Iggy Pop to release 'jazzy' album

Influential punk legend Iggy Pop has announced that he is to release a jazz-influenced album entitled Preliminaires.

The singer, whose last album was The Stooges' 2003 comeback LP The Weirdness, claimed that he is bored of listening to mediocre guitar music.

Of his new record, Pop said: "It's a quieter album with some jazz overtones. That's because at one point I just got sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars, banging out crappy music.

"I was starting to listen to a lot of New Orleans-era Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton-type of jazz."

The record is based on controversial French author Michel Houellebecq's bestelling 2006 work The Possibility Of An Island. Seven of the songs composed by Pop were used in the Last Words documentary which featured Houellebecq translating his last novel.

The album will be released on EMI France in April.