It’s near-impossible to think of a more fitting image to sum up Oxford’s Ride than the huge arching wave, captured moments before breaking that adorns their debut album, 1990’s Nowhere.
It’s near-impossible to think of a more fitting image to sum up Oxford’s Ride than the huge arching wave, captured moments before breaking that adorns their debut album, 1990’s Nowhere . The band who would later be dubbed the premier shoegaze act, offered up a whole new brand of guitar-based rock with the emphasis on layering, effects and slow-building walls of noise, which they captured in a rare, startling potency.
Twenty-one years after Nowhere, just ahead of its anniversary reissue, singer Mark Gardener realises the wake of that album was more powerful than he or his band could have imagined, or even hope to have survived. Unlike many of his Creation records co-signings, Mark Gardener and band have resisted the reunion tour trap, despite their once rocky friendships now fully repaired. After walking out of Ride in ’96, Gardener’s sense of ‘normality’ needed some readjustment as he explains later. But despite messy endings, for the 21st anniversary edition of Nowhere, the original four members all sat in on the remastering sessions, "just like old mates". Gardener begins by describing his finely tuned ear’s impression of the 21-year-old debut and the feeling it has left him with.
"It’s strange because at the time we were so involved with it, but now because I’m doing a lot of production myself I listen to it with a kind of producer’s ear, I guess, and to me it sounds very unconventional," he decides. "Listening now, it takes me back to being in the studio and us all living nocturnally for the whole process. Alan McGee (Creation label boss) was coming down to the studio a lot too. I mean, it was early days for Creation so Alan was very keen on encouraging us and just making himself available for whatever we needed. I think it helped a lot having that kind of support and it’s something I always try and do with bands I work with now." McGee, it is now known, was barely clinging on financially when Nowhere was being recorded. My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless record had cost the label dearly, and it’s reasonable to think he was hanging high hopes on his latest signing.
"At the time, our first two EPs had gone into the mainstream charts, which was a first for Creation, and so Alan was excited but also just into letting us get on with it. He was a keen observer of our progress though," he adds. "As far as having any kind of plan for Nowhere, we had the material written and just set up as though we were playing live and kept belting out songs all through the night in this old converted church called Blackwing studios. I remember just weird, spooky stuff kept happening with the recording equipment and we were convinced there were spirits in the room!" he exclaims. Naturally, Gardener is understated when describing Nowhere, but the confidence to pull off such a non-derivative record at the age the band were still seems remarkable, I propose.
"Interestingly, when I hear Nowhere, I totally get that we were all clicking and being very instinctual with the music," he offers. "We were at a place in our minds collectively that was all about fulfilling our childhood dreams of making an album. We knew that if it failed then we would probably just go off to university and get real jobs, so it was also a time of no-pressure and let’s-just-see-how-we-go, which was a great feeling," Gardener recalls his good fortune with some disbelief. "We had our first record contract when I was 18 and it’s only really now that I can appreciate what an amazing that time was – we were four mates who were incredibly lucky to be connecting with people through music we wholly believed in." Inspiration for the remarkable sound on Nowhere, Gardener states, was best summed up by Ride co-lead guitarist, Andy Bell.
"Andy once famously said his childhood memory of hearing The Beatles playing while his mum was doing the hoovering had a huge impact on him!" he laughs. "That whole melody and droning noise clash kind of sums up what Ride were about in the early days." For his singing on Nowhere, Gardener added perfectly measured monotone voice-scapes, seemingly more for the purpose of offsetting the wailing guitar than offering insightful lyrics. "With my singing at the time, I really didn’t know what I was doing so I just sort of mumbled a bit," he says. His impressionist singing on the album’s most colossal moments – Vapour Trail, Dreams Burn Down and Paralysed – gave Ride their only real subtlety, while the main focal point was Andy Bell’s and Gardener’s guitar washes filling every possible space in the music, while rhythm section Steve Quarelt and Loz Colbert added heaving bulk for contrast. With the one exception of My Bloody Valentine, no other band had at that time succeeded so fully in stealing soaring guitar music off dreary dinosaurs and harnessing it with such youthful flair. Sadly though, Ride’s rare chemistry was also a time bomb and Gardner knew it, or so he claims.
"We left at the right time, I think. A lot of great love affairs don’t go on for 20 or 30 years just as Ride’s season of intense creativity wasn’t meant to." However, his appreciation of the band’s short peak was a lesson learned over time. He continues: "At the time Ride finished, life just seemed to be such an anti-climax, really. I filled that gap by turning my house in Oxford into a kind of non-stop night club, but then after a year of that you just go ‘shit, this is really not good’ and I had to get away from there altogether. So that’s what I did."
I wonder with time being touted as a great healer and considering some of Creation’s most popular acts are touring again, is the temptation to re-join the party at all? "Playing together again would be like going back to an ex partner and shagging them long after you’ve moved on," he says. But you know the offers still keep coming, so maybe we will if the time ever feels right."
Ride’s 21 st anniversary edition of Nowhere is out now through Rhino records. The expanded remaster now includes the complete Today Forever EP, bonus B-sides, and a complete live recording from Ride’s 1991 US tour.
