Annie's back

Norwegian news sources reported yesterday that Annie has signed a new record deal with Island and will be working with Brian Higgins, which is a) good news and b) about time too.

To clear things up a bit we've spoken to Brian about all this business and this is what he says.

» "Annie is a fas­cin­at­ing lady with the potential to be an inter­na­tional superstar. She shares my way of thinking — that you can be cool and com­mer­cial at the same time."

» She's signed to a label which isn't exactly Island and isn't exactly Xenomania Records, but a sort of joint venture between the two which doesn't have a proper name yet.

» "We're def­in­itely only doing four tracks on the album."

» But Brian will be over­see­ing the whole th ing("in a sort of helpful, stan­doff­ish way") so that it isn't a ridicu­lous mess of nonsense. Also involved are Richard X, Alan Braxe, longterm col­lab­or­ator Timo Kaukolampi and the ubi­quit­ous-with-good-reason Greg Kurstin.

» "It'll be very melodic song-based elec­tron­ica — cutting edge pop and great melodies with a view to getting people dancing. We won't let her down."

It's all a while off yet, but if you're getting impatient for new Annie stuff something you may not have come across is a newish track called 'Follow Me' by Ercola featuring Annie.

It's is VERY BANGING INDEED and also very good and you can listen to clips of it at this page here or at Ercola's MySpace.

So there you go.