Andy Bell is a busy guy. Ride released a great new album, Interplay, this year and they’ve been touring for it, and he may or may not be occupied in 2025 with bass duties on the Oasis reunion tour (we’ll see). Meanwhile he’s just announced a new album under his electronic GLOK alias. It’s titled Alliance and will be out November 8 via Bytes.
Alliance is true to its title as it has Bell collaborating with Amsterdam-based producer and DJ Timothy Clerkin, who had done a GLOK remix back in 2019. “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 says, “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.”
The album includes two songs that feature Beth Jeans Houghton, aka Du Blonde, and the first single is the glitchy, trippy “Empyrean.” Says Andy, “It’s basically a Timothy Clerkin remix of a demo I sent him. 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.” Watch the video below.
Andy Bell with be out with Ride across North America in late fall, including a Brooklyn show at Warsaw on December 6.
Alliance
1. Empyrean
2. AmigA
3. Nothing Ever feat. Du Blonde
4. Scattered
5. The Witching Hour
6. E-Theme
7. Nothing Ever (Reprise)
8. Nothing Ever feat. Du Blonde (12″ Version)