(Music Radar) Neil Peart has taken to his website to discuss to state of Rush. According to the acclaimed drummer, the band will convene in Los Angeles very soon to discuss their next recording, the follow-up to 2007's Snakes & Arrows. "These are parlous times in the music business, so our time-honored pattern of touring, recording and touring is no longer the obvious way to do things."""The music world - or at least the business of it - is very different now, even since 2006, when we began work on Snakes & Arrows," he continues. "The importance of 'the album' is not what it was, and there is currently a reversion to a musical climate rather like the 1950s, when only 'the song' matters," he wrote. "Radio, downloads and 'shuffle' settings are inimical to collected works. Because of that reality, record company advances that used to pay for album projects are a thing of the past, so if that was what we wanted to do, we'd be on our own...
"To this point, the three of us haven't even discussed what we might discuss, so to speak - so our ideas and shared enthusiasm for the entity of Rush will be fresh, spontaneous and quite likely exciting. For myself, I'm open to anything we can all agree on (I've pointed out before that in a three-piece band, we need consensus, not democracy - it's no good having one outvoted and unhappy member)." - more on this story