Angels & Airwaves' Prog Rock 'Love' Album, Film To Be Released For Free

Even as he prepares for blink-182's summer reunion tour, guitarist Tom DeLonge is deeply ensconced in the next project by his other band, Angels & Airwaves -- an album and film project called "Love" that should be out before the end of the year.

DeLonge tells Billboard.com that "Love" -- which will be released for free thanks to corporate underwriting -- is "the biggest release of my life, the pinnacle of my creativity" and likens it to Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in the scope of its ambition. "It's super conceptual and highbrow in many ways, very artistic, very Stanley Kubrick," he says. "But it's not a rock opera. It's a very modern version of what could happen when you blend the film industry and the music industry together in a very, very arty, kind of cool way with professionals involved all along the path."

DeLonge says the "Love" movie -- which began life as a documentary about Angels & Airwaves recording its 2006 debut album, "We Don't Need to Whisper," and expanded from there -- "blurs the line between full-fledged live action and documentary with these epic kind of...meditative sequences where the sound design and the music and the picture all bend together to create a sonic experience as much as a visual one." The script, meanwhile, "tells a story of human life and destiny but at the same time really makes usual moments of life extraordinary. It's a circular narrative in many ways, where it kind of sums up the human race in a time capsule."

The music of "Love," DeLonge says, will have a prog-rock kind of flavor. "It's like blending Radiohead and U2 together with these kind of Pink Floyd movements," he explains. "Things happen unpredictably and take you to these epic soundscapes. It's very much in the spirit of Angels & Airwaves, but it sounds way, way more thought-out and way more ambitious."

DeLonge says the group is still figuring out mechanisms for delivering the film and album and are also planning a tour to support the project. All of this, of course, is going on while he rehearses for the blink-182 tour, which begins July 23 in Las Vegas.

"It's gonna be a really busy time -- It's fucking crazy, actually. I don't know what I'm doing," DeLonge says with a laugh. "But I'm totally down and excited to figure out how to make it all happen, 'cause in my life both of these (bands) can be a very necessary thing."

---