March 27 will see the release of Abolition of the Royal Familia – the 17th album by prolific electronic godfather Alex Paterson and his rotating roster of collaborative cohorts.
The new album is set to form part two of a pair – a continuation of the same “anything goes” ethos as the previous, critically-acclaimed longplayer No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds.
This new offering marks the first with Alex Paterson and Michael Rendall as main writing partners, with the new blood having risen-up-the-ranks from a member of The Orb’s touring band, to a studio engineer, and now graduated to half of the fully-fledged core duo. The pair also took over production duties from Youth, who corralled sessions for the last LP.
The upcoming album features guest turns from Youth, Roger Eno, Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy (from Gong and System 7), On U-Sound’s David Harrow, Alex’s dog Ruby, a 17 year old trumpeter called Oli Cripps (who was working a Saturday job in Alex’s local record shop when the pair met), his cousin Leyton on whistle, real strings courtesy of Violetta, and more.
The album is in part inspired by and in retrospective protest of the royal family’s historical endorsement of the East India Company’s opium trade, which was hugely damaging to India and caused two wars with China in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Humour, samples, deep ambience, cerebral throbbing dub, classic house, the white island, hip hop, psych and heartbreakingly beautiful contemporary composition are reportedly present, as is, perhaps less expectedly, a proudly pop element.