Ronnie & Clyde - Nettlebed Skyline (2023) Hi Res

Ronnie & Clyde - John Ross and Rob Fitzpatrick - have been making melodic and experimental breakbeat and electronic music since 1995, recording for Swim, The Leaf Label, Domino’s 500 Series and 4AD’s short-lived offshoot, Detox. But “Nettlebed Skyline” is their first album since the release of their debut, In Glorious Black And Blue, in 1997. “We never actually stopped thinking or talking about Ronnie & Clyde,” they explain. “We just got distracted by life’s long and, at times, quite scenic routes.” Anyway, what’s 25 years between friends?

The duo began to record again in 2020, inspired by the unexpected free-time bonanza of Lockdown 1 and and, in Rob’s case, a 90-day free trial of Logic. First single “In The Garden” was released in March 2021 on their own Faroe Recordings label. This was followed by “The Last Retention” - with a Deep Space Ambience remix by soundtrack guru Thomas Ragsdale, the piano-driven “Overheard” and a remix of “In The Garden” by spectral post-rock masters epic45. 18 months later, those releases have clocked up well over a million streams between them.

In late 2021 Ronnie & Clyde began talking to Gearbox Records about the album they were preparing, a record that would become Nettlebed Skyline. Originally inspired by post-rock, jungle, dub, golden-era hip hop and their crate-digging adventures in the super-cheap bins of west London charity shop basements, the intervening years have found the duo further shaped by home-made New Age, French and Italian library music, sombre English folk, Swedish and Norwegian jazz and a peculiarly strong love for the 60s and 70s pop of South Korean label, Jigu.

All of this can, quite possibly, be heard across Nettlebed Skyline, a record that, even in its most melancholic moments, is full of joy and a desire for connection and emotional release.

You can hear that joy in the glistening, underwater piano and pitched down breaks of “Jacked Up” and the thick, bass-warmed air that floats around the sunset-groove underpinning “This Heart of Mine”.

“Alfred Foments Trouble” is a straight-up modular jazz monster, driven ever onward by live drums, while “Sour Plum” has its in-the-moment headnod thump leavened by a cleansing blast of strings, flute and needle-sharp harp. The duo’s latest single, “Sleeping City”, is Moog-scented and heavy-lidded and “Silent Sea” is like elementally smooth driftwood, something to hold on to tightly and cherish. These are richly melodic and intricately woven gems, there’s not a track here that wouldn’t sound out of place over the end credits of your most beloved new drama series.