The New Cue #448 December 4: Sonic Cathedral's Nathaniel Cramp

"Stop worrying and enjoy yourself."

Morning,

This Friday sees the release of a 4CD box set called Celebrate Yourself, marking the twentieth anniversary of Sonic Cathedral, the passion project London label started and run entirely by Nathaniel Cramp from his home.

It’s not massively overstating matters to credit Sonic Cathedral as almost entirely responsible for rehabilitating the reputation of ‘shoegazing’, a pejorative early ‘90s music weekly term for floppy fringed home counties indie kids who played entire gigs while engrossed in their effects pedals. This despite the genre producing some of the era’s most inventive records, like those by the likes Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Lush: music journalists were just much meaner in 1990s. Both Sonic Cathedral and the title of this anniversary box-set are wry reclamations of those music press pisstakes, i.e. the shoegazer bands were, it was sneered, part of ‘the scene that celebrates itself’…

No longer. Nowadays, ‘shoegaze’ - as Pitchfork might have it - is viewed with the kind of reverential esteem that ‘60s garage punk or psychedelia is held - and that’s thanks to the dedicated work Nat Cramp’s put in to Sonic Cathedral, releasing new material from OG shoegazers like Andy Bell (Ride), Emma Anderson (Lush) and Neil Hastead (Slowdive - enormous in the US: some of their Spotify tracks have over 65 millions streams!), as well as many new practitioners like deary or bdrmm.

Anyway, enough of my yakking. Let Nat tell the story himself. Have a listen to his work on this playlist as you read.

See you on Friday,

Ted and Niall.

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Lost in Music: Nat Cramp of Sonic Cathedral

What did you grow up wanting to be:
I don’t remember to be honest; it changed all the time. Growing up at school in the middle of nowhere down in Devon, the careers advisor had two options for all the pupils –go on a YTS or work on their family’s farm. I knew I definitely didn’t want to do either of those. Then I started reading NME…