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Hot on the heels of the Pet Shop Boys’ brand new track Winner a 4-Track Limited CD Single & 12” Plus Digital Bundle Will Follow On August 6th.
Winner is taken from the brand new studio album Elysium out on September 17th on Parlophone.
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe recorded Elysium earlier this year in Los Angeles, the first time they have recorded an album in America. They co-produced the record with US producer Andrew Dawson, who has won three Grammys for his work on Kanye West’s albums.
The album track Invisible was recently made available online, accompanied by a film made by renowned Los Angeles artist/film-maker Brian Bress.
Elysium features 12 new songs with a warm, deep electronic sound and includes orchestral arrangements by Joachim Horsley, Andrew Dawson and Ben Leathers.
Backing vocals are provided on many of the tracks by veteran singers Oren, Maxine and Julie Waters (whose long career spans sessions with The Jackson Five to Adele), and singer/songwriter James Fauntleroy.
Pet Shop Boys said: “It was inspiring to make an album in Los Angeles, and to work with a producer from a different musical genre, who has brought a new dimension to our music”.
The album will be available in standard CD, digital download, and limited edition double CD where the bonus disc contains an instrumental mix of the album. The album has also received special mastering for the iTunes version.
In 1975, having completed a degree in history at North London Polytechnic (now London Metropolitan University), Neil Tennant worked for two years as London editor for Marvel UK, the UK branch of Marvel Comics.
He was responsible for anglicising the dialogue of Marvel’s catalogue to suit British readers, and for indicating where women needed to be redrawn more decently for the British editions.
He also wrote occasional features for the comics, including interviews with pop stars Marc Bolan and Alex Harvey.
Then he moved to ITV Books where he edited TV tie-in books. After having commissioned Steve Bush, then the designer of Smash Hits and The Face, to design a book about the group Madness, he was offered a job at Smash Hits as news editor of the British teen pop magazine in 1982.
The following year he became Assistant Editor. He also edited the 1982, 1983 and 1984 editions of The Smash Hits Yearbook.
At Smash Hits an opportunity arose for him to go to New York to interview The Police. While there, Tennant arranged to meet Bobby Orlando, a producer whom both he and Lowe admired.
Neil mentioned that he was writing songs in his spare time and Orlando agreed to record some tracks with him at a later date. Orlando subsequently produced the Pet Shop Boys’ first single, the seminal art-pop hit West End Girls.