June 12, 2012

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The Smashing Pumpkins are streaming their new album Oceania online via iTunes.

The album isn't formally released until next week (June 19), but can be heard in full now. The album is the seventh full-length effort of the band's career.

Oceania, which was originally due last September, will now be released on June 18 and has been described as an "album within an album" as it is part of their 44-song cycle Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, the first songs for which were released in 2009.

The record will be distributed by EMI, who announced earlier this year that they had inked a deal to release the record with singer Billy Corgan's label Martha's Music. It features a total of 13 tracks.

Speaking about the album, Corgan said: "I was dead set on making an album where every song was just as valuable as any other, ignoring the typical claptrap you hear about needing a single. The only way to make the case that every song on 'Oceania' is worth hearing is to put your heart into the sequence as a cohesive whole. Once we felt we'd achieved that balance, only then did we let anyone outside our world hear the record we'd made."

The album is the band's first recorded effort with their new line-up, which now features Mike Byrne on drums, Nicole Fiorentino on bass and Jeff Schroeder on guitar, with Corgan keen to stress that they have recorded the album as a band, rather than as himself and session musicians.

He said of this: "I've been adamant in stressing that, as a group, first and foremost, we are here to make new music together. Jeff, Mike, and Nicole have all made significant contributions to the tone and texture of 'Oceania', which is an album that is unlike any I've ever made. Yet at the same time I believe it upholds the same musical values I've always pushed for with the Pumpkins, be they progressive, emotional, epic, or restless."


The tracklisting for 'Oceania' is as follows:

''Quasar''
''Panopticon''
''The Celestials''
'Violet Rays'
'My Love Is Winter'
'One Diamond, One Heart'
''Pinwheels''
''Oceania''
''Pale Horse''
''The Chimera''
''Glissandra''
''Inkless''
''Wildflowe'r'

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[Edited 6/12/12 9:13am]