Ride (Band)
Ride was a British shoegazing band.
- 2.1 albums
- 2.2 Singles and EPs
- 2.3 compilations
History
The founding
The band was founded in 1988 in Oxford by Mark Gardener (guitar, vocals ), Andy Bell ( guitar, vocals ), Steve Queralt (bass) and Laurence Colbert (drums). At that time, the members of the band students of Banbury Art College. After a tour as the opening act for the Soup Dragons in 1989 Alan McGee of Creation Records attention to them and gave them a record deal.
Career of the band
With the support from their record company they took in 1990 to the EPs Ride, Play and fall, which made them known to a wider public. The Melody Maker magazine named one of the hopefuls of the year. In October of the year finally released their first LP, Nowhere, which made it to # 11 in the UK charts. Ride and Play in 1992 re-released on the compilation Smile, while the pieces were retrieve from case on the CD version of Nowhere. In March 1991, the next EP of the band, Today Forever, which was followed by the first international tour of Japan, Australia and France appeared.
In March 1992, Going Blank Again finally appeared, produced by Alan Moulder. Especially the first track, Leave Them All Behind, is considered exemplary of the genre Shoegazing. About eight minutes Ride produce the typical wall of sound sound using the two guitars of Bell and Gardener, the distorted and create wah wah pedals a hypnotic atmosphere. Going Blank Again was a great commercial success and went into the UK charts at # 5. The single Leave Them All Behind managed to climb into the Top Ten of the singles charts. However, the band's big break was not yet succeeded; This meant that there was always greater tensions, especially between Gardener and Bell within the band.
In 1994 the next album, Carnival of Light with Jon Lord as a guest musician. Also this album was still in the Top Ten of the album charts; However, the music scene in the UK had now changed. The typical shoegazing band Ride and My Bloody Valentine were replaced in the perception of the mainstream audience slowly from Britpop bands like Blur and Oasis. The songs on Carnival of Light reflected the in-band tensions, since now the songs of the first half alone of Gardener and the songs of the second half alone were written by Bell. The previous cooperation in the songwriting was abandoned.
Resolution and follow-up
During the recording of the 1995 album Tarantula first signs of disintegration in the band were visible. Gardener went into an inner exile and only wrote a song for this album, the rest was written by Bell. Even before the release, the band broke up. When the album came on the market, it was by critics and fans and was withdrawn after one week.
Andy Bell founded after his time at Ride the band Hurricane # 1 This broke up after two albums also on, whereupon Bell - was the bass player for the British rock band Oasis - until its dissolution in 2009. Mark Gardener has been part of several commercially less important musical projects. With the band, The Animal House, he released an album in 2000 and left the band afterwards. As of 2005, Mark Gardener worked with Goldrush and producer Bill Racine and in 2006 published his solo debut album These Beautiful Ghosts.
In 2001 there was a documentation of the television station Channel 4 on Sonic Youth to a reunion of Ride to demonstrate the use of feedback and effects units. This 30- minute session and two more songs were released as an EP ( Coming up for Air ) 2002. As a result, more CDs of live performances and a CD box appeared. Hopes for a permanent reunion were dashed when Bell this explicitly excluded. However, there were several smaller collaborations between individual members of the band.