Billy Corgan Shares Snippet of Experimental Solo LP, ‘AEGEA’
Billy Corgan is one busy man. The Smashing Pumpkins frontman already announced plans to release two new albums entitled Monuments to an Elegy and Day for Night. Now, Corgan has shared a taste of AEGEA, his experimental solo double LP recorded in 2007 and released in two small pressings on the website MadameZuZus.com. Listen to the clip below, featuring three minutes of textural synth pulses and electronic shards.
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Conjuring the moody vibe of early Tangerine Dream, the snippet veers from Corgan’s epic, guitar-driven work with the Pumpkins. But that shift in direction shouldn’t come as a surprise since he revealed the LP’s unconventional approach back in April.
“As a work, AEGEA is experimental in nature, and comes across as more a soundtrack to some lost foreign film than the kind of music I’m usually associated with,” Corgan wrote on his website. “Listening back, I quite like how AEGEA goes along, as it has qualities that are both meditative and alien; but not alienating.”
Earlier this week, two limited pressings of 250 copies were made available on the Madame Zuzus website. Each record is numbered, hand-collated and signed by Corgan, with the first 50 pressed on colored vinyl.
AEGEA differs from what Corgan has planned with the upcoming Pumpkins releases, which are planned for release in 2015. The band started work on the albums in recent weeks, with Corgan emphasizing a six-string-heavy direction. “For those interested in sound, think: ‘guitars, guitars, guitars, and more guitars,'” Corgan wrote, “but more so on the epic side of things than, say, grossly metallic.” Both albums will be produced by Howard Willing, who worked on the band’s misunderstood 1998 album, Adore (which is being reissued this summer in a massive box set).
Last week, Corgan revealed that Momuments for an Elegy will include drum tracks from an unlikely source: Mötley Crüe stick-man Tommy Lee. “Tommy hits the drums in a crushing manner, but as many fans know, this is not without nuance or reaction; as he has a fantastic ear for music and plays with the songs in a means that only enhances excitement,” Corgan wrote. “The only other place I’ve heard this phenomena is with John Bonham of Led Zeppelin: where heavy drums can sound soft and expressive. Good company indeed!”
In the meantime, Pumpkin-heads can keep up with the band’s progress on their new website, The Panopticon, which will feature “song titles, lyrics, poetic impressions, pictures, sound clips, studio gear and the like offered for a circuitous, bird’s eye view of the process as it unfolds.”