Smashing Pumpkins‘ 1996 box set The Aeroplane Flies High is to be reissued on July 23 with 90 bonus tracks.
The original 1996 edition was a five-disc set featuring expanded versions of the five singles from the band’s Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness album, which came out the previous year. The bumper reissue adds a total of 90 unreleased demos, alternate versions and live recordings and everything has been fully remastered.
The reissue also includes a sixth disc featuring a live recording from the band’s 1996 tour and a DVD of their performance in Belfort, France on July 4, 1997. The new box set apparently boasts “unique packaging with embossed foil wrap and twinkle stock for jackets” and will be available to buy from July 23.
Billy Corgan has contributed track-by-track notes to the reissue’s 46-page booklet. “What I like about The Aeroplane Flies High is that it’s almost the existential backwater of the Mellon Collie album. Listening to the music gathered here is a little bit like seeing what goes on behind the walls of Disneyland,” he writes. “At least for me, the behind the scenes feel heard on The Aeroplane Flies High represents something revealing not found on the made album.”
Meanwhile, Smashing Pumpkins are heading over to the UK next month for live dates. The band will play Glastonbury‘s Other Stage on June 30, Manchester on July 1 and Glasgow on July 2 before returning later in the month for a London show on July 22. Corgan revealed in March that the band had started writing their next album, the follow-up to 2012’s Oceania, and recording will start “soon”, a news item on their official website confirms.