KANSAS Announces New Album “The Absence of Presence” Out in June 17th

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Prog-rock legends Kansas have announced the arrival of their next album entitled “The Absence of Presence” for June 26th according to Billboard. The nine-song set will hit the stores shelves in time for the group’s summer tour with Foreigner and Europe, and it’s been once again produced by guitarist Zak Rizvi with founding members Phil Ehart and Richard Williams at Real 2 Reel Studios in Stockbridge, GA.

“The Absence of Presence” is Kansas’ second effort with Rizvi and singer-keyboardist Ronnie Platt and first with keyboardist Tom Brislin (Meat Loaf, Debbie Harry, Yes). According to drummer Phil Ehart statement to Billboard “the new blood has made another album that stands alongside vintage ’70s Kansas”.

“This sounds like Kansas,” Ehart says. Zak wrote the majority of “The Prelude Implicit” and this album, and now having Tom Brislin adding a couple of his songs and his keyboard prowess really pushed the band even more toward that original sound, which is not easy to do by any means. You’ve got to have the material. You’ve got to have the singer to sing it. You’ve got to have lyrics that are Kansas-type lyrics. These guys get it, and the other four of us who have been here for 20, 40, 50 years, we’re just sitting here grinning, going ‘This is great!'”

Ehart says that if the band had its way, “The Absence of Presence” would have been finished sooner. But the popularity of recent tours, in which Kansas has played its two biggest albums – 1976’s “Leftoverture” and 1977’s “Point of Know Return” – in their entirety kept the group away from the studio for longer than intended. “We got so busy we couldn’t make another album,” Ehart says. “The Absence of Presence” was recorded in a couple of shifts and finished earlier this year, with mixing recently completed and mastering under way.

“The Absence of Presence” Album Artwork

The lyrics to the title track, meanwhile, were written by Brislin from a title and concept suggested by Ehart. “It can mean a couple of different things,” the drummer notes, “but what sticks out is when we’re at an airport, there’s a lot of people there but everybody is staring at their phone or looking at their computer or their iPad or reading a paper or whatever. Someone’s sitting across from you looking up, and you can tell they’re not engaged at all. People are there, but they’re not really there. They’re present, but there’s an absence of presence.”

As the album is being prepared for release – a first single is due to be announced during early April – Kansas is preparing to return to the road. It’s just started a U.S. run of Point of Know Return and Kansas Classics shows that stretch into May, then it hops on the Juke Box Heroes 2020 tour starting July 9 in New Mexico. Ehart notes that Foreigner toured with Kansas in Europe during the ’70s, and he’s looking forward to pairing up again.

“We’ve been trying to put the two bands together for quite a while, so when this came up we jumped on it,” he says. “We’ve stayed in touch over the years and they’re a great band and good guys, and I think we have a mutual respect between the two bands. We get one hour and it’ll go by very quickly for us, but we’re just happy to be there and get offstage and watch Foreigner come on. And Europe, too. It should be a great summer.”

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