Ride’s new release after 20 years of Nowhere

A reworked version of the landmark shoegaze album Nowhere by Oxfordshire quarter Ride celebrates the album’s two-decade anniversary.

Rhino Records has released a two-disc, 40-track set, including a 40-page booklet of rare photos and a previously unreleased live recording, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Ride’s debut album, Nowhere. We caught up with Ride’s bass player Steve Queralt to take a look through the kaleidoscope of the band’s past and get his thoughts on the here and now of Nowhere.

yourGigs: What do you remember about the original recording of the Nowhere album?

Steve Queralt (SQ): Not a great deal apart from working well into the night later and later as the days went by. It was great to be working at Blackwing Studios though, where a lot of 4AD artists had recorded. I guess it meant that we had at last reached a certain level; we were now a proper band making records. We always ate at the same place every day — no idea what it was called but we knew it as Mrs Miggins’.

yG: What was the experience of working with Alan Moulder like?

SQ: Alan did a rescue job with Nowhere. We brought him in after rejecting the first mixes of the album which, after all the hard work, were sounding a bit flat. It wasn’t really until Going Blank Again that we actually worked with him properly. Alan was a great guy to have around with fantastic stories about Depeche Mode. He also knew his way around a Chinese takeaway menu. As you are beginning to see, food was a major part of the artistic process for us.

yG: What did the album mean to the band at the time, and was there any indication of the importance and effect it would have?

SQ: The album we made was a truly honest Ride record without any compromise or outside influence. There was no master plan or producer shaping the record, just us and an engineer whose job it was to capture what we were playing in the studio.

yG: How has your opinion of the album changed over time?

SQ: I don’t think my opinion has changed at all. It’s the album I’m most proud of and I’ll always stand by it. It marked the end of a really exciting couple of years, from first playing together in Loz’s [Laurence Colbert’s] garage, headlining the best venues in Oxford, meeting record companies, touring the UK to making our first album. From then on we almost had to start again; all our material was used up on the EPs and then Nowhere itself.

yG: How did the reissue come about, and what involvement did you and the band have in it?

SQ: Sorry, not sure how it came about. We all provided sign-off for the mixes and format. It’s great that we still have control over such things even after 20 years.

yG: Where do you think the band and the album stand in today’s musical climate?

SQ: It’s not really for me to say. However, it is still a massive compliment whenever I read that we have influenced a band or the sound of Nowhere is used to describe someone else’s music.

yG: Do you think having the album out again will spark interest for another Ride reunion, and how likely do you think the band will be to reunite?

SQ: A reunion? It’s very unlikely.