Bytes Vinyl & CDs

Review: Ride's Andy Bell - recording under his electronic alter ego Glok - and producer and Insult to Injury label boss Timothy Clerkin join forces for Alliance, a brand new seven-track album released through Bytes. Both artists let their hair down for a freewheeling foray through freak-sonics, recalling every influence from James Holden to Boards of Canada to Death In Vegas, for a thorough canter come gallop through and in anabranched veins of Balearica, cosmic disco, shoegaze and techno. After some collaborative exchanges online, and a momentous in-person meeting at the funeral of legend Andrew Weatherall, Bell and Clerkin have since kept dutifully in touch, fashioning relentless downbeat chugs driven by amped distortion, wonderstruck arpeggiations and heavenly vox lines. From the buzzing 'Empyrean' to the neo-Balearadelican 'E-Theme', this is a massive album whose influences clock in at too many to count, and yet manage to bottle them all into a potent carbonated brimmer.