The artist formerly known as Terence Trent D'Arby (who five months ago officially changed his name to Sananda Maitreya) has released his new album independently on the Web. The appropriately titled The Wild Card, his fifth album, is available through www.pentacles.net and will be released through retail outlets in July. The album is Maitreya/D'Arby's first recording since 1995's TTD's Vibrator.
Maitreya says that the album was created over a nine-month period when he also recorded an additional thirteen songs that he would make available at a later date. "It just hit me that I didn't have to sacrifice this record, but I could just let people have it because what was most important for me was that people hear the songs," Maitreya says. "There's such a tremendous degree of constriction that happens in labels, especially when you consider that most of the men that are running these institutions no longer have a love or feel for music, but only an understanding of what they presume the bottom line to be."
"The idea that I bake a pie, I then am contractually obligated to give the whole entire pie over to someone who then deigns to cut me a tiny slice and give it back. That's just an insult to my character."
Maitreya is currently at work with marketing companies to design alternate avenues for releasing new and different artists and styles of music to the public. "I'm very grateful that I was able to be squeezed by the pain into a greater realization," he says. "And with that in mind, we can just open up and be free to give the people what they deserve and not always the same reconstructed, regurgitated piece of music over and over again."
KERRY L. SMITH
(May 16, 2001)