Glok - Gateway Mechanics: Live Electronic Sound (2023)

In June 2022, Electronic Sound, the peerless periodical for electronic music, invited Andy Bell, founder member of shoegaze legends RIDE, to their studio in Norwich to perform a session as GLOK, his electronic alter ego. The magazine has always been a big supporter of Andy in all his various guises and he was delighted to oblige. Accompanied by fantastic visuals from Innerstrings, aka the video artist Chris Tomsett, the result was an unforgettable, psychedelic journey into the realm where guitars and synths collide in gravity-free space. In fact, it was so good that ES decided it was worthy of a proper release.

The resulting live album - Gateway Mechanics: Live Electronic Sound - is a perfect snapshot of the project, with Andy reworking tracks from his two acclaimed albums, Dissident and Pattern Recognition, resulting in a bold and dynamic record that puts his virtuoso guitar playing and musicianship to the fore. Across the eight tracks, Andy expertly weaves together throbbing dubbed-out acid, levitational psychedelia, Balearic, ambient, techno, kosmische, shoegaze, post-rock, art-rock and Compass Point-style post punk.

The album has been pressed on transparent yellow tint vinyl (limited to 500 copies), with artwork from the ES in-house designer Mark Hall using photos from the session taken by Andi Sapey. It will be available to buy from the shop on the Electronic Sound website (see link above). Bytes, the usual home of GLOK, is looking after the digital release.

The release of Gateway Mechanics coincides with the first proper GLOK tour, which will take Andy all over the UK for 16 dates during October (which we are now renaming GLOKtober). As well as the ES session, as a live entity GLOK has two festival appearances under his belt - at the Optimo/Ransom Note shindig Watching Trees and Convenanza, the gathering of the acid house tribes in France started by the late Andrew Weatherall. These performances also featured visuals by Innerstrings, who will be providing visuals on all dates.