Smashing Pumpkins AEGEA

Two weeks after announcing the release of two albums in 2015, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan revealed a separate, more experimental album called AEGEA has been recorded and will be released in six to eight weeks.

Recorded in 2007, the two-record set will only initially be pressed in a set of 250 vinyl copies, each one "hand-numbered and annotated" by Corgan himself and sold for $60.

"As a work, AEGEA is experimental in nature, and comes across as more a soundtrack to some lost foreign film than the kind of music I’m usually associated with," Corgan said on his website. "Listening back I quite like how AEGEA goes along, as it has qualities that are both meditative and alien; but not alienating."

The release of the six-year-old album should act as a stopgap while the group records new material for upcoming albums Monuments to an Elegy and Day for Night. The band began recording sessions for those albums two weeks ago, with Corgan noting that most of the songs had already been written and were ready to record. "For those interested in sound, think: 'guitars, guitars, guitars, and more guitars,'" Corgan wrote, "but more so on the epic side of things than, say, grossly metallic." The albums will be produced by Howard Willing, who started working with the band on their 1998 album, Adore.

Fans can follow the recording process on the band's new website, The Panopticon, where Corgan said they'll post "song titles, lyrics, poetic impressions, pictures, sound clips, studio gear and the like offered for a circuitous, bird’s eye view of the process as it unfolds." Corgan wrote that the new site will "better address the speed of modern life" through "its simplicity."

On ‘AEGEA,’ the 2007 experimental recordings by WPC, a first run of 250 copies has been ordered with 50 of those being colored vinyl. As those are expected to arrive soon, only the printing of the gatefold covers is left as an issue before determining release.

The double disc set will include 5 shorter pieces, with 2 album-side extensions that are altered renderings of pieces 3 and 5. No titles are yet listed, but on the day of order a single excerpt will be shared.

The break-out of availability will be as follows: 200 copies via Madame Zuzu’s online store, 30 copies at Madame Zuzu’s Teahouse itself, 10 copies by way of the famed Vintage Vinyl in Evanston, IL, with 10 set aside for promotion.

The pending release is expected no later than mid-May.