Pearl Jam tease "Gigaton" via augmented reality

Pearl Jam announce their new album "Gigaton". With a clever augmented reality scavenger hunt around the world, the band from Seattle gives the first clues as to what is to come with the album.

Now it's official: Pearl Jam announced their new album last week. It's called Gigaton, was produced by Josh Evans (instead of Brendan O'Brien) and is due to be released on 27 March 2020. Together with the album, Pearl Jam also launched a worldwide scavenger hunt with augmented reality.

About AR an insight into the album

The Band-Website welcomes you with a coordinate system behind which you can find the first clues that can be found in various metropolises around the world. One clue can be found on Oberbaumstraße in Berlin-Kreuzberg, just a few metres from the Musik & Frieden venue.

Once you have made the effort and travelled to one of the clues, you have to look at the banner on site through your Facebook or Instagram lens. On the banner you can see something that is probably the artwork of "Gigaton". Through the lens there is a sound snippet (which is probably from the upcoming album) and you can see melting polar ice. In fact, the mass of the melting ice is measured in gigatonnes. The photos for "Gigaton" were taken by photographer Paul Nicklen, who specialises in Arctic photography.

As part of their album announcement, Pearl Jam have also announced new tour dates. They will play 16 concerts in North America in March and April 2020 before coming to Europe in the summer.

Artists make use of VR and AR

Pearl Jam is not the first band to experiment with VR and AR. VR music pioneer Björk has already released a VR album in 2017, as we reported. Stars who have already passed away, such as Amy Winehouse brought back to life through virtual concerts. And a virtual version of the metal band Korn plays a concert in the multiplayer video games "AdventureQuest 3D" and "AQWorlds". The band performs as part of a special In-game events on.

Source: visions / musikexpress