With their rumoured reunion now confirmed, and live dates scheduled for 2014, where better to start a month of shoegazing bliss than with the scene’s original champions?

Slowdive’s debut album Just For a Day more or less created the template for the archetypal shoegazing sound: layers of guitars, reverb, a little distortion, a helping of ambient and psychedelic beauty, and vocal harmonies to make you float away. Or, Catch The Breeze, as they sang.

After Slowdive were given the heave-ho by their record label, Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, together with drummer Ian McCutcheon, went on to form Mojave 3, which turned out to be a sort of folk-tinged summertime Slowdive, before eventually launching solo careers, Halstead finally making his transformation from effects pedal wizard to folk troubadour complete with a series of enchanting solo acoustic albums.

And now they’re back, together, and talking up the prospect of new Slowdive material. It might just be a very good time to be a Slowdive fan.