RIPE

Ripe recalls sweating buckets in a basement beneath a Subway sandwich shop, writing his very first songs in a concrete cubicle that smelled of fresh bread. The band recalls selling their first tickets by hand outside the café where their friends worked, acting like twenty-something promoters trying to shift fifty tickets for a pub that agreed to let them keep the takings on condition that they managed the venue themselves.

In a world where we constantly feel that gentle pressure to ‘tell our story’, where so many of our friends who have succeeded as artists have done so on their own, Ripe uses their story to tell you that everything hinges, above all, on collaboration and community – a friendship that has become a bond as strong as that of family, a constantly shifting entity that no photograph can truly capture.

The creation and release of their latest album, “Play The Game”, have been an intense and joyful journey, fuelled by a growing energy. They worked in dream studios, in a city where they had spent years trying to make it, with a producer who had produced albums they adored during their formative years, alongside the closest musical partners they have ever had. It is their love letter to a complex nostalgia, to ceaseless and liberating change, to the realisation that the fulfilment of dreams (just like a crisis) only makes full sense when it is shared.

‘Joy In The Wild Unknown’ allowed them to tell you who they were. ‘Bright Blues’ tore them apart so they could start afresh. What follows is the band aiming high, putting everything on the line, risking it all in an attempt to feel connected to you. Thank you for being here.