September 16, 2010

Joe Satriani posts NEW song online

Joe Satriani's new single, "Light Years Away", is available for free download at this location in exchange for a tweet or a Facebook post.

"Light Years Away" comes off "Black Swans And Wormhole Wizards", Satriani's 14th studio album, which was produced and recorded by Mike Fraser (AC/DC, Metallica) and Satriani, and is set for release on October 5, 2010 through Epic Records.

Veteran Satriani bandmate Jeff Campitelli joins Joe on drums, while newcomers, keyboardist Mike Keneally (Frank Zappa, Steve Vai) and bassist Allen Whitman (Mermen) are adding their expertise to the mix. Satriani's classic sound also carries a surprisingly rich texture of new material as well.

First single, "Light Years Away", the first single on the 11-track album, is destined to hit big, with several other high energy offerings, like "Wormhole Wizards" and "Premonition". Satriani's world tour promoting "Black Swans" will begin in this fall, kicking off on October 16 in Dublin, Ireland with the North American dates starting on December 1 in Atlanta, hitting cities such as Chicago, New York, Boston and more (a second January 2011 leg to be announced).

As a special bonus, US residents can pre-order the upcoming album "Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards" exclusively through Joe Satriani's web site, and receive an autographed copy of the CD, a download of the new single "Light Years Away", and a special code allowing access to tickets for Joe Satriani's North American tour dates before they go on sale to the public (not all North American tour dates apply to this promotion). The ticket pre-sale is powered by Ticketmaster.com.

Satriani will be authorizing a special version of the new album through the Best Buy retail chain. Fans that purchase the album in store will receive two bonus tracks, "Heartbeats" and "Longing", added to this limited edition version of the album. Both tracks will also be available for download through Napster.

via Ultimate Guitar

September 16, 2010

A Perfect Circle: to debut new material on upcoming tour

A PERFECT CIRCLE has announced that it will go out on a five-city tour this fall, marking the band's first shows since 2004. Dates and ticket information will be announced shortly, but the venues and cities have been confirmed as the Marquee Theatre in Phoenix, the Avalon in Los Angeles, the Showbox in Seattle, the Fillmore in San Francisco and the Pearl in Las Vegas.

All the cities except Vegas will be three-night stands, with each night featuring one of the band's albums performed in its entirety: 2000's "Mer de Noms", 2003's "Thirteenth Step" and 2004's "eMOTIVe". Las Vegas will be a two-night outing and "eMOTIVe" will be excluded from that run.

A PERFECT CIRCLE will also perform on ABC-TV's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on October 27.

A PERFECT CIRCLE singer Maynard James Keenan and guitarist Billy Howerdel both tell RollingStone.com that they are working on new material, trading ideas over e-mail. The writing "never really stopped," says Keenan. "We always had music bouncing back and forth, but [this] just seemed like the right time" to regroup.

With A PERFECT CIRCLE being without a record label at the moment,Keenan says "it's kind of a good time to take what I've learned with [Maynard's other band] PUSCIFER as far as being independent — do a few songs at a time, build it slowly — possibly — back up to where it was. The hard part is not falling back into the old pattern of how we used to approach it." "The clock is ticking," Howerdel adds, "and we have intentions of playing a new song or two at these shows."

Keenan hopes the band will continue touring after November. "Maybe not in this format," he tells RollingStone.com. "It might be more like a regular several week tour, instead of it being the multiple-night album shows."