Irvine Welsh is releasing a disco album to accompany his new Trainspotting sequel
The 10-track record arrives alongside his new novel Men In Love, a direct sequel to Trainspotting set in the late '80s
Irvine Welsh has announced he will release his first-ever album this summer, a disco record that’s an accompaniment to his new novel Men In Love, a direct sequel to Trainspotting.
The Scottish novelist, screenplay writer and playwright curated and wrote the lyrics for the 10-track album, with The Sci-Fi Soul Orchestra composing and producing the music. It’s coming out via Port Sunshine Recordings.
The first single ‘A Man in Love with Love’ is out now, pairing crooning vocals with ecstatic disco textures and groove.
Both the album and the novel, which have the same title, come out on July 24.
The novel returns to the beloved characters first introduced in Welsh’s debut novel Trainspotting in 1993, picking up the story as soon as the first novel ended, unlike the other sequel Porno which was set 10 years in the future, or Skagboys which is a prequel.
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The description notes: “It is the late 1980s, the closing years of Thatcher’s Britain. For the Trainspotting crew, a new era is about to begin – a time for hope, for love, for raving.
“Leaving heroin behind and separated after a drug deal gone wrong, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie each want to feel alive. They fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead; they follow the call of the dancefloor, with its promise of joy and redemption.”
The album serves as an audio companion to that story.
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Speaking about the album, Welsh says: “In uncertain times, dominated by the ascendancy of soul dead oligarchs, their corrosive technology and looting economics, the great positive constant for humanity remains our infinite capacity for love.
“Music is still the medium by which we bypass their reductive, low frequency world, and if we can sing and dance and express our collective love in joy and rapture, we render their pathetic schemes the irrelevant sideshows they deserve to be.
“One of the greatest musical forms in delivering that ecstasy has been discotheque music. No matter how confused our men (and women) have been in the quest for love, as we are forced to earn a living to pay for our fun, our real predilections are to party like it’s 2099. So don’t diss the disco, let’s dance away the heartache or die trying, because nothing else makes any sense.”
Welsh is also heading out on a promotion book tour across England and Scotland in July, with tickets on sale here.
Pre-order the album here, pre-order the novel here.
