Ride share new single ‘Last Frontier’
Oxford shoegaze pioneers Ride have shared the single ‘Last Frontier’, the second offering from their forthcoming album, Interplay.
The new track is a resounding sonic palette that fuses the band’s shoegaze origins with the expansive, electronic-inflected style they established on their most recent albums, 2017’s Weather Diaries and 2019’s This Is Not a Safe Place. ‘Last Frontier’ follows the record’s lead single ‘Peace Sign’, which arrived in January.
Discussing the track, vocalist and guitarist Andy Bell explains: “This was the runt of the litter of the very first jam session from Mark’s OX4 Studio and I didn’t even include it on my shortlist of the best tracks. It was our producer Richie Kennedy who saw the potential of the song, and we attacked this with a vengeance at Vada studio. A complete revamp of the backing track and arrangement was needed and we took it right back to basics, more towards a pounding Joy Division feel.”
He continues: “For the topline, I tried improvising at the mic, singing it all different ways, and coming up with new parts on the spot. I felt really exposed but kind of said to myself, ‘You’re among friends, it’s good to push yourself to try new ways to write.’ It feels different to every vocal I’ve ever done. It’s still a new way of working for me but it’s something I want to continue trying as I think it makes for better vocal lines; a good mixture of written and improvised.”
Ride’s seventh studio album, Interplay, arrives on March 29th via Wichita Recordings and PIAS. Their third since reforming in 2014, the quartet, comprised of Bell, Mark Gardener, Steve Queralt and Loz Tolbert, have now been together longer than their first stint, which lasted from 1988 to 1996.
Produced by the band alongside Richie Kennedy and Claudius Mittendorfer, the new album looks to delve deeper into a “more expansive sonic template” inspired by the 1980s groups who made a mark on Ride in their early years, including Tears for Fears, Talk Talk and early U2.
This week, Ride have also announced a run of UK and Irish tour dates. Hitting 16 cities in September this year, including Belfast, Bristol, Dublin, Glasgow, London and Manchester, this will be preceded by a North American stint of 11 dates in May.
Listen to ‘Last Frontier’ below.
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