Ride

As Ride were working on their 2024 album Interplay, 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 had 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, however, felt like it had been leading to Interplay, the group's seventh album, which was released in 2024. 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 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 critically- acclaimed 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.