Legendary British shoegazers Ride have shared a new cut from their imminent new album, This Is Not A Safe Place, Like other tracks in Ride’s discography, “Repetition” is poppier than other shoegaze songs. Swirling guitars intertwine with jubilant synths, crafting a sunny single that sounds like if Kraftwerk were stripped of technological anxieties and linked up with Devo.
Frontman Andy Bell smiles throughout the track, encouraging listeners to embrace patterns amid substantial life changes. “Repetition is a form of change / So don’t be fazed if the backdrops change,” he chants encouragingly during the chorus. Per the track’s YouTube description, Bell writes that the track “succeeds in bringing me back to all of the things we were into and talked about when we were 18, but also being of the moment, in 2019.”
Ride reformed in 2014 to do some touring and finally released their first new album in 21 years, Weather Diaries, in 2017 via Wichita. That was followed by the 2018 EP, Tomorrow’s Shore. As with those two releases, Erol Alkan produced This Is Not a Safe Place. Alan Moulder mixed the album, the fourth Ride album he has mixed. The band came together at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019. A previous press release said the band were influenced by “the Jean Michel Basquiat exhibition at London’s Barbican Centre and the post-punk sound of The Fall and Sonic Youth, for an album rich in their trademark shoegaze atmosphere, whilst simultaneously sounding rejuvenated and creatively ambitious.”
Laurence Colbert,
Mark Gardener,
Steve Queralt
This Is Not A Safe Place is out on August. 16th via Wichita Recordings.
