Thursday, September 1st 2011
News: Smashing Pumpkins
Listen To ‘Drown’ Demo From Smashing Pumpkins Record Club
To keep himself distracted while recording Smashing Pumpkins‘ new Oceania album, frontman/mastermind Billy Corgan has announced a record club for fans, dubbed SPRC, which will offer a wealth of Pumpkins’ rarities online. In a promising kickoff, those who sign up for the free service will be offered a free download of an early demo version of their dreamy 1992 track Drown, the finished version of which was found on the incredible soundtrack to the 1992 film Singles.
Listen to the track below:
Corgan announced the project in a video posted on the band’s YouTube channel, promising “so much free stuff” to be uploaded soon. More than two hours of demos from the band’s 1991 debut Gish have been rediscovered by the many who wrote the majority of it, as well as about six hours of Siamese Dream-related material.
“You hear all sorts of things: rough vocals that weren’t used, songs before they had particular lyrics, it’s really interesting, even for me, to listen through chronologically, because you can really hear some of the progression,” Corgan says. “So we may be offering those as sort of audio documentaries, possibly with or without commentary, so we’re exploring those options.”
As for the new music, Oceania will most likely see a release in November, with a Fall tour to follow (it kicks off on October 5 in Los Angeles). “I’m halfway through the singing at least,” he said of the recording process. “I’ve got maybe five more songs to go on the singing, so we’re getting pretty close. We start mixing September 1. We hope that the music will start to be available to be heard somewhere in the November area. We’re working out those details now.”
One of my all time favorite SP songs!
While I largely agree with the ‘incredible soundtrack to the 1992 film Singles’ statement, I also agree with wiki’s overview that the album was resposible for the ‘breakthrough of alternative rock into mainstream popular culture, neatly and effectively packaging the Seattle phenomenon for the wider national consciousness’. Thus, killing the very thing that made grunge so appealing to its early founders and audience, anti-establishment and mainstream music culture at the time.