Duran Paper

With the cover art for Paper Gods, Duran Duran cheekily revisit icons of their past: the smile of Rio, the cap of the "Chauffeur," girls on film, and a prowling tiger. Thirty years in, Duran Duran are comfortable enough to play with their past, comfortable enough to draw an explicit connection to their back pages by hiring Nile Rodgers - who helmed Notorious back in the day - to do a bit of production alongside Mark Ronson, the hitmaker who gave the group a refurbishment on 2010's All You Need Is Now. Most of the record, however, bears credits either by Mr. Hudson or Josh Blair, two younger musicians who help give Paper Gods a bit of a contemporary glint. While there are nods at the '80s and even the '90s arriving in the form of samples, synthesizers, and power ballads, Paper Gods is an aggressively modern album, living in the oversaturated world where emojis and gifs battle in perpetual motion…

“This record really goes back to that strange early Duran mix: the hard-edged pop coexisting with the dark, weird and experimental,” says John Taylor of the album’s development. Working with renowned LA-based artist Alex Israel, the stunning box set release of Paper Gods seeks to replicate that unease. Mining Hollywood for inspiration as “the world’s primary desire factory”, Israel’s artwork encourages fans to search beyond perceptible positivity for signs of darkness in the artwork.

Duran Duran are an English new wave and synthpop band formed in Birmingham in 1978. The band grew from alternative sensations in 1982 to mainstream pop stars by 1984. By the end of the decade, membership and music style changes challenged the band before a resurgence in the early 1990s…

Dream 6 is actually the original name for the band that would become Concrete Blonde, comprised of future Blonde members Johnette Napolitano and James Mankey (Michael Murphy handles drumming). They released this six-song EP in France four years before their self-titled debut and there's nothing very remarkable about it…