Morphine to release posthumous album Cocoon

Morphine are set to release a posthumous album, Cocoon, constructed from work that lead singer Mark Sandman left behind in the last years of his life.

Before making 2000's The Night, the band abandoned a series of recordings with Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade, the Boston producers who worked on Hole's Live Through This, Radiohead's Pablo Honey and Morphine's Cure For Pain.

Cocoon draws from recordings from those sessions to make up a new 8-song album which will arrive on December 4 via Partisan Records.

Sandman collapsed on stage on July 3, 1999, at the Giardini del Principe in Palestrina, Lazio, Italy, while performing with Morphine.

Following his death, they disbanded, with the surviving members briefly touring with other musicians as Orchestra Morphine, a tribute to Sandman and in support of the posthumous release, The Night.

"Mark loved performing and travelling the world, but he also loved to come home and cocoon," explained Sabine Hrechdakian, his partner at the time of his death.

"It was our home and his studio, so there was always music happening, tape running, friends dropping by at all hours, lots of cooking.

"The lyrics speak to the hardship of being away from loved ones while the band was on tour and the joys of homecoming. This thread of space travel runs through the album, so I imagine the cocoon as kind of a spaceship for two who leave the world and return to it."

• Listen to the title track below