Public Enemy will release two albums this year. Due in early summer, How Do You Sell Souls to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Souls? is a classic-soul-minded album, while the fall-targeted New Whirl Odor is an “eclectic, typical Public Enemy record,” according to frontman Chuck D.
“They’re two totally different albums,” he continues. “But they come together like a nice double set. I can’t write a record without at least mentioning what’s going on. I delve real deep on the second album, and dig deep into the music on the first one.”
The albums and his current lecture tour titled “Rap, Race, Reality and Technology” will all touch on the current events and issues endemic to an election year. “I think this is a year that art can actually speak,” D says. “But I don’t see enough of it being done. I don’t see enough attention given to rap groups that might do it, like the Coup and Dead Prez. The industry is presenting rappers as one-dimensional, and that doesn’t hold as much water in 2004.”
Source Rollingstone.com.
U.K. rock act the Beta Band will return later this spring with its third album, “Heroes to Zeroes.” Due May 4 via Astralwerks, the 12-track set was self-produced by the group and mixed by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck). “The first single is ‘Assesment’ and the video is going to be the history of human warfare,” vocalist Steve Mason wrote on the band’s official Web site.
In November, Mason said, “all four of us are also working on a DVD to come out around the time of the LP. 12 films, three each, to go with 12 tracks. Some of these tracks may not be from the LP but will be new.” At deadline, it is unclear if the DVD is still being targeted for release in conjunction with the new album. “Heroes to Zeroes” is the follow-up to 2001’s “Hot Shots II.”
Source billboard.com.
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