Shields enthusiasts already beating their hands to a bloody pulp in frustration while waiting for the forthcoming My Bloody Valentine activity might want to step that yearning up a notch, as the guitarist’s collaboration with Patti Smith, The Coral Sea, prepares to see the light of day.

A two-CD piece based around a poem written around the death of Smith’s friend Robert Mapplethorpe back in 1989, this live recording, captured at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2006, features Shields accompanying Smith’s spoken word with washes of guitar which, to these ears, sounds not unlike Stars Of The Lid or some such. The Coral Sea is released on PASK on July 11.