Glok

RIDE’s Andy Bell, recording under his electronic alter ego GLOK, and the producer and Insult to Injury label boss Timothy Clerkin have joined forces for Alliance, a brand new seven-track album released by Bytes on November 8. The collaboration finds Andy and Tim with their freak flags flying, working in a freewheeling environment where nothing was off limits, with influences ranging from Death in Vegas and Boards of Canada to James Holden and New Order.

They already knew there was chemistry — Andy and Tim were introduced by Bytes when the label suggested Tim as a participant for the Dissident Remixed album, which was put together in 2019. Tim delivered a killer rework of ‘Projected Sounds’, turning the Neu!-meets-Steve Reich original into a tripped-out, slo-mo acid house wonder; ‘Voodoo Ray’ for the shoegaze generation. They later met in person at the funeral of Andrew Weatherall (whose influence can be heard in every groove of the album) and kept in touch.

The catalyst for the album was Tim finding an old Les Paul in a case that hadn’t been touched for years. It was still in tune (albeit a rather odd tuning) and Tim posted a short film of himself playing it on Instagram. Andy was into what he heard “and said I should make it into a song,” Tim explains. “I asked if he’d like to do it as a collab and it snowballed from there.”

“We didn’t discuss much in the way of direction,” says Andy. “I was having quite a creative spell at the time, to me it felt like making music was keeping me sane but when I think back, it was actually making me more insane, just in a different way.”

“It was all done remotely,” Tim continues, “firing ideas back and forth between 2020 and 2021 while I was in Amsterdam and Andy in London. I think people will probably think that I did the synths and Andy did the guitars, but we actually played a pretty equal amount of both! That’s one of the reasons I love it, it’s a proper collaboration, where we both tried new things and nothing was off limits.”

“I handed control over to Tim for the production side,” Andy reveals. “My role was coming up with, and recording, musical ideas — and playing on his ideas. I’m not entirely sure who played what on what tracks, it all goes into the Clerkin blender and amazing music comes out!”

Amazing is an understatement. The woozy ‘Empyrean’, which combines the analogue-decayed production of Boards of Canada and the ethereal vocals of ‘Xtal’ from Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92 with a fizzing behemoth of a synth line, is a fitting way to open the album as it was the first track they worked on together. “It’s basically a Timothy Clerkin remix of a demo I sent him,” Andy explains. “I can’t get enough of it. To me, it’s one of the best tracks I’ve ever been involved with since I started making music.”

Of ‘AmigA’, Andy says, “A few of the tracks led me into a kind of Pagan, pre-Christian headspace. ‘AmigA’ is kind of like an ancient prehistoric rave at a Stone Circle — I’m just gutted Tim took off all of my grunting noises!” This is proper head music, a thick swirl of pastoral acoustic guitars, Ghost Box-style vintage synths and angelic harmonies.

Tim got his friend Beth Jeans Houghton, aka Du Blonde, to provide vocals for ‘Nothing Ever’, which is a hit single in waiting. It’s a fuzzed-up, scuzzed-up, dazzling indie-dance banger, with Beth’s lip-curling vocal a perfect fit for Andy and Tim’s music.

There are echoes of Death in Vegas in tracks like ‘Scattered’ and ‘The Witching Hour’, where 1960s counter-culture rock mixes with psychedelic electronics. Fans of baggy will be at one with both of these tracks, where the sweat, throb and frenzy is reminiscent of live at the G-Mex-era Happy Mondays (circa-1990), with Weatherall and Oakenfold at the controls. Of the vocals on ‘Scattered’, Andy says: “I was just talking, I genuinely felt very scattered. I don’t know what to do when asked to provide vocals, I don’t see myself as a singer at all, so I thought I’d chat instead. It was very free and open, our freak flags were flying!”

And RIDE fans will be delighted as the future Balaeric classic ‘E-Theme’ opens with a guitar riff not a million miles away from ‘Vapour Trail’, underpinned by the laidback breakbeat that adorned many an indie-dance track in the early-90s, smeared rave synths and swooning vocals. It’s a moment of pure bliss and one for the 3am dancefloor.

The artwork is by the Nottingham-based illustrator Nick Taylor, with the geometric yet soulful cover image influenced by the record sleeves of the abstract artist Josef Albers, as well as Andy’s request that it should be “the opposite of AI”.