Still in a Dream: Shoegaze, Slackers and the Reinvention of Rock, 1984–1994

Win Five Shoegaze Records

In celebration of the release of Simon Reynolds' Still in a Dream: Shoegaze, Slackers and the Reinvention of Rock, 1984–1994, we have five essential shoegaze records chosen by Simon for one lucky shoegaze fan to win:

My Bloody Valentine – Isn’t Anything 
Isn’t Anything has a harder, wilder edge and chaotic live energy compared to the studio-bound Loveless – simply put, it rocks, even as it dissolves the guitar into gaseous and ghostly wooze. MBV came up with their own killer concepts for their innovative noisepop: “the not-quite-really-there-sound” and “glide guitar”. Swoon-songs like All I Need and  Slow” feel like being taken to the brink of unconsciousness and held there.

Cocteau Twins – Blue Bell Knoll 
So many fabulous Cocteau Twins' records – Head Over Heels, The Moon and the Melodies, the EPs Sunburst and Snowblind, The Spangle Maker, and Love’s Easy Tears – but Blue Bell Knoll is their peak: overflowing with melody,  glittering with guitar textures, and Elizabeth Fraser never effed the ineffable more exquisitely.

A.R. Kane – 69
After taking their sculpted chaos aesthetic to the limit with the Up Home EP, here Alex Ayuli and Rudy Tambala pare it back and try some different directions, from dubby pop to subaquatic ambient grottos as The Sun Falls Into the Sun. #1 in the indie chart, 69’s blend of song and space, experimental abstraction and poignant melody faintly recall Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way,  but is ultimately uniquely A.R. Kane.  

Slowdive – Blue Day
Compiling songs from their perfect first three EPs, this 7-track mini-LP features their most serenely gliding tunes, Shine and Morningrise. Like clouds shot through with sunlight, Slowdive’s blurry skyscapes are suffused with the sweet sorrow of just another diamond day turning into an idyllic memory.   

Seefeel - Quique
Weaving lustrous guitars and ripples of voice-as-instrument through sample-loops and dubby dance beats, Seefeel find a spangly-tingly groove midway between Cocteau Twins and Aphex Twin. Shoegaze melting into post-rock, this album should be subtitled Songs for Swooning Lovers.

To Enter: Pre-order a copy of Still In A Dream before the 18th June 2026, or purchase a ticket to Simon Reynolds: In Conversation at Rough Trade East, or enter your details HERE.

Still in a Dream: Shoegaze, Slackers and the Reinvention of Rock, 1984–1994

A groundbreaking history of late 1980s underground music and the emergence of shoegaze as the defining sound of an era, from acclaimed music journalist Simon Reynolds.

The definitive story of the slackers and shoegazers who reinvented rock. Twenty years after his acclaimed postpunk best-seller, Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds tells the tale of what happened next: the underground explosion of noisepop, shoegaze, slacker rock and grunge that reverberated through the late Eighties into the early Nineties.

Capturing the musical exhilaration of the era along with the alienation of youth during a period of ascendant conservative politics and glitzy mainstream pop, Still in a Dream celebrates a golden age of guitar reinvention, a second psychedelia of mind blowing sounds pioneered by bands like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. In Britain, groups like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive escaped into shimmering dreamworlds while American underground rockers like Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement blended apathy and urgency into thrilling noise.

A propulsive and personal account from a journalist who covered this music in real time from the frontlines, Still in a Dream vividly recreates a period that was the last blast for the analogue culture of vinyl records and music papers, before the Internet changed everything.