DAMIEN Rice has confirmed that his new album will be released in the UK on November 3 and will be titled My Favourite Faded Fantasy.
The new record is Rice’s first collection of material in eight years and was produced by Rick Rubin (Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chilli Peppers) and Rice.
Confirmation of the release follows an album teaser posted by Rice online last Friday.
The title track from the album was debuted by Zane Lowe on his Radio 1 show last night.
The first official single taken from the album will be I Don’t Want To Change You, which is due to be released at the end of the month.
It will mark the first new material from Rice in eight years and of his long absence the singer said: “Sometimes you have to step away from what you love in order to learn how to love it again.”
He added that whilst fans would repeatedly ask “when?,” for Rice the real question had shifted to “why make an album at all?”.
The recording process with producer Rubin began in Los Angeles and finished up in Iceland. “I came to Rick mostly based on what I didn't know about him, rather than what I did,” describes Rice.
“For some reason I just had a feeling that I would feel comfortable being open and being me and being vulnerable with Rick.”
Rubin, meanwhile, first saw Rice play live around the release of O, and recalls that “he was my favorite new artist at the time. A lot of our work together was to help him see what was so clear to everyone else in the room.”
Rice then went from Los Angeles to Iceland and assembled a cast of friends and local musicians to complete My Favourite Faded Fantasy against the backdrop of Reykjavik.
The musician’s last album 9 was released in 2007, following on from his hugely-successful debut O in 2002.
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