This Is Not A Miracl

Ride return with the 6th studio album of their career and their second since reforming in 2014 and signing to Wichita. As with their previous album, Weather Diaries, Erol Alkan was in the producer’s chair, and Alan Moulder (with Caesar Edmunds) took care of the mixing (making this the fourth Ride album he has worked on). Gathering influences from sources such as the Jean Michel Basquiat exhibition at the Barbican, and the post punk sound of The Fall and Sonic Youth, Ride have made an album which contains echoes of their earliest days as a band, while bringing these elements into 2019. Both musically and lyrically, this is clearly an album made by a band who love being back together and who are at the very top of their game.

Ride handed the entirety of their highly acclaimed sixth studio album, This Is Not A Safe Place, to mysterious London act, Pêtr Aleksänder, who stripped the songs back to just the band's vocals and added their customarily beautiful string arrangements, keys and synth textures beneath them.The results take Ride deep into the neo-classical / ambient territory that a couple of the remixes of their previous album hinted at. These new 'reimaginings' will appeal to fans of those musical styles, as well as those who consider themselves a part of the Ride fanbase.

When originally assembled, Food was an avant-jazz quartet that experimented with sound. After five records with Feral and Rune Grammofon, they pared down to a duo of saxophonist Iain Ballamy and drummer/electronics wiz Thomas Strønen, signed to ECM, and enlisted guests to fill out their lineup. The one constant has been guitarist Christian Fennesz. Electronics are more central to the band's musical identity here, though jazz is still an important part of the mix. They craft something more akin to "songs," though improvisation remains. The basic recordings for This Is Not a Miracle were done in the summer of 2013. Strønen, Ballamy, and Fennesz cut a wealth of material live from the floor of engineer Ulf Holand's studio in Oslo. Strønen (with Ballamy's blessing) took the tapes and worked on them alone for five solid months, radically reshaping the music…