Genre: Noisy/Shoegazer Year: 2002 Country: UK Label: First Time Records Web: Official Site Details: Tracks & Audio
With the release of this compilation and given the new generation of bands contributing to the noisy pop revival, now is a good time to rediscover Ride, one of the major groups of the genre along The Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine.
In the early 90's the four from Oxford created a new sound whose psychedelic beauty was colored by bold strokes of feedbacks with their rich dreamlike harmonic layers of choruses and noisy guitars. After the first Ep Smile, including the singles "Chelsea Girl", "Drive Blind" and "Like a daydream", came their two masterpieces, the ethereal Nowhere featuring the wild landscapes of "Vapour Trail", "Taste", "Dreams burn down", and the more structured Going Blank Again with their most powerful piece, "Leave Them All Behind", the pop fave "Twisterella" and "Ox4". Deciding to return to their psychedelic roots, Ride then released Carnival of Light, an album devoid of their emblematic walls of saturation, thus creating a certain frustration. While "From time to time" was undoubtedly in the vein of their best songs and "How does it feel to feel?" a welcome strike of rock and roll, "I don't know where it comes from" and "Birdman" proved to be weaker efforts. However, the band didn't go down without heroics; their last entry was Tarantula's sharp and infectious "Black Night Crash", a song inspired by Ballard's novel Crash.
While Ride's contribution to music has been pretty much ignored in the US, its influence can now be heard in popular bands such as Doves, Oasis, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and newcomers The Stratford 4. Getting this CD and the band's first 2 albums will put things in perspective, reminding us where it all comes from.
A few additional tracks are available on the bonus CD.
Ride OX4
