The Cure’s Robert Smith is set to release a solo “noise” album.
The ‘Friday I’m In Love’ hitmaker has revealed that his bandmates responded with a resounding “no” when he suggested the “hour-long noise” record, and so he is going it alone for that project.
He told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1: “I’ve always wanted to do an hour’s worth of noise, and I didn’t want it … The Cure, you wait 10 years and then we bring out an album that’s just noise. So it was just like, ‘No’ – that was me doing the rest of the band. That ‘no’ was a band no. So I’ve been just having fun with that really.”
However, the rocker does have two albums on the way with the band, which are polar opposites when it comes to the overall mood.
He teased: “Probably in about six weeks’ time I’ll be able to say when everything’s coming out and what we’re doing next year and everything … We were doing two albums and one of them is very, very doom and gloom and the other one isn’t.
“And they’re both very close to being done. I just have to decide who’s going to mix them. That’s really all I’ve got left to do.”
The Cure’s last studio album was 2008’s ‘4:13 Dream’.
Meanwhile, the 62-year-old goth icon has just released a collaboration with synth-pop group Chvrches.
The cinematic track, ‘How Not To Drown’, is featured on the band’s upcoming album, ‘Screen Violence’.
The follow-up to 2018’s ‘Love is Dead’ is out on August 27.
Martin Doherty of the electronic trio – which is also made up of Lauren Mayberry and Iain Cook – said: “I wouldn’t be in a band if it wasn’t for [The Cure’s] ‘Disintegration and Pornography’.
“So when Robert got back to us and said that he was interested in collaborating we never truly thought that it would come to fruition. After it had gone quiet for a little while, we get this demo out of the blue on Halloween, no less. From Robert. With him singing. And it was everything that we hoped it would be and more.”
It was an “emotional” experience hearing his idol on one of his own songs.
He continued: “It was like a more intense version of the electricity that I heard the first time I heard Lauren [Mayberry] singing on one of our beats. It was like I’d gone right back to the first day of being in a band again. And it was that feeling bottled up and intensified … I can’t overstate how much of an influence The Cure are on my music, on me as a producer and me as a writer. And so that one moment, it was emotional, and it was really intense.”