• News

• All

Feb 18, 2021 By Joey Arnone

Andy Bell, founding member of ’90s British shoegaze band Ride, has announced a new series of EPs and a compilation album, collectively titled Ever Decreasing Circles, to be released in the coming months. The first EP, The Indica Gallery, will be out April 9 on 12-inch vinyl and digital. It consists of five reworkings of songs from Bell’s debut solo album, 2020’s The View from Halfway Down, by British electronic artist Pye Corner Audio. The sixth and final track is a remix of Pye Corner Audio’s reworking of “Indica,” done by Bell under his GLOK moniker. Listen to it below, and check out the covers for the EPs and compilation.

The second EP, See My Friends, to be released May 14 on 10-inch vinyl and digital, features the first two songs Bell released with Sonic Cathedral (”Plastic Bag” and “The Commune”), followed by reworkings of both songs from Pye Corner Audio. The third EP, All on You, consists of acoustic radio session versions of songs, and it will be released on 7-inch vinyl and digital on June 11, in concurrence with the release of Another View, a CD release which features all 15 tracks from the three EPs.

“Each release in the series will be smaller in size than the last, so we start with a 12-inch, then a 10-inch, a 7-inch, and CD,” states Bell regarding the concept behind the Ever Decreasing Circles project in a press release, “so that was the reason for the name Ever Decreasing Circles, a figurative and fond nod to the ’80s Richard Briers sitcom. I like the idea that the EPs represent fainter and fainter echoes of The View From Halfway Down and remind me of water splashes reducing in size on a pond, much like the shots in the sitcom’s opening titles! Pretentious, moi?”

Bell continues: “Martin [Jenkins, aka Pye Corner Audio] has been top of my list of people to work with ever since a monumental night at The Social, when I performed for the first time in support of my solo releases in October 2019. It was Sonic Cathedral’s 15th birthday party and Pye Corner Audio was headlining, with bdrmm and myself playing live sets, as well as Simone Marie Butler, Maps and others DJing. Before this legendary night was over, Martin and I agreed we would work together on something, sometime. I wasn’t sure he’d remember the conversation, but luckily he did.”

Jenkins adds: “It gave me a great deal of pleasure working on these remixes, and I think the EP is a fitting companion piece to the album.”

The View from Halfway Down came out in October of last year on Sonic Cathedral, and made it to #25 on our Top 100 Albums of 2020 list. It featured the songs “Love Comes In Waves,” “I Was Alone,” and “Skywalker,” all of which were on our Songs of the Week lists.

Read our interview from this year with Andy Bell about The View from Halfway Down.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.