Damien Rice announces new album

The long awaited new album from Damien Rice, 'My Favourite Faded Fantasy', will be released globally this autumn (3rd November in the UK & Ireland). The new record is Rice's first collection of material in eight years and was produced by Rick Rubin and Rice.

'My Favourite Faded Fantasy' follows the seminal 'O' which sold two and a half million copies worldwide, won the prestigious Shortlist Prize, spent 10 weeks on the Billboard 200, spent 80 weeks on the U.K. chart—as well as the million-selling, Brit-nominated follow-up, '9'.

The title track from the album 'My Favourite Faded Fantasy' was given its world premiere on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show moments ago. From midnight tonight local time (excluding Germany, Switzerland, Austria) it will be available instantly when you pre-order the album on iTunes, and available to stream on Spotify from Tuesday 9th September.

The first single taken from the album will be 'I Don't Want To Change you', which will be premiered later this month.

"Sometimes you have to step away from what you love in order to learn how to love it again," says Rice regarding the long gap between albums. Whilst fans would repeatedly ask "when?", for Rice the real question had shifted to "why make an album at all?" My Favourite Faded Fantasy suggests that the answer may have been staring right back at him all along. Here is a selection of songs, which Rice says are "sung straight into the metaphorical mirror." Intimate, frank and revitalized by making music again, My Favourite Faded Fantasy is a record that accepts one's faults but also begins, perhaps, to appreciate one's ability to grow up.

The recording process with producer Rubin began in Los Angeles and finished up in Iceland. "I came to Rick mostly based on what I didn't know about him, rather than what I did," describes Rice. "For some reason I just had a feeling that I would feel comfortable being open and being me and being vulnerable with Rick." Rubin, meanwhile, first saw Rice play live around the release of O, and recalls that "he was my favorite new artist at the time. A lot of our work together was to help him see what was so clear to everyone else in the room." Rice then went from Los Angeles to Iceland and assembled a cast of friends and local musicians to complete My Favourite Faded Fantasy against the stunning backdrop of Reykjavik.