Ride are releasing their new track 'Monaco' on Thursday - out at 5pm following a first play on 6Music. It's the final offering before they release new album Interplay on the 29th March.
For new track ‘Monaco,’ frontman Mark Gardener’s powerful lyrics are matched by an icy, throbbing synth rock intensity that reflects the urgency of their subject, as he explains: “The backing track came from the earlier Ox4 Sound sessions we did and we gave it a demo name of ‘Monaco’ as we were naming these jams and ideas we were pulling together as place names. One evening, during the recording sessions at Ox4 Sound, the guys had all left the building and I was there with just producer Richie Kennedy and an engineer. I had been writing some words about how I was feeling that everybody was being smashed in the current economic climate with the rise of energy bills and all else; to the point that it just seems now that we’re having to live to work instead of working to live.
The song is a reflection on this feeling of how we’re all being smashed to pieces and under pressure constantly financially. It’s a kind of call to arms against this whilst we still have strength to fight against it . ‘Monaco’ then stayed as the ironic title as the song is totally against the madness of the few who live in their artificial, detached rich bubbles in Monaco.”
Interplay is the Oxford four piece’s third album since reforming in 2014, having now been together longer in their current second phase than their original iteration as 90’s shoegaze pioneers. It connects all the dots from their career, taking the frenzied guitar attacks, hypnotic grooves and dreamy melodic hooks of their early work and setting it to a more expansive sonic template, inspired by 80's pop gems like Tears For Fears, Talk Talk & early U2. Running through it is a sense of resilience and perseverance that comes from imploding, then reforming and finding a way forward to their second peak.
