23/10/2025
New album collaboration with Andy Bown. Details below (Thanks to Chris Shelley for the information)
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Andrew will be releasing a new album entitled Out There: A Deep Space Love Story By Russell Hoban & Andy Bown, on November 21, 2025
The album will be released in 2 formats:
CD album (Pre-order)
With text and lyric booklet
(Price: £15.00 + postage)
12" Vinyl album (Pre-order)
With text and lyric insert
(from Elastic Stage)
(Price £33.90 + Postage)
Both can be ordered via Andrew’s website here: www.andybown.com
(Please note the orders will not be dispatched until November 21, 2025
Track listings as follows:
1. Out There.
2. Flick and Fade
3. Boondocks 3
4. Flicker Freako
5. There’s a Black Hole Called Regret
6. Frogs and Owls
7. City Of Love (featuring Judie Tzuke)
8. Deep-Space Freighter
Andy explains how OUT THERE came about:
"I first met Russell in the mid-nineties when our sons attended the same school. I was a little in awe of such a successful novellist but when sharing a bottle of wine one afternoon he suggested we try and write a song together, I jumped at it. It was then that I read Ridley Walker. I was blown away and never looked back.
Over the ensuing three or four years that song gradually morphed into a mind-bending operatic deep-space love story; a musical with cojones. We recorded a few demos and, pleased with the way it was going spent a little time attempting to find development funding. Short story: Brick wall.
So Russ went back to his typewriter and I went back on the road with Quo and we thought no more about it.
Sadly we lost Russell in 2011.
Early on this year my memory was severely jogged by an email from a chap to whom Russell had given a cassette tape of the demos way back when - and 2025 being Russ's centenary year this chap was trying to organise celebrations. He thought this weird song stuff might interest Hoban fans. That was food for thought. Hmm... maybe.
Luckily all the original files were still lurking in the bowels of Mike Paxman's studio and we went through them. We liked what we heard. A lot. We went to work. Mike gave it the sonic French kiss of life. It lives, it breathes.
We thought - let’s get it OUT THERE !"
Music by Andy Bown, lyrics by Russell Hoban
Cover art by Terry Pastor - www.terrypastor.co.uk
Produced by Mike Paxman
