Morphine will have their second posthumous album released. Titled Cocoon, the album will be released on December 4 via Partisan Records.
However, if The Night, released in 2000—the year following Mark Sandman’s death— was a studio album nearing completion at the time; Cocoon brings together eight recordings made by Sandman with producers Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade in 1998, which had been set aside and left unfinished.
The title track is accompanied by a video featuring rare footage of Sandman.
The tracks on the new album were selected by Kolderie and Sabine Hrechdakian, Mark Sandman’s former girlfriend, from the original tapes. Saxophonist Dana Colley added new layers of saxophone to three of the songs, and Kolderie was responsible for the new mixes.
Tracklist
- "Tomorrow"
- "Wig"
- "Patience"
- "Spaceman Charm"
- "Justine"
- "Moons of Jupiter"
- "Cocoon"
- "Pretty Face"
A version of “Cocoon” was included in 2004 on the box set Sandbox: The Music of Mark Sandman.
When asked about the meaning behind the title track, Hrechdakian explained:
Mark loved performing and traveling the world, but he also loved to come home and cocoon. It was our home and his studio, so there was always music happening, tape running, friends dropping by at all hours, lots of cooking. The lyrics speak to the hardship of being away from loved ones while the band was on tour and the joys of homecoming. There’s also this thread of space travel that runs through the album, so I imagine the cocoon as a kind of spaceship for two who leave the world and return to it.
