Idlewild start selling album not even recorded yet

Idlewild's sixth LP is now on sale and they haven't even recorded it yet.

The band are currently taking orders for the follow-up to "Make Another World". Fifteen quid will get you a limited edition CD with exclusive packaging, at least one bonus track and access to a website full of photos, videos, blogs and downloads from the band's December gigs at Glasgow's King Tut's Wah Wah Hut.

Of course those gigs haven't happened yet. And neither has the album. They will be recording it next year.

"After 11 years of recording and releasing records within the constraints of the record industry we now feel that the time is right and the technology exists for us to deal more quickly and directly with the fans," Idlewild said in a statement.

Not only have they liberated themselves from label constraints, they have also broken free from time!

"We will be in the studio for the first few months of 2009 and plan a conventional album release in the summer, but for a limited time, we would like to offer our fans a chance to be involved from the beginning," they wrote.

And they aren't just promising a compact disc. Anybody who pre-orders it will have their names printed in the CD booklet, on the website and then receive the album early - just a few weeks after recording's finished.

Whatever next? It will be interesting to see just how many fans pre-order this without even hearing it first.