U2 ARE set to release a new album featuring re-recordings and re-imagined versions of 40 of their seminal songs.
Songs Of Surrender, set for release on Friday 17 March and curated and produced by The Edge, sees the band revisit some of the most celebrated songs of their 40+ year career, including 'With Or Without You', 'One', 'Beautiful Day', 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' and 'Invisible'.
The reimagining results in a completely new recording of each track and in some cases, new lyrics.
"Music allows you to time travel," explained The Edge, "And we became curious to find out what it would be like to bring our early songs back with us to the present day and give them the benefit, or otherwise, of a 21st century reimagining.
"What started out as an experiment quickly developed into a personal obsession as so many of our songs yielded to a new interpretation. Intimacy replaced post punk urgency. New tempos, new keys, and in some cases new chords and new lyrics arrived. A great song, it turns out is kind of indestructible.
"The process of selecting which songs to revisit started with a series of demos. I looked at how a song would hang together if all but the bare essential elements were taken away. The other main aim was to find ways to bring intimacy into the songs, as most of them were originally written with live concert performance in mind.
"Reviewing these sketch recordings with producer Bob Ezrin, it was very easy to see the ones that worked straight off the bat and those that needed more work. We all got into the sensibility of less is more."
The 40 newly recorded tracks are collected together under each of the four band member names across four separate 'albums'.
The Edge adds:
"Hearing the songs interact, and finding the running orders for the four albums was really thrilling; finding the surprising segues, getting a chance to DJ. Once we had four distinct albums it was easy to see who would be the figurehead for each one."
