The Petra Zone

I just received the new Choir album, "Burning Like the Midnight Sun," and so far, so good at first listen.

They signed the packaging, and included the regular album, a "director's cut" of the album including commentary by the band over the music, and a disc of mix stems, and people are constantly posting their own remixes on The Choir's Facebook. Some of which are really nice. Fascinating idea, it would be sweet to get some insider info on what Petra's doing, their process, their thoughts on changes and reimaginations of the old songs.

Any other bands doing that?

Jars Of Clay posted the mix stems of Dead Man from Good Monsters on their website a couple of years ago and had a remix competition. They also occasionally release some podcasts/videos with comments on certain songs, but that's more about the contents of the song than what I would expect a 'director's cut' commentary to be.

It's nice when bands take that much trouble to stay in touch with their fans.

Oh man, there are all kinds of bands doing this kind of stuff on the secular side, including books, vinyl, SACD and or DVD-A audio.

I just realized that Sarah Kelly's new album is titled 'Midnight Sun'. Popular theme apparently.