does it mean you have to throw your body off a building?

Way back in the darks of distant days, I wrote about James Angell's excellent Private Player album. Even then (a year or two after its release), his label's website had imploded, his own website had no new information, and even an e-mail to an address listed at that site received no response. I was left to conclude that Angell had once again retreated to the Oregon wilderness.

So I'm glad to report activity on the Angell front. Because publicity doesn't seem to be his strong suit, some of this "news" is fully a year old, in the form of this Brooklyn Rail interview from November 2006, which gives the impression that a new CD was all but ready to be released. A year later, and Angell's myspace site (which I don't believe existed when I last wrote about him) has an entry from May of this year referring to ongoing work on a new CD, as well as three fine, diverse new tracks. The new album supposedly will be called The Pandemic Symphony and will be released on "the new Dream Makers label" - which, judging from the artwork of the label's other signings (including an act named, confusingly, Aangell), seems an odd fit. (There's a definite metal-y/goth-y/proggish feel to the designs...then again, Angell jokingly describes his music as "death metal/glam/lounge" at his myspace site...)

Samples of all the Private Player tracks are available at Angell's rather underlinked label site, but here are two of them in better quality:

James Angell "Ooh Love" (Private Player, 2001)
James Angell "Dear Dying Friend" (Private Player, 2001)