Robyn Hitchcock, Andy Partridge Working On Collaborative Album

[Jahfin]

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/articl...t_id=1003722605

Robyn Hitchcock

Gary Graff, Detroit

A new DVD, another album with the Venus 3, a collaboration with XTC's Andy Partridge and a box set will be keeping Robyn Hitchcock busy for the coming year, and beyond.

Hitchcock tells Billboard.com he's particularly stoked about working with Partridge, which at the moment he calls "a self-generating project. I write the words on the train going up to Swindon (in England) and then, bang, we record it in his shed. I think it's good for me to be brought up against somebody else, another songwriter; I really think about how everything fits together. And I think it's something else for (Partridge) to kind of flex his mind on while he's doing other stuff, to keep his beak sharpened."

Hitchcock says he's not sure what he and Partridge -- who's also working on a solo album -- will be doing with the music they're creating. "It'll definitely be worth releasing," he says. "And I would think it should be its own project rather than getting mixed in with other things were doing."

Hitchcock is gearing up for the March 25 release of "Sex, Food, Death ... and Insects," a Sundance Channel/BBC documentary by John Edginton that focuses on Hitchcock's creative process, specifically with the Venus 3 consortium that includes R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and associates Scott McCaughey and Bill Rieflin.

The DVD includes eight unreleased Venus 3 songs, which will be the precursor for a full-fledged Hitchcock album with the group that he expects to put out in 2009. "We've recorded a lot of music," says Hitchcock, whose last session with the Venus 3 took place during November in Seattle. "I'm not a believer in a double album, so I've got to sift through everything and see what makes sense."

Some of the material may end up in "Dancing With Shiva," a Jonathan Demme film starring Anne Hathaway in which Hitchcock appears briefly as a wedding singer.

In addition to these projects, Hitchcock is also overseeing his next boxed set with Yep Roc, which is due this summer and will focus on his '80s work with the Egyptians.

[dragster]

I'd love to see the final product here