Per Gessle reveals to Expressen: Roxette is recording a new album

Roxette is already underway with recording a new album. At the same time the band’s successful World Tour that began earlier this year will extend – and continue throughout most of 2012.
(p) Lionel Zaragocin
We’ve already started recording new songs for our next album which will be a continuation on “Tourism”, says Per Gessle.

Per Gessle, Marie Fredriksson and the rest of the “new” Roxette has received a nine-day vacation from the hectic tour. Expressen met Per Gessle related with the opening of photography exhibition with Terry O’Neill’s classic 1960s images of Tres Hombres Art in Tylösand.

Some concerts are like a big karaoke-show, the audience sings along, all the time, says Per’s wife Åsa has been for most of the tour.

I and MP were in the studio in Halmstad yesterday and wrote a new song, Per reveals. – New album is being recorded during this tour, in local studios and during the soundcheck. Just as the “Tourism” from 1992. All material is new. Working title is now “2Rism”

(c) ExpressenPer found a part of previously unreleased recordings. – Here are the songs with young Marie, before she became ill. We will use the song and record new backgrounds. Like Stones did when they found some leftover from the cult classic “Exile on Main Street” and Springsteen’s “forgotten” recordings of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” that was released as “The Promise”.

– These successes are pure bonus for us, that we had not counted on. We cannot compete with today’s artists like Lady Gaga and other pop based on beats, arrangements and a visual idea. It is not easy to do powerpop 2011. Yet we have just played for almost half a million people. When the tour is complete, we will reach 1.3 million.

Source: Expressen

Thanks to Emilio Gimenez Bahl for the picture.

Per Gessle: I feel this is the best Roxette band our fans have ever seen

Clayton Morar, SA’s celeb expert & autograph hunter, posted a blog entry from the Monday press meeting in Cape Town. Read some extracts from what he noticed during the interview:

I feel this is the best Roxette band our fans have ever seen. We’re enjoying touring around the world and we’ll continue to sing and produce hits as long as Marie’s comfortable with how we do things and as long as the fans keep supporting us. All we’d like to do is to continue to make good music!

I love SA wine and I’ve previously brought my family out for a visit a few years ago, and we took a tour to all the wine farms outside Cape Town. While there I met up with Ernie Els (SA golfer) and Bjorn Bjorg (Swedish tennis star) and had a great time. I also love the food here and the great sights of Cape Town.

Check Clayton Morar’s blog out for more pictures and stories.

New Roxette album postponed to 2011

As The Daily Roxette reports, the upcoming Roxette album got moved from end of this year to early 2011. The recordings go well, but they plan to have a summer break (where they’ll perform live around the Baltic sea) to resume recording until October. The actual plan is to record 16 songs with the first single to be released for Christmas 2010.

Comment: In my opinion that’s a good decision!
– The current EMI turmoil could lead to a quite insecure release/promotion situation this year. EMI was rumored to have postponed the next Coldplay album for example.
– The pre-christmas market is always very crowded with album releases. Nobody knows if Roxette’s name is still big enough to gather enough attention between such a huge competition. Roxette have a good history of winter/spring releases (all studio albums except (POP and LS).
– Judging from previous release interviews they always got fresh inspiration through a recording break.

I guess a first single already 2-3 months in advance of the album will keep us more excited than single/album released within 2 weeks… 😀

Gessle’s new Roxette album’s recording diary

February 4th, 2010:
The very first pictures and clips from Chris’ studio in Scania were presented.

February 3rd, 2010:

Grtgs fr ze studio. Day and nite #3! Just had a grt dinner by ze fire in Chris’s hse. His wife shd open a Michelin-rest! Back to work y’all!

This morning we could hardly find the studio. Serious amount of snow in the south of Sweden, folks. Are we human or are we dancer?

Had to take a 45 min walk w/ Clarence last nite, In 10 in of snow! At 3AM in the morning! I had a flashlight. Clare had a smile on his face.


February 2nd, 2010:

Just spent an hour listening to old demos. Hallelujah. So much rubbish, a few candybars…

Someone just sent me a link to Tapefly’s new single Sheela. Great stuff, wonderful guitar hook. We all love it in the studio

Greetings from The Studio. We’re making things happen here!!

January 26th, 2010:

Did some recordings at MP’s brand new Tits&Ass studio. Very cozy, great vocal-sound, nice coffee.

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