ALSO WORKING

…in November, JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN releases The Solution Is Restless, a collaborative album with the late Tony Allen and Dave Okumu of The Invisible. She was introduced to Allen in Paris in 2019 by Damon Albarn (right). “We hit it off,” she says, “and decided to record together… we improvised all night. When the world shut down, I used those recordings to write a record” …DAMON ALBARN’s own solo set The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows arrives in November. Started as an Iceland-inspired orchestral work and developed over lockdown, it “documents the emotional ebb and flow of the human condition” …JETHRO TULL’s

The Zealot Gene, the group’s first album since 2003, will be released early next year …MICHAEL ROTHER, BLONDIE and BITCHIN BAJAS are also recording new music … ex-5TH DIMENSION voices

(and stars of the Summer

Of Soul movie) Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr are working on an expanded version of their recent Lennon & McCartney covers set, Blackbird …YES release The Quest, their first LP since 2014 and the death of Chris Squire, in October. With sleeve art by Roger Dean, guitarist Steve Howe calls it, “a well-refined set of songs that capture the band’s true potential” …BILLY BRAGG’s (left) The Million Things That Never Happened is due in October. Billed as a “pandemic blues album”, it was produced by Magic Numbers’ Romeo Stodart and Dave Izumi: songs include Freedom Doesn’t Come For Free and The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here No More…