New Model Army Revisit and Reimage Classic Album

Keavin Wiggins | 09-20-2020

New Model Army have announced that they have reimagined their classic 2005 album "Carnival" and will be releasing the new version of the record on November 20th.

The new version was created after the group found all the original recordings and gave them to Lee Smith, co-producer and mixer of their recent albums.

Justin Sullivan had this to say, "In the long history of New Model Army, it is the albums made between 2000-2009 that are usually the least feted. It was a strange period for us. Partly we were finding our feet after the departure (and later passing) of Robert (Heaton) and still absorbing the lessons of the long, costly, and less than satisfying Strange Brotherhood era of the mid '90s. Eight (released in 2000) was a simple reaction to the latter, a 'primitive' album, really just a set of demos, put together quickly by Michael (Dean), Dean (White) and myself.

"Carnival was a different kind of project, ambitiously conceived as a swirling, eclectic fairground of sound as my new creative partnership with Michael began to develop, and with an endless stream of ideas from Nelson, Dean and Dave (Blomberg) being thrown into the mix.

"We perhaps chose the wrong producer in Chris Tsangarides, who was not cut out to control and steer the chaos around him, and things were made more complicated by the frequent absence of Nelson and Dave, who was in the process of leaving the band for family reasons.

"We always felt that this was the one album where the recording, mixing, and mastering didn't bring the end result close to what we had originally intended.

"So, when earMUSIC declared their interest in licensing and reissuing the album, we discovered four associated tracks -B-sides and unreleased songs -to add to it and saw an opportunity to 'reimagine' the album as a whole."