shows are set for Feb. 6 in Osaka at Namba-Hatch and Feb. 7-8 at Tokyo’s Studio Coast.

Photo: John Davisson

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, Indio, Calif.

Earlier this month the band released remasters of Isn’t Anything and Loveless along with a compilation album featuring previous EPs, a single and unreleased tunes.

Frontman Kevin Shields has once again been talking about recording a new album.

“We’re making it now, in fact it’s almost done,” Shields told Quietus in an interview posted online May 8. “I’m on the eighth song, and I’ve got to do vocals for that, then I’ve got to record the ninth song from scratch. Then I’ve got to mix it. But that’s OK, because I’m not slow at mixing.”

In late April he told Pitchfork that he was “finishing a record that I had started in the 90s. It was going to be, like, the next record. But it was already after the band had half split up, and me and Bilinda [Butcher] were left. Then we got back together. We never broke up, technically; I left the band for legal reasons once, I had to. But other than that, I’ve always said that we were going to make a record again. You never know, we might finish it really quickly, and it might be up in a few months! I tend to work really quickly, suddenly, and I might be willing to do that right now. We’ll see!”