Smashing Pumpkins Return To Studio To Finish MACHINA After 18 Years

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Billy Corgan has shared a new photo of his Smashing Pumpkins bandmate Jimmy Chamberlin in the studio recording a new drum track for “White Spyder” for the MACHINA reissue, which is expected to be released in 2019 or 2020. Corgan has said the reissue will feature new artwork and a new complete tracklisting featuring tracks from MACHINA I and MACHINA II, along with previously unfinished songs from the sessions featuring newly recorded parts. Corgan will begin writing a new Smashing Pumpkins album on January 6, 2019 to followup Shiny and Oh So Bright Vol. 1/LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun.

He discussed reviews for the album in a new LA Weekly interview, “I mean, we’ve always gotten weird reviews,” he says. “The albums that everyone considers classics got bad reviews back in the day. So it’s always a bit of a weird process. I’ve learned through the years to just read the fan reactions. And the fan reaction on this has been a 10 out of 10. It’s unbelievable. It’s as nice a reception as we could have expected. We didn’t really expect it because we just went in to record a single, so it was a little weird putting out an album that wasn’t conceived as an album — it was more like a collection of songs that we recorded with Rick [Rubin]. But to see everybody’s response has encouraged us to dive back into the deeper end of the pool as far as writing new material.”

“The best way I can put it is we spent a lot of time in rehearsal and in studios developing what people often refer to as the Pumpkins wall of sound,” Corgan later said about why the Pumpkins fell apart and originally split following the MACHINA tour in 2000. “When we stopped doing those things, or we chose not to do those things, people acted like I got hit in the head with a rock. For us to pick back up on a language that we spent a lot of time developing, and have fun with it again, it’s as easy as jumping in a pool. It’s not like we sat around a table, or Rick said that we’ve got to put the fuzz pedal back on. It’s a natural consequence. For us, it’s pushing those buttons again and seeing if there’s anything left for us to play, and we were surprised that there were new things to say so we went back to that approach. But we could just as easily not do it, then everyone would say that I’d been hit in the head with a rock again.”

The Smashing Pumpkins headlined KROQ Absolut Almost Acoustic Christmas in Los Angeles over the weekend, while Muse played in the Pumpkins’ hometown of Chicago. Muse played an instrumental cover of “Cherub Rock”, you can view it below the new MACHINA recording photo.