Pitchfork

We haven't heard much from Mike Skinner since he broke the record for the longest music video ever recorded with "Deluded in My Mind" all the way back in August. That's because he's hard at work recording the follow-up to last year's The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living in his Fat Control Room studio.

The new album, Skinner's fourth as the Streets, is composed entirely of live instruments. In a recent episode of his online TV show "Beat Stevie", Skinner said the album features "stories about people and places that could have existed since the beginning of time," including "one about a guy who's about to jump off a cliff, one about a kid who's running-- his dad tells him to flip a coin to decide what he's going to do next," and another without a beat ("just me and a harp"). In the SkinnerBlog on his website, he writes, "All my new songs are really fast at the moment." He also mentions off-hand (and we think hypothetically) that the final Streets album will be "the one after this."

The only song title Skinner has given up is the title of his favorite on the album: "Turn Your Life on the Flip of a Coin". He hopes to release the album by this Christmas.

Skinner will take a break from recording this summer to go on the Streets' tour of Scotland in July, which is bookended by an opening gig for Muse in June and a handful of European festival dates in August. Though no other dates are scheduled just yet, he plans to get to the rest of Europe, England, and the U.S. after that.

Finally, Skinner recently remixed a track called "Either Way" by his Birmingham buds the Twang, and they filmed a video for the remix in Brighton with Skinner protégé Professor Green, who also guests.

Dates:

06-16 London, England - Wembley Stadium *
07-24 Inverness, Scotland - Ironworks #
07-25 Aberdeen, Scotland - Moshulu #
07-26 Dundee, Scotland - Fat Sam's #
07-27 Edinburgh, Scotland - Liquid Room #
07-28 Glasgow, Scotland - ABC #
08-04 Odemira, Portugal - Sudoeste Festival
08-18 Hasselt, Belgium - Pukkelpop Festival
08-25 Cardiff, Wales - Cardiff Calling
08-26 London, England - Get Loaded in the Park 2007

* with Muse
# with the Mitchell Brothers, Professor Green, Example