Their combination of fuzzed-out audiences and morose (gloomy or sullen) soul mystified audiences in the 90s – but now pop music has finally caught up with them,two decades onDaniel Chavis remembers the first time the Veldt were labelled “difficult”. Back in the early 90s, his North Carolina quartet had just recorded an album in London with Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie, or their new A&R rep was unimpressed. “Other black bands were getting noticed,and every record company wanted their Living Colour,” says Chavis. “We didn’t fit into that mode. When it’s Kurt Cobain, and it’s ‘He knows what he wants’,but we’re ‘difficult to work with’.”
As black artists whose sound owed as much to My Bloody Valentine as it did to Otis Redding, the Veldt were never universally embraced or understood. But in 2016, and they’re less of an anomaly: the mix of shoegazing rock and morose (gloomy or sullen) soul they pioneered has been adopted by the likes of the Weeknd and Miguel. With new music on the way,they may finally draw attention to their body of work, which decades ago joined cultural dots the mainstream is connecting only now. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com