To say it’s been quite a busy year for Mark Lanegan is something of an understatement. With his painfully honest autobiography Sing Backwards and Weep hitting the bestseller list and the accompanying album Straight Songs of Sorrow earning some of the best reviews of his long and storied career, he would be forgiven for disappearing for a bit and putting his feet up. However, anyone who has followed his career over the past few years will know that that just isn’t his style. His next project sees the release of a full remix album for his most direct album to date, last year’s brilliant Somebody’s Knocking.
Unlike previous remixes for Phantom Radio and Gargoyle, this marks the first time he’s given the entire album to a single artist to rework; in this case British trio IYEARA. As he admits, it’s an idea that he’s had for a long time.
“Way way back in the ’90s, one of my favorite records was Global Communication’s “Pentamerous Metamorphosis”, which was a remix of Chapterhouse’s entire Blood Music record, and I have always dreamed of such a scenario for one of my records.”