RIDE

As Ride were working on their excellent new record, the quartet realised they had now been a band longer in their second phase than their original incarnation had lasted. When Andy Bell, Laurence “Loz” Colbert, Mark Gardener and Steve Queralt reunited in 2015, it was with a desire to re-conjure the musical alchemy that had made them one of the most exciting British bands of the late 80s and early 90s. Yes, there was a legacy to celebrate, album anniversaries to mark and old classics to dust off, but what Ride really wanted to do was keep pushing forward, pick up the thread of what made them such an exhilarating proposition in the first place. It was a reunion underpinned with a sense of unfinished business.

There have been two records since then, 2017’s Weather Diaries and 2019’s This Is Not A Safe Place. Both produced by Erol Alkan, they were albums that re-lit the spark, both pleasing old diehards and introducing one of the most forward-thinking guitar bands of their generation to a whole new audience. Everything feels like it has been leading to Interplay, the group’s forthcoming seventh album. It’s the sound of Ride connecting all the dots, taking the frenzied guitar attacks, hypnotic grooves and dreamy melodic hooks of their early work and setting it to a more expansive sonic template, one that takes in synth flourishes, psychedelic folk, electronic beats and noir-pop soundscapes. “You learn this is a special thing,” says singer and guitarist Gardener of the dynamic between them. “It’s easy to take it for granted the first time round, when you just come out and everything is great.”

Shall we take a quick trip back to that period for the uninitiated? Ride were formed in Oxford in 1988 by four friends rooted in art-school aesthetics who combined 60s guitar-pop sensibilities with avalanches of noise and driving rhythms. It was a recalibration of indie-rock that would come to be defined as shoegazing, music that was both experimental and pop, powerful and fragile. Preceded by a run of three criticallyacclaimed EPs, their 1990 debut album Nowhere is regarded as one of the greatest debuts of the ’90s. By the time they released fourth record Tarantula in 1996, however, they’d hit the skids, intra-band turmoil prompting them to call it day.

But something curious happened whilst the four-piece had put the band out to pasture and when Ride reunited in 2014, they were surrounded by a wave of groups — Tame Impala, Beach House, Animal Collective amongst them — who sounded like they had been inhaling heavy doses of early Ride recordings. Eight years into their second era, the band are increasingly beginning to acknowledge the period themselves. Interplay is pockmarked with nods to their younger selves.

“It’s got a lot of references within the writing to earlier days,” says Bell. “Then on a sonic level, it’s got the feel of some of the later 90s stuff. There’s a grown-up-ness to it as well as the early influences coming through.” “Obviously, there’s a big heritage angle to this band because loads of people were so in love with Nowhere,” adds Gardener. “But for me the whole reformation was because I felt we still had great chemistry as a band. That was why I wanted to do it, for moments that we felt in the studio making this record.”