Steve Hackett will release his new album The Circus And The Nightwhale on 16 February 2023 via InsideOut Music.
A rite-of-passage concept album with a young character called Travla at the centre of it, The Circus And The Nightwhale contains 13 tracks and has an autobiographical angle for the musician who says about his 30th solo release: “I love this album. It says the things I’ve been wanting to say for a very long time.”
The Circus And The Nightwhale is Steve’s first new music in over two years. It follows the acoustic album Under A Mediterranean Sky from January 2021 – which rose to No 2 in the UK Classical chart – and, in September of that year, his metallic masterpiece Surrender Of Silence, which hit the UK Top 40 and even went straight into the Top 10 in Germany.
Steve’s new album promises ballads, blues, blistering progressive rock… and healthy measures of theatre and fantasia. Recorded between tours in 2022 and 2023 at Siren studio in the UK – with guest parts beamed in from Sweden, Austria, the US, Azerbaijan and Denmark, the line-up for The Circus And The Nightwhale includes some familiar faces alongside Steve on electric and acoustic guitars, 12-string, mandolin, harmonica, percussion, bass and vocals. Roger King (keyboards, programming and orchestral arrangements), Rob Townsend (sax), Jonas Reingold (bass), Nad Sylvan (vocals), Craig Blundell (drums) and Amanda Lehmann on vocals. Nick D’Virgilio and Hugo Degenhardt return as guests on the drumstool, engineer extraordinaire Benedict Fenner appears on keyboards and Malik Mansurov is back with the tar. Finally, Steve’s brother John Hackett is present once more on flute.
The new album will be available to pre-order from the 1st December 2023 on several different formats, including a Limited CD+Blu-ray mediabook (including 5.1 Surround Sound & 24bit high resolution stereo mixes), Standard CD Jewelcase, Gatefold 180g Vinyl LP & as Digital Album. All feature the stunning cover painting by Denise Marsh.
A review about the new album will be available on our website in late January.
The full tracklisting is as follows:
People Of The Smoke [4:51]
These Passing Clouds [1:35]
Taking You Down [4:17]
Found And Lost [1:50]
Enter The Ring [3:53]
Get Me Out! [4:16]
Ghost Moon and Living Love [6:44]
Circo Inferno [2:30]
Breakout [1:37]
All At Sea [1:56]
Into The Nightwhale [4:06]
Wherever You Are [4:19]
White Dove [3:15]
The final track, White Dove, is an acoustic piece from 2018 and was one of the bonus tracks on the Japanese edition of the live album Wuthering Nights.
The album is 45 minutes long. Summing up The Circus And The Nightwhale Steve says: “It’s a lovely journey that starts dirty, scratchy and smoky and becomes heavenly and divine. How can you resist it?”
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Steve Hacketts Studio-Album from 2006 as a Special Edition.
Review available
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