Manila, Philippines - The Smashing Pumpkins are back with a new album, Oceania, the first full-length effort featuring their current lineup. Oceania was recorded at singer/guitarist Billy Corgan’s private studio in Chicago with his bandmates: Guitarist Jeff Schroeder, drummer Mike Byrne and bassist/vocalist Nicole Florentino. The new album is now available in stores via PolyEast Records distribution. Buy the album in selected retail stores and you might be the lucky winner to watch Smashing Concert in Manila tonight at 8:30 at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
The powerful 13-song collection (see track listing below) was produced by Corgan and Bjorn Thorsrud and mixed by David Bottrill. Marking The Smashing Pumpkins’ seventh studio record, it is “an album within an album,” part of their 44-song work-in-progress Tear Garden by Kaleidyscope. The hauntingly beautiful album cover image was photographed by Richard Shay, son of Chicago legend Art Shay.
“We worked for a time in an empty movie theater in Sedona during the winter months of early 2011, sketching out some primary versions of the songs while trying to dial in the emotional terrain we were seeking. In that kind of process it wasn’t that unusual from past records where I’d worked with a band as a unit to help me define a set of templates to work towards. We’d just come off the road, and had a good sense of what was no longer working in our eyes from a dynamic point of view. We worked hard to create space in the music, but not lose any of the emotive power that I like to have behind my songs,” shared by Billy Corgan, vocalist of Smashing Pumpkin’s two-decade career.
Oceania was created by the band as a true album experience for listeners to immerse themselves in the songs and musical performances. For its release, the band is making the best efforts for all the fans to hear it at the same time as press or radio. As part of their Oceania worldwide, tour, The Pumpkins will perform Oceania in full at their solo shows including the Philippines, backed by visuals prepared by Sean Evans, whose most recent work was assisting Roger Waters on the newest staging of The Wal. The Pumpkins will use new technology in video mapping to create something new and previously unseen. For the second half of the show, The Pumpkins will perform classics from their body of work.
PolyEast Records also announces the release of The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1994 Pisces Iscariot album. The album is reissued for the first time and receives the fully remastered treatment as part of EMI’s extensive reissue campaign.
EMI Music’s extensive reissue campaign honors the legacy of The Smashing Pumpkins when the iconic alternative band’s third album Pisces Iscariot — 1994’s platinum-certified disc that reached No. 4 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart — receives the fully remastered treatment for the first time. This follows last year’s acclaimed reissues of the band’s groundbreaking first two albums, Gish (1991) and Siamese Dream (1993).