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Influential guitar band My Bloody Valentine are poised to finally release a new album, which has been 20 years in the making.
The cult group began preparing a new album shortly after their 1991 release Loveless was issued, but despite years of work on and off, nothing materialised.
The large gap between albums puts even the 15 years Guns N' Roses took to deliver their 2008 release Chinese Democracy in the shade.
My Bloody Valentine drew huge acclaim for their combination of dreamy atmospherics and ear-pummelling noise in the late 1980s, although they had little in the way of chart success.
The band's main man, guitarist Kevin Shields, has told NME the album will be released before the end of the year, ahead of live shows next year including a headline performance at a Tokyo music festival.
He said of the new material: "I think with this record, people who like us will immediately connect with something."
The band released two official studio albums through Creation Records - Isn't Anything and Loveless, which was much delayed due to the band's perfectionism - before signing a deal with major label Island Records in 1992.
They spent their advance from the deal on equipping their own studio, but little emerged apart from tracks for compilation albums. Band members went on to play with other bands and Shields eventually joined Primal Scream, as well as contributing to the Lost In Translation soundtrack.
It was reported that hours of material was delivered to Island in the late 1990s, and Shields himself said a whole album was dumped at one stage.
The group - also made up of Bilinda Butcher, Debbie Googe and Colm O Ciosoig - eventually re-emerged in 2008 to play a series of uncomfortably loud shows which included 15 minutes of feedback as they played 1988 single You Made Me Realise.
