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Tremolo (EP)

album by My Bloody Valentine

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ627287
Source-derived summary

Tremolo E.P. is an extended play by Irish alternative rock band My Bloody Valentine, released in February 1991 by Creation Records. The EP was a critical success and topped the UK Indie Chart. It featured the single "To Here Knows When", which subsequently appeared (in a different mix) on the band's second album Loveless.

Background

The EP featured the band more heavily utilising samplers, which allowed them to play back sounds on keyboard. Sampled sounds include guitar feedback, vocals, and a BBC stock sound effects recording used to create a low-end effect on "To Here Knows When", and a Turkish belly dancing track ripped from cassette on the track "Swallow". The title is a reference to the band's heavy usage of guitar tremolo and vibrato to create blurred, dreamlike tones (Kevin Shields' method of strumming chords while simultaneously bending his guitar's tremolo/whammy bar was referred to as "glide guitar").

In November 1991, Shields commented: "Tremolo had seven tracks on it, but you're not allowed to do that, so we called it four tracks and didn't name three of them. People just thought they were weird bits!" The lead track, "To Here Knows When", has a longer and more ethereal coda—essentially constituting a separate song—than the version later included on the album Loveless. "Swallow" and "Honey Power" also each contain an instrumental coda. All three segues/codas feature backwards guitar loops and heavy reverb.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Tremolo (EP)” is album by My Bloody Valentine. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Tremolo, album and Bloody, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1991—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1991-02. For this dossier, Tremolo, album and Bloody is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “album by My Bloody Valentine” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q627287. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Tremolo (EP)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Tremolo (EP) primary sources, Tremolo (EP) archive and Tremolo research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Tremolo (EP)”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Tremolo (EP)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.