New RUSH music.

RUSH: Onto the Mixing

Neil Peart has updated his website with another lengthy post and in it he discusses the recording of the new Rush album, and, he touches upon something he has rarely ever shared with the public -- the death of his daughter Selena in 1997 followed by his first wife Jackie. He brings this up in explaining a letter he wrote to his late drum teacher, Freddie Gruber, in 1998.

"The letter was written at the darkest point of my life -- though I didn't know then that just a week or two later, we would get the diagnosis about Jackie's terminal cancer. So I was between deaths, as it were. (The gate of that year opened on a prison cell -- what seemed to be an eternal sentence of grief, confusion and emptiness. There was no light.)"

In the letter he wrote: "I miss everything. Not only Selena, but ourselves, our friends, and our lives together. It's all been blasted into such a howling chaos of sorrow and meaninglessness, and we're only now beginning to grope for a path ahead. It sure won't be easy, but I hope we'll find some kind of peace -- if never the joy we knew before..."

As for the new Rush album, Clockwork Angels, he says, "As we prepare to start mixing in the New Year, it is too early to say anything about the results... I recorded my drum parts in a way that, for me, was completely different than ever before... I have been working deliberately to become more improvisational and these sessions were an opportunity to attempt that... I am working at a whole new level of both funky, dirty, greasy groove and fancy show-off technique-a combination I have been seeking my entire drumming life." The album will be out later this year.

Read more from Peart at NeilPeart.net.