Billy Corgan just announced that the forthcoming Smashing Pumpkins album, Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, will be a 44-track (!) endeavor that will be released piecemeal over the coming months beginning in October—the songs will be released as four-track EPs, 11 in total. And for those of you who don’t really care about packaging and won’t be acquiring physical copies, the music will be completely free. No opt-ins, no mailing-list signups, no talking orangutans! Billy explains after the jump.
Recording began yesterday, September 15th, 2009 on the new record which will be entitled ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope’. The album will feature 44 songs, 4 of which are now being recorded. My desire is to release a song at a time beginning around Halloween of this year, with each new release coming shortly after until all 44 are out. Each song will be made available absolutely for free, to anyone anywhere. There will be no strings attached. Free will mean free, which means you won’t have to sign up for anything, give an email address, or jump through a hoop. You will be able to go and take the song or songs as you wish, as many times as you wish.
We will however sell highly limited edition EP’s (of 4 songs each times 11), and details of how those EP’s will be made available are still being worked out. Because the songs themselves will be free, the EP’s will be more like collectors items for the discerning fan who will want the art itself, along with the highest possible audio quality available. The EP’s will be more like mini-box sets rather than your normal cd single. We may also offer other variations for sale, say for example a digital single with a demo version of a song. The commitment that is most important is the one I’m making to you: that the music of ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope’ will be available for free to everyone. All 44 songs: free for ALL.
When the entire album is finished, it will be compiled into a deluxe box set which will also be made available for sale. Those who have bought the EP’s need not worry, as the box set will not be a recompilation of the limited edition pieces.
Anyway, I’m most hopeful over Corgan’s note that “The music of Teargarden by Kaleidyscope harkens back to the original psychedelic roots of The Smashing Pumpkins: atmospheric, melodic, heavy, and pretty.” Although surely I can’t be the only person who’s more than a bit curious if he’s actually going to finish the project; an 11-EP run sounds like one of those ideas that seems at the outset like a fine, if sorta-sprawling, idea only to become something of a pain as it grows in scope/scale. Sure, 53 songs are written, but editing is just as important of a part of any creative process…
Announcement From Billy Corgan About New Smashing Pumpkins Album [SmashingPumpkins.com; HT Hipsters United]
Holy shit that is the worst album title.
I thought that picture meant Whitney Houston was involved somehow! Yikes!
Beyond that, from since age eight I have taken liberal and indiscriminate drinks from the keg of Corgan kool-aid, to the point where Zeitgeist appeared on my 2007 year-end list by virtue of being composed by the guy who kept me alive in high school. I fell off the wagon when American Gothic made me retroactively realize that I was listening to awful things.
So the whole “original psychedelic roots” thing is enticing, but man, where did his songwriting go?
It’s hard to knock free. Thank Billy! Just don’t suck!
Just ask Sufjan Stevens how planning a themed multi-album project ahead of time works out if you’re not good with the follow-through.
They’ve kind of already done this before in a different way. Billy wrote and recorded around 60 songs for Mellon Collie, most of which eventually saw release. 28 on the album itself and another 20 or so on the EP’s that eventually comprised ‘The Aeroplane Flies High’ box set. And there are a bunch of songs that got recorded during those sessions that still have never seen the light of day. They recorded all those in about 6 months, so 44 songs over 2 years is nothing.
The idea behind the project is to focus attention on individual songs instead of recording a ton of songs over a relatively short period, many of which get passed over simply because you can only fit so many songs on an album.
Most bands struggle to write an album’s worth of decent material, Billy has always had the opposite problem. And quite often the stuff that didn’t make the album is just as good if not better. On MCIS in particular there was a lot of stuff that probably should’ve been b-sides and a lot of b-sides that should’ve been on the album.