About

Celebrating the release of their seventh studio album, 'Interplay', Oxford four-piece Ride head out for a run of UK and Ireland tour dates, including a show at Portsmouth Guildhall.

Interplay is Ride’s third album since reforming in 2014, having now been together longer in their current second phase than their original iteration as 90’s shoegaze pioneers. It follows 2017’s Weather Diaries and 2019’s This Is Not A Safe Place, which re-lit the Ride spark, both pleasing old diehards and introducing one of the most forward-thinking guitar bands of their generation to a whole new audience. Produced by the band with Richie Kennedy and mixed by Claudius Mittendorfer, it connects all the dots from their career, taking the frenzied guitar attacks, hypnotic grooves and dreamy melodic hooks of their early work and setting it to a more expansive sonic template, inspired by 80’s pop gems like Tears For Fears, Talk Talk & early U2.

Made up of guitarist/vocalists Andy Bell and Mark Gardener, alongside drummer Laurence “Loz” Colbert and bassist Steve Queralt, Ride were formed in Oxford in 1988; 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 ‘shoegaze’ and with their seminal 1990 debut Nowhere came a run of critical and commercial success that eventually hit the skids in 1996, with intra-band turmoil prompting them to call it a day.

They reformed in 2014, finding a global scene full of bands indebted to Ride and their peers (Tame Impala, Beach House et al), and after a successful tour went into the studio with legendary producer Erol Alkan to create the critically acclaimed Weather Diaries and follow up This Is Not A Safe Place. Now in 2024, shoegaze is one of music’s fastest growing genres, having picked up a new wave of Gen-Z fans via TikTok, with artists such as DIIV and bdrmm converting millions of views into impressive streaming numbers and ticket sales. A quarter of a century since originally forming and with a new generation discovering their music, Interplay finds Ride hitting new creative heights and stronger than ever.