Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson has announced plans to release an enhanced and expanded version of his second solo album, Balls To Picasso.
More Balls To Picasso will be available from July 25, and is described by Dickinson as a "reimagined" version of the original 1994 release, which charted at number 21 in the UK.
The follow-up to 1990's Tattooed Millionaire, Balls To Picasso was titled in honour of the cubist pioneer whose representations of spherical objects were as squares, and reflected on the cover in graffiti style on a tiled bathroom wall.
"The songs are the same, but you will just not recognise the vibe," Dickinson says in a new instagram post, addressing those who've heard the original album. "Because not only does everything sound more vibrant and electric because of modern technology, but we've effectively reimagined the album. We've put stuff on there which was not there in the original. We haven't taken anything away, so nobody has changed any guitar solos [but] we've added loads of really heavy, moderrn-sounding rhythm guitars to it, so everything is just more beefy, as it should have been in 1994."
"I can't tell you how much I love this record."
In a press statement announcing the album, Dickinson adds, "While mixing all my catalogue into Dolby Atmos I had a nagging desire to revisit and reinvent the record. So putting more balls into Balls… was a labor of love.
"Of course, we beefed up the guitars - courtesy of our 'Swedish shredder' Philip Näslund - and we added some really beautiful work by Adassi Addasi on Tears… [of the Dragon] as well. Fellow Brazilian composer Antonio Teoli added some stunning orchestral arrangements, and in a unique contribution, added indigenous instruments from the Amazon (recorded by himself when he lived there!) at the beginning of Gods Of War.
"Shoot All The Clowns gets the benefit of a horn section fronted by the Berklee College Of Music, and all of the record gets the benefit of the mix by Brendan Duffey, (who worked on The Mandrake Project), with notes along the way from Shay Baby, the original father of the album."
More Balls To Picasso is available to pre-order here.
