Of all of these reissues, Isn’t Anything (1988) is the one that most needs attention. Oft-overlooked in the wake of the sound and fury that followed, it finds My Bloody Valentine at a weird crossroads: not quite shorn of their more indiepop sensibilities, the divebombing sonic attacks occasionally sound welded-on, or at the very least, jarring against what lies beneath. Like the smoke wisp of a photo that adorns its cover, the album sometimes allows its gauzy barrage of effects to overwhelm the actual songwriting. The structures and hooks aren’t quite there – especially on the pure noise ballads like ‘No More Sorry’ and ‘Lose My Breath’, which sound like tentative templates for ‘Sometimes’.

Just listening to the first five seconds of ‘Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside)’ – its snarling bass run and stuttering snare assault now sounding more vicious than ever- validates the necessity of the remastering job. It also brings out the vocals a little bit more, which means that Kevin Shields’ endearingly effete vocal delivery (think early Bobby Gillespie) can be on show almost as much as the violently exploding spring coils that come from his guitar. The breathless coos and barbed wire acoustics of closer ‘I Can See It (But I Can’t Feel It)’ – a title which makes sense when coupled with the muted murder fantasy on the cover of You Made Me Realise – now sounds immaculate, while the old-school Valentines pop sound hits its absolute zenith on the thundering ‘You Never Should’, blessed with one of the most effortless melodies to emerge from Shields’ twisted head.

One thing this reissue campaign proves is that it’s important to take each record on its own merits; the available My Bloody Valentine catalogue is small, but that doesn’t mean that each release rests on the other. There’s a sense of progress between the three records, sure, but the EP collection brings you that evolution without having to change discs. Isn’t Anything can now be accepted as an incredible stand-alone achievement, albeit one which just happened to come from the same minds who brought you…

The big one – Loveless (1991) - now in two “distinct” flavours ; well, distinct like the difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero. And yes, they’ve apparently been labelled wrong – and there’s a barely-audible-but-just-audible enough digital hiccup halfway through ‘What You Want’ – but don’t let that put you off. The two versions of the album are pretty hard to tell apart; occasionally I found myself hearing a slightly different guitar tone or drum sound – perhaps a little bit more space in the mix or something - but listeners should be careful to avoid the shoegazer’s Stockholm Syndrome of continually flitting between the two, playing spot the difference.

But more to the point, what more is there to say about Loveless that hasn’t already been said in flowery, audiophilic prose. I asked some friends if they could think of anything to say, the best response being “Loveless sounds like the work of frisky robot otters that exist only on peanut butter and nettles”, but he isn’t an MBV fan, so that doesn’t really count. What is striking about the record, whichever way you choose to listen to it, is just how oddly it’s sequenced; starting with nothing but the elephantine bombast of ‘Only Shallow’, then a lull for another few songs, before reaching its pop peak on ‘When You Sleep’. ‘Sometimes’ remains the album’s heart and soul, yet the whole song sounds like it’s drowning in quicksand, while ‘Soon’ – the LP’s arms-aloft zenith - is weirdly placed as the closing number. It’s all pretty perverse and, one imagines, Kevin Shields wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Maybe it’s all Alan McGee’s fault that the album never quite got the wider acclaim it has long been due – he infamously snubbed Loveless when compiling his nominees for the inaugural Mercury Music Prize (in a year when three other Creation alumni – The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream and Saint Etienne – got nods). Still, there’s a good chance that Loveless might just be the most important cult record of all time, and that’s not a bad legacy for it to have…

Now for the third release of the set – the EPs 1988-1991. Like I said before, one thing these remasters help with are clarity in the vocals and, on a great deal of these EP tracks, it really does seem like all this band ever sang about was the desire for a good blowjob. ‘Swallow’ speaks for itself, while the fever-dreampop of ‘Slow’ has a chorus begging for “a slow, slow, slow, slowwwwww suck”. No wonder Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite once cited MBV as being responsible for “some of the dirtiest records I own”.

Anyway, the four EPs presented here are the lines that join the album-shaped dots; You Made Me Realise is the undisputed peak - five tracks that carve out an identity which, had the band stuck with it, would have left MBV with as much clout as they wield today. The dronin’-and-twangin’ ‘Drive It All Over Me’ seems to have enrolled in the JG Ballard school of The Erotic Potential of the Car Crash - ”travel always gets me”, indeed – and as for the title track… well, if Alan McGee (who picked it as the EP’s lead cut) is to be believed, it’s the greatest novelty song ever written. The Feed Me With Your Kiss selections feel more like b-sides – indeed, they were outtakes from Isn’t Anything – and, while great, they don’t hold a candle to the stop-start thrills of the astonishing lead track.

You’d think the real breakaway moment for the Valentines’ sound would be on the Glider EP – the four-tracker which first brought the world ’Soon’ – but listening to it in context of these reissues, they don’t seem to have quite found The Sound yet on it (‘Soon’ notwithstanding). Half of the EP is taken up by ‘traditional’ acoustic rockers, the likes of which the band never quite tried again – the guitars sound like guitars, the drums are real, and you can actually hear the lyrics. If you want to nitpick, the breakthrough really starts with the bonus seven-inch which came with Isn’t Anything - the two tracks of which see their first official CD release here; ’Instrumental 2′ invents Loveless armed with nothing more than a sampled Public Enemy breakbeat and a thousand tracks of Bilinda Butcher sighing, while ‘Instrumental 1′ spend three minutes imagining what Kevin Shields’ blues phase would sound like (spoiler: it just sounds like My Bloody Valentine).

And then there’s Tremolo. Technically a seven-song EP - Shields counts those Music for Airports-style mid-track interludes – it’s effectively Loveless in miniature. ‘To Here Knows Where’ still sounds like someone left the master tapes of All Pop Music Ever in direct sunlight for too long, the guitar hook of ‘Honey Power’ sounds like a balloon flying around the room, while the flute-laden Bhangra/baggy soundclash of ‘Swallow’ somehow still manages to sound filthy and impenetrable. The rarities and unreleased cuts are pretty interesting, too – if, in part, for their varying degrees of fidelity; the long-bootlegged ‘Good for You’ (aka ‘Cowboy Song’) displays some of the band’s classic wind-tunnel pop, while ‘Sugar’ (a b-side to a French promo-only single – how indie schmindie is that?) bounces wolf notes and harmonics across the speakers over a bed of lush acoustic guitars and the stuttering pound of a synthetic kick drum. Of all the rarities presented here, that is your lost classic.

EPs and Rarities is arguably the most important of these three reissues; so much of its material has been unavailable on any format other than crappy-quality mp3s for years, and its position as a pseudo-best of means that the listener can use it as a handy reference guide to their MBV-of-choice. The sheer volume of material on this compilation certainly bears listening to in smaller portions. Want a relentless jangle rush? Skip to the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart-inventing ‘Thorn’! Fancy ten minutes of relentlessly shifting industrial noise? Well, then you’ll love the extended take on ‘Glider’! Sure, it would’ve been nice to see the compilation-only covers of Wire (‘Map Ref. 41°N 93°W’) and Louis Armstrong (‘We Have All the Time in the World’) making an appearance (presumably licensing issues were to blame…), or Andrew Wetherall’s remix of ‘Soon’, but this compilation is still an embarrassment of riches that was entirely worth the wait.

Taken as a whole, this reissue campaign is a fantastic way to perpetuate the myth of My Bloody Valentine, and the reclusive genius of Kevin Shields, right down to the constant delaying of the release date. The CDs don’t necessarily sound better than the existing issues – which makes EPs and Rarities the only truly essential purchase of the bunch – but they certainly make for a more satisfying experience. Especially when, as obvious as it sounds, you play it fucking loud.