THE BLACK RYDER
THE GUARDIAN: Nash and Scott Von Ryper’s debut UK album, The Door Behind the Door, is beautifully slow burning, its grinding guitars and heavy layers of dark, feted romance akin to Spiritualized and the Jesus and Mary Chain.
PITCHFORK: The moaning feedback drone in “Seventh Moon” has the gorgeousness of a Neil Halstead lead, “Let Me Be Your Light” has a candy-kissed psychedelic swirl, strings and all, that serves as the perfect backdrop for Nash’s whispery vocals, and “Until the Calm of Dawn” brings to mind the acid-fried Disneyfications of prime Mercury Rev, with a twinkly music box set against a sweeping orchestral arrangement.
NOISEY: The Black Ryder tends to swirl together breathy post-rock crescendos, plaintive shoegaze melodies, and psychedelic sprawl to create a greater sprawling whole. The LA-based Australian duo does so to great effect on its latest record, The Door Behind the Door.
UNCUT MAGAZINE: 8/10 – Nu-shoegazers trip the dark fantastic. Offering black-on-black swirls of hypnotic psych gloom, The Black Ryder’s belated follow-up to 2009’s ‘Buy The Ticket, Take the Ride’ is a heavy trip indeed… constructing intricate mini-universes of MBV-like noise on the brilliant ‘Let Me Be Your Light’ or exploring Primal Scream-ish acid-soul on ‘Throwing Stones’.
STEREOGUM: Ethereal drone, ceremonial percussion, and dead-eyed harmonies carry on together until they build up to something sublime. There's never really a climax because the whole thing feels like one overwhelming wave of gorgeous noise.
NYLON MAGAZINE: Their music is spiked with feedback the way a murder cocktail is spiked with arsenic, but it's the dreamy vocals of singer Aimée Nash that somehow turns the band into something more than a trippy daydream of chords.
PASTE MAGAZINE: The Black Ryder is an Australian duo consisting of Aimee Nash and Scott Von Ryper that mastered the ability to intertwine the sounds of ‘80s British synthpop and electronic rock. The band’s debut takes a dark, sultry approach to shoegaze with sprawling layers of droning, blissed-out guitars and ethereal vocals, creating a kaleidoscopic sound. From its opening track, “To Never Know You,” the album brings new textures and contrasts them with layers of emotive and majestic guitar riffs that are accompanied by brooding lyrics. The songs swirl together in a way that’s intended to be listened to as one overwhelming ride. It’s a long and intimate one, at that.