More news on that Eric Green shoegaze documentary “Beautiful Noise” – apparently it’s being scored by Brad Laner, formerly of Medicine. If you’re scratching your head and saying, “Medicine?” then let’s have a short history lesson.
Medicine were, essentially, L.A.’s response to the British shoegaze movement. In fact, because of their city of origin, some people don’t even consider them to be a shoegaze band. Naturally, Medicine formed right around the time My Bloody Valentine were releasing Loveless and by 1992 Rick Rubin picked them up for a U.S. release (In that same year producing albums by Danzig and Sir Mix-A-Lot. Yes really.) on his Def American label. Medicine was the brainchild of Laner and really his band with a cast of rotating members.
We’re considering Laner a bit of an odd choice to score the movie because, as Green tells Pitchfork, “The bulk of the movie is in the late 80s-early 90s, which is a pretty interesting time period, because a lot of these [British] groups were picked up by major labels in the U.S. Around 1990, people thought that this was going to be the next big thing. And then there was a huge backlash, and [shoegaze] was turned over for, let’s say, more press-friendly genres.”
Essentially Medicine came out just in time for the backlash.
Here’s a completely fictional account of what we suspect happened: Kevin Shields turned the offer to score down first, because Green isn’t Sofia Coppola and MBV were busy reuniting. Then Mark Garnder’s residual 90s crankiness prohibited him returning Green’s call after the initial interview for the film. Green couldn’t find Simon Raymonde’s number because his file-o-fax got lost in the CA wildfires so he just went to Laner since he was based in L.A. already and had recently started working in film and TV scoring as well as releasing a solo album.
Download: Brad Laner – “Out Cold”
Download: Medicine – “One More”
