Slowdive - Pygmalion

Pygmalion is the third studio album by British rock band Slowdive, originally released in February 1995 via Creation Records. It was the final album before Slowdive disbanded in 1995.

Slowdive are an English rock band that formed in Reading, Berkshire in 1989. The band consists of Rachel Goswell on vocals and guitar, Simon Scott on drums, Neil Halstead on vocals and guitar, Nick Chaplin on bass and Christian Savill on guitar. Several other drummers also briefly played with the band, including Adrian Sell, Neil Carter and Ian McCutcheon. Halstead is the band's primary songwriter.

Goswell and Halstead had known each other since early childhood in Reading, Berkshire. Scott left in 1994 and when Savill and Chaplin left the band soon after the release of Pygmalion, the remaining members renamed the band Mojave 3. Slowdive reunited in 2014.

Their sound has been described as dream pop, shoegaze, indie rock and ambient, and they are regarded as one of the key shoegaze bands that emerged in the UK from the late 1980s.

When Slowdive disbanded in 1995 music fans widely associated it with the demise of the shoegaze genre. Their last sign of life was Pygmalion and it was, after Just For A Day and Souvlaki a totally different and more abstract album.

Where the band attempted to put more song structures in place on Souvlaki, they began to incorporate more elements of ambient electronica on Pygmalion. Which resulted in a more complete album than the two previous albums.

Tracks like “Blue Skied An' Clear” and “Crazy For You” demonstrate that the songs are still there, somewhere -- they're just buried under more abstract sounds than before.

The cover illustration featured imagery from Rainer Wehinger's graphic notation for György Ligeti's work Artikulation (1958).

Pygmalion has been well received by critics. AllMusic called it "a stylistic masterpiece", while BBC Music echoed similar sentiments, writing that Pygmalion "remains Halstead and Goswell's masterpiece and comparing it to the ambient works of Brian Eno".

The album peaked at number 108 in the UK Albums Chart.

This album is a 2020 reissue on 180 gram black audiophile vinyl with a printed insert, pressed in Europe via Music On Vinyl.