Posted by Andy Bell is continuously creative.
Guitarist with shoegaze legends Ride, he’s helped propel their second act, releasing two glorious albums and a collection of neo-classical reinterpretations, all while touring the globe.
His own electronic dalliances as GLOK have resulted in some superb one off releases and remixes, showing a different side to his character.
New album ‘The View From Halfway Down’ is a solo album proper, and it finds Andy Bell adding fresh influences to that shoegaze sound.
Moving from dappled psych-pop through to wonky Beta Band elements, there’s also a touch of ‘Odelay’ era Beck, too.
Andy kindly broke the album down for Clash – listen to it below, then find his track by track guide after the jump.
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Love Comes In Waves
My kind of music. It’s a combination of The Byrds, The Stone Roses, Neu!, The Beatles, and Ride. I wear my influences on my sleeve and I keep ploughing the same sounds, but I can’t get enough of making tunes like this.
Indica
When I think of my album, this is the track I think of. It’s the heart of the record. It started as a folk jam with a “Can type beat”, recorded at Gems studio. The vocal is spun in backwards from another song on the record. And it’s long – although nothing much happens. It was important to give tracks like this room to kind of hover.
After two albums of punchy Ride songs, I felt the need to make songs which had way less words and just sort of floated around you.
Ghost Tones
I’d love to do a film score someday – either electronic or on guitar – on maybe both – but this would sound good on a film I think, maybe Shane Meadows is looking for a composer for his next one.
Skywalker
A song I wrote about watching my eldest daughter Leia grow up and make her way in the world. She is 22 now and I’m so proud of her, I have 4 kids and I’m so mind blown by all of them, how different they all are and how great they are. It’s been a long time since we were all together as the older two live in Sweden.
Aubrey Drylands Gladwell
I imagine ADG as the name of the military man in that 60s poster – the “Britain needs YOU” fella.
It was recorded at Gem’s studio but – in my head – I knocked this tune out after a visit to Granny Takes A Trip for some threads and a couple of scotch and cokes at the Bag O’ Nails.
Cherry Cola
The first song written for this album. The finger-picking part used to be the entire song, it started off as a folky song with a Beta Band kind of feel. I recorded it that way with Gem, and a little later overdubbed some more instruments, probably too many. Then when I heard the way ‘Living In America’ by Sault sounded, it gave me the production style for the track.
It’s my favourite song on the album. Over the years I have made so many demos of this song that it bends my head to think I have finally made a definitive version.
I Was Alone
My favourite days making music are when I’m doing just that without an end in mind. I found this track and it was unclear whether it was a song at all. It was just these swells of sound and drones coming in and out.
I had to open it up and empty it out to create space for a vocal, and when I did, it seemed to be going in a Spacemen 3 direction. The tremolo guitar is my Vox Invader, which used to belong to the wonderful Andrew Weatherall.
Heat Haze On Weyland Road
A whole series of memories from my early childhood set to music.
One of my first memories is of standing on the pavement looking at the air shimmering above the street with the smell of melting tarmac in my nostrils, during the Summer of ’76. I lived on a street called Weyland Road, in Headington, Oxford. Quarry Rec, and the playground down at the end of the street were the places I grew up playing, roundabouts and slides. Then a few years later I got a racing bike and would ride all over Headington with my mates after school until it was dark.
Going from sweet shop to park to Shotover Hill, to the dual carriageway leading to Wheatley. All this was in a lyric I wrote to this song, but in the end I felt it said it better without words.
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Photo Credit: Shiarra Bell