In the era of Pandora I've rarely purchased new albums. Oh, am I ever glad I sprung for this one. Even the packaging is perfect.
via OCEANIA | The Smashing Pumpkins:
You finished Oceania before deciding to team up with EMI Label Services/Caroline Distribution, so that would mean you were completely artistically free to create the album you wanted to make. Want to tell us about your creative mind-set during the recording?
From a production standpoint I was dead set on making an album where every song was just as valuable as any other, ignoring the typical claptrap you hear about needing a single. The only way to make the case that every song on Oceania is worth hearing is to put your heart into the sequence as a cohesive whole. Once we felt we’d achieved that balance, only then did we let anyone outside our world hear the record we’d made. The chance to work within the EMI system again felt right to me. But unlike years in the past where I was under a set contract and beholden to a set of external forces which didn’t always fall in our favor, in this set-up they are now our partners in putting Oceania out to a wider marketplace than we could reach on our own.
Mission accomplished.
Last night I bought the new Smashing Pumpkins album Oceania. I’ve had it on repeat for much of the time since. Expect a thorough review soon. But this Pumpkins fan is very happy.
The band has not released any music videos yet but here’s a live recording of the opening track “Quasar” from an October 2011 show:
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