About 90 years ago, Gustav Holst released his most widely received album The Planets, a 48-minute instrumental suite about the seven celebrated celestial bodies. It’s a landmark in modern music, and hosts some of the most gorgeous, dynamic, and accessible tracks in the classical canon. It is a personal favorite of mine, and now it’s going to have some competition in the form of Dr. Dre (well, as much as Dre can actually compete with Gustav Holst, though I’m open for a serious discussion on the subject.)
Anyhow, like Mr. Holst, Dr. Dre is seriously working on an instrumental hip-hop album about the planets that make up our particular corner of space (via GigWise). He’s apparently been working on it “for a long time” and plans to call it, wait for it, The Planets.
“It’s just my interpretation of what each planet sounds like,” Dre said in an interview with Vibe Magazine. “Just all instrumental. I’ve been studying the planets and learning the personalities of each planet. I’ve been doing this for about two years now just in my spare time so to speak. I wanna do it in surround sound. It’ll have to be in surround sound for Saturn to work.” Well, duh.
But first, we’re still all waiting for Detox , Dre’s extra-long-awaited followup to 2001. In case you missed it, you can find the leaked track “Under Pressure (feat. Jay Z)” from Detox right here.
