NOT content to sit back with the recent release of his GLOK remix project, Dissident Remixed (read our review here), Andy Bell, blonde-locked Ride singer-guitarist, has chosen the day of his half-century on the planet in order to announce the release of his debut solo album, The View From Halfway Down, which will be released on October 9th.
And he’s also chosen his 50th birthday to unveil a glorious psych-pop single and accompanying video in the shape of “Love Comes In Waves”, which you can see below.
Twelve-strings chime like a British mod-psych glory circa late ’67; they rush us through acid-filtered summer fields. Is that Andy we see resplendent in kaftan and some home-fashioned space helmet, a persona to transport us deeper in guitar melodicism?
The View From Halfway Down has been four years in the making; lockdown gave Andy the chance to finish it up. The result, he says, “sits somewhere between Ride’s widescreen shoegaze and GLOK’s darkly textured electronics.”
“I’ve always wanted to make a solo album, I’ve always said I would do it, although I never imagined it happening like, or sounding like, this one,” he explained.
“I’d been sitting on this pile of almost finished tracks, along with all the other hundreds of ideas that had fallen by the wayside since I’ve been making music. Lockdown gave me the opportunity to find a way to present it to the world.”
There will be two limited-edition vinyl variants: blue, which will be available from shops, and a white and blue splatter which will only be available from Bandcamp. There will also be a CD version in a card mini-LP sleeve, plus a full digital release.
Oh: happy birthday, Andy, good sir!
The View From Halfway Down is available to pre-order now at Andy’s Bandcamp page, here.
