I Could Live in Hope

I Could Live In Hope is the debut studio album by American band Low, released in 1994 on Vernon Yard Recordings. A reaction to the abrasiveness of alternative rock in the early 1990s —when grunge had a reigning popularity—, Low "eschewed conventional songwriting in favour of mood and movement." Influenced by Brian Eno and Joy Division, the band favored slow-paced compositions, a minimum of instrumentation and an economy of language; working with long-time producer and New York underground mainstay Mark Kramer. Featuring an "unprecedent pace in the then-flowering underground," I Could Live in Hope help to birth the genre known as slowcore, that encompassed acts from Bedhead to Codeine throughout the 1990s.