Andy Bell The View From Halfway Down

Ride Guitarist/Singer Andy Bell Releases His Debut Solo Album. The Product Of A Gradual, Four-Year Process And Finished During Lockdown, The Album Was Entirely Written And Recorded By Andy, Engineered By Gem Archer And Mastered By Heba Kadry. Back In 2016, Andy Was Inspired By David Bowie's Death To Be More Proactive About Finishing His Songs, More Confident About Sharing Them And To Channel All Of This Into Finally Making A Solo Album. He Laid Down Some Tracks In Former Beady Eye And Oasis Bandmate Gem's Studio, But Got Diverted When Ride's Live Reunion Blossomed Into A Full Return. A Run Of Two Albums, An Ep And Two World Tours Later, It Would Take A Pandemic To Give Andy The Space To Complete The View From Halfway Down. "I've Always Wanted To Make A Solo Album, I've Always Said I Would Do It, Although I Never Imagined It Happening Like, Or Sounding Like, This One Does," Explains Andy. "I'd Been Sitting On This Pile Of Almost Finished Tracks, Along With All The Other Hundreds Of Ideas That Had Fallen By The Wayside Since I've Been Making Music. Lockdown Gave Me The Opportunity To Find A Way To Present It To The World. "The Album Is Not About Songwriting. There Aren't Many Verses Or Choruses, Because This Album Is About Sounds, A Listening Experience." From The Ecstatic Psych Pop Of 'Love Comes In Waves', To The Heady Loops Of 'Indica' And Deeply Groove-Led 'Skywalker', The Eight Tracks Mix Summery Melodies With Soundscapes And Studio Experimentation. The End Result Sits Neatly Between Ride's Widescreen Shoegaze And Glok's Textured Electronics, Variously Inspired By The Stone Roses, Spacemen 3, The Beatles, The Byrds, The Beta Band, Stereolab, Neu!, Can, John Fahey, The Kinks, The La's, The Who And The United States Of America. As For The Album Title, It Comes From A Particularly Dark Episode Of Bojack Horseman And A Poem That Scriptwriter Alison Tafel Wrote For The Penultimate Show. The Spoiler-Free Version Of The Story Goes Like This: "The Poem Describes Someone Committing Suicide By Jumping To Their Death...