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In what is happily one of the best headlines of the year, Iggy Pop is to release a Jelly Roll Morton-influenced jazz album inspired by French novelist Michel Houellebecq.

The Stooges' leader made the announcement in a video originally posted on his official website, holding court at the side of a swimming pool. "I just got sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars, banging out crappy music," Iggy said, "and I was starting to listen to a lot of New Orleans-era Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton type of jazz."

The album is called Préliminaires and was directly inspired by Michel Houellebecq's 2005 novel, The Possibility of an Island. Iggy was originally contacted to provide music for Last Words, a Dutch documentary about the novelist's efforts to adapt the book for film. Directed by Erik Lieshout, Arno Hagers and Reinier van Brummelen, Last Words played at several festivals and a DVD will be released on 17 March, according to reports.

Unlike the Guardian, Iggy is apparently a fan of Houellebecq's book – the story of a stand-up comedian, a Raelian-style cult and the comedian's cloned descendants. But while this work of misanthropic sci-fi might suggest creepy space synths or sinewy post-punk, Iggy has instead opted for a "quieter album with some jazz overtones".

"I've always loved quieter ballads," he said in his video, emphasising in a later MySpace bulletin that this is "NOT a rock album". According to a fan site, Préliminaires is "very Sinatra-like (low voice and all)". And on one song, Les Feuilles Mortes, Iggy Pop even sings in French.

"I've made it really especially for France and people who speak French," Iggy Pop said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/mar/03/iggy-pop-preliminaires-jazz-album

P.S. There is a large hole in the musical world without Iggy, and he just filled it with this new Effort... I couldn't have been even dreaming of it. Iggy's voice 's good for everything... Iggy Pop, had been inspired by the jazz when he was young before he create the Stooges.He called this album "preliminaire" because it was the beggining of it all for him, in the music and stuffs ....

http://blog.iggypoppreliminaires.com/

Iggy Pop said: “One of the most moving songs of the record Préliminaires is called King Of The Dogs, where Fox tells you how cool it is to be a dog, how much it beats human life”. This revolutionnary interactive video directed by Patrick Boivin lets you decide which dog you want to be between a business man, a bum and an explorer.