I formed Banco de Gaia with Andy Guthrie back in 1989, that's 20 years ago in case you didn't work it out, so it seems appropriate to do something in an anniversary mood. (No, I'm not buying Andy a ring). The new album is in effect that something, a kind of 20 year retrospective with a difference.
The title, as revealed previously, is "Memories Dreams Reflections" and the music can be broken up into three sections. Oh, and it's a double CD for those of you who still buy such things, or a damned big download.
Disc 1 begins with the 'Reflections' bit. This is a selection of cover versions of tunes which hugely inspired and influenced me in my formative years. To be precise it is a full length version of "Echoes" by Pink Floyd (that's 22 minutes), "Starless" by King Crimson and, as some of you may have worked out from recent live shows, "Spirit Of The Age" by Hawkwind.
The rest of Disc 1 is the 'Dreams'. These are reworkings of early Banco tunes which will be familiar to anyone who knows the original cassette albums but mostly unknown apart from that. Ranging from faithful recreation to extreme reworking, the tracks are "Soufie", "Tempra" and "Terra Om".
Disc 2 brings the 'Memories'. It's a 78 minute selection of live recordings taken from over the years and including early solo Banco rave anthems, through the 5-piece live band of the mid/late-90s and continuing on into the 'Toby and Ted' years up to the current live video show (without the video obviously, this is an audio CD).
So, getting on for two and a half hours of music, hope that makes up for the wait.
On to the release details. The album will be released worldwide on September 18th (September 22nd in North America), both CD and download, and it will be available from all the usual places (so hopefully that's anywhere you can think of) as well as direct from our very own mail order and download stores. We are also planning to make it available for a short period prior to that to our mailing list subscribers, so if you want to know where and when you'd better sign up to the list fast.
It's taken a long to time get here but hopefully the album will more than justify it's 20th anniversary status. I can't believe it's 20 years since Andy first said "do you want to play some guitar synth at this gig I'm doing?"...
