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Hugo Race and his long time collaborators the True Spirit release their first album in seven years on May 29th 2015 through German independent Glitterhouse Records. ‘The Spirit’ is the band’s 12th studio album, not including live albums and retrospectives and while Hugo’s prolific and eclectic catalogue includes solo albums and an astonishing variety of international collaborations, The Spirit presents a return to his roots in a psych-rock zone tagged by Melody Maker in the band’s early days as ‘industrial trance blues’.

Produced by Hugo over a period of three years in his hometown of Melbourne with the same line-up (Michelangelo Russo – electronics, Bryan Colechin – bass, Brett Poliness – drums and percussion, Nico Mansy – keys) featured on albums like Goldstreet Sessions (2003), Taoist Priests (2006) and 53rd State (2008), The Spirit is fuelled by high-energy rhythmic drive and Race’s darkly humorous lyrics with the band wielding space and sonic suggestion as instruments in their own right.

“We built a studio in a house out on the city’s edge to slowly develop the songs at our own speed with no pressure. We’d never had the luxury before of playing new songs live before recording them. When we felt the time was right, we taped a lot of the final album with Idge at his Soundpark studio, capturing our sound with ambient mics and vintage processors. But the vibe of that house and the all-night recording sessions with the background buzz of cicadas and the homemade instruments in the tool shed, its all still there. We wanted to create a definitive album for The True Spirit and took our sweet time about it. This record is it.”

The Spirit is a compelling statement by a legendary band at the height of their powers.

The first single “Elevate My Love” (and the video by Donald Baldie) drops in April 2015, the complete album on May 29th and a second single “False Idols” (not included on the album) in October prior to the True Spirit embarking on a European tour in the autumn.

“I see the True Spirit as connected to my original reasons for making music in the post-punk time, a kind of collision of influences that include the cosmic side of psychedelia, the analogue razor blade attack of primal blues (ie – the 30s and 40s and early 50s), as well as soft sexy soul music and electronica. We’ve always felt comfortable outside the ‘box’ of easy categorization and we’ve never hesitated to pull in streams and influences from the political or the spiritual, developing our personal obsessions and refining them down into something for the mind and body and soul.” - Hugo Race