Returning to Bristol – with disciples bdrmm in tow – the original Oxford four proved that they can still make beautiful and timeless noise

Having first belatedly seen Ride in a remarkably satisfying acoustic setup for a Rough Trade Bristol instore – way back in pre-pandemic times for the launch of 2019’s This is Not a Safe Place long player – there was certainly an aural itch for your scribe to scratch in terms of catching them live again, albeit in a fully-plugged-in form. Hence, a rare Sunday night outing to Bristol’s still relatively new Marble Factory to seize the first local opportunity.

Despite being slightly less well-served on the sound-mix front, such is a support band’s lot, Hull’s capital letter and vowel averse bdrmm served-up a highly-spirited set of sonic tower building to warm up the audience, with impassioned excerpts from 2020’s Bedroom LP and the just-released Port EP putting freshness, energy and subtly into the post-shoegaze sound world. Still frighteningly talented beyond their years, bdrmm continue to be ones to watch under the nurturing wing of the Sonic Cathedral label.

Obviously having a lot more life miles on the clock, Ride soon appeared in front of a more-than-ready crowd, to spin back time to re-examine the whole of 1990’s Nowhere album – in its best known expanded eleven-track version with the same year’s Fall EP appended to be precise – for another anniversary-affixed live airing.

It’s sometimes true of reunited bands that matured musicianship can do wonders for live rebirths of earlier works, as long as the core chemistry and the spirit of the original material remains. Certainly, Ride proved this to be the case with recelebrating Nowhere; giving greater muscle and momentum to the likes of “Seagull” and “Taste” as well as adding extra epic languor and swirl into songs such as “In a Different Place” and “Dreams Burn Down”. The total bliss-out moment came – with happy predictability – via “Vapour Trail”, the Andy Bell-led cosmic-pop classic that only grows with yearning grandeur as the years rolls by.

Freed-up from the classic-album-in-its-entirety commitments of the extended Nowhere performance, the quartet returned for a truly transcendent encore.

Reconfirming themselves as not just a living museum piece enterprise, extracting choice cuts from 2017’s post-reformation Weather Diaries album (“Lannoy Point”) and the aforementioned This is Not a Safe Place (“Future Love” and “Kill Switch”) felt just as invigorating as revisiting the vintage 1991 Today Forever EP (for “Unfamiliar”) and 1992’s Going Blank Again LP. Whilst an open-ended “OX4” from the latter turned out to be a somewhat unexpected treat, the colossal payoff from “Leave Them All Behind” sealed the deal on the whole show. With Bell and co-frontman Mark Gardener fused symbiotically on the vocal and guitar frontline, Steve Queralt laying down his juddering Pete Hook-like bassline and Loz Colbert driving things along with his immense drums, the song’s seminal sky-scraping euphoria was delivered magnificently.

Assuredly finding ways to stay connected to an illustrious past whilst staying relevant in the present, Ride gave us an age-defying masterclass in dreaminess and dissonance. Long may they run…

Adrian
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