The Coral have re-recorded their debut album in an 8-bit video game format.
The Dreaming of You indie rockers have reworked their entire 2002 self-titled record with bassist Paul Duffy using the miniBit platform to put a nostalgic, lo-fi twist on the LP.
The Coral Caves Of Illusion – Debut Album Celebration will be officially released on September 5 via AV8 Records, and is available now for pre-order.
Revealing his motivation for the album, Paul said: “How do I make it sound like my favourite level on Sonic or Mickey Mouse’s Castle Of Illusion?”
The band were in the midst of working with director James Slater on documentary Dreaming of You, which focuses on the band’s formation and experiences recording their first album.
Paul recalled: “We were in the process of filming the documentary and James asked Nick Power (keyboards) if anyone could make an 8-bit version of Shadows Fall for a short scene in which we were depicted as pixel characters.
“Nick said: ‘Duffy’s your man’. I’ve always been a bit of a gamer, so it was perfect for me. “Everyone loved it so much that they said do the whole first album in 8-bit. Now it’s featured throughout the documentary.”
The Coral’s most recent collection of new material was 2023’s Sea of Mirrors – their 11th studio album – which featured actor Cillian Murphy on closing track Oceans Apart.
The Peaky Blinders star had a spoken word part, a role originally intended for Frank Nero and Terence Hill, who turned down the offer.
Frontman James Skelly previously told NME: “Sean was like, ‘Oh I know someone. I did his first film. He might be good – Cillian Murphy.’ and I was like, ‘What? One of the best actors in the world?’
“And then Cillian Murphy just emailed and was like, ‘Ah, yeah I love the band, I’m up for helping you out.’
“Then we just had a conversation about what it was going to be, because we needed help with it. We were speaking about books we liked and films and how you build a character. He went away and thought about the character and tried different things.
“He just sent what he did for the album and said it should be like an old sort of American actor like Bella Lugosi or Buster Keaton. The idea was these massive stars ended up in these B-movies. “And they were like, ‘Where is my life?’ That’s the idea, this internal thing of, ‘How did I get here?’ He just nailed it and we put it in the track and put some reverb on it. We were like ‘Nice one Cillian, thanks a lot, you put the cherry on top.’ “