Audio [aw-dee-oh] n. – of, pertaining to, or employed in the transmission, reception, or reproduction of sound.

-mancy [man-see] suff. – a combining form meaning “divination,” of the kind specified by the initial element: necromancy. [Origin: ME -manci(e), -mancy(e) < OF -mancie < L -mantīa < Gk manteía divination. See mantic, -cy]

I saw My Bloody Valentine last night and if I’ve ever been convinced that someone has magical powers it isn’t that tool David Blaine.  Kevin Shields may very well be an audiomancer. To take a guitar and run it through enough guitar effects so that an entire venue and every molecule in it begins to shake violently — that is no ordinary feat.

To be honest, there really aren’t any words to describe this experience.  Which is a shame, because description is the expressed duty that words have.  And it’s not because I’ve loved this band for a long time and shit a brick when I found out they would be reuniting; not because I’ve learned so much about guitars from reading about and listening to this band; not because they are officially the loudest goddam thing I’ve ever heard in my entire concert life which consists of 200+ shows where a sizeable chunk of those are straight up noise…

It’s just… well, you had to be there.

If you Google the band, or Twitter search, all you’ll see about My Bloody Valentine (or alternatively, MBV) are about how loud they were and the ensuing euphoria that came from it.

Granted, a lot of people I know who simply can’t handle loud volumes would have just gotten their asses kicked from the show.  People who can’t handle washes of noise wouldn’t have been able to handle the show closer.  You kind of have to “get it”, but when you’re in it, I don’t think it’s really all that hard to “get it”.

Kevin Shields isn’t a god, because that’s a cliché.  Godhood is reserved for people like Thurston Moore, the number 7 according to Black Francis, and apparently Clapton.

But he must have figured out that he is some sort of superhero, or has figured out some kind of divination via guitar.

It’s the only explanation.