Square Peg recording session in Norway. 
(Picture from bowers-wilkins.com)

This week, Apparatjik are offering a 24-bit studio-quality version of their second album Square Peg in a Round Hole as a free download on their Facebook page (as “Draft 7”).

This is a high-quality FLAC version (472 MB) of the original 12-track album, which first appeared in lower MP3 quality as part of the “Apparatjik World” iPad app back in November and later as “Draft 1” in the ongoing fan collaboration project on Facebook.

Apparatjik are releasing this version of the album in collaboration with British loudspeaker company Bowers and Wilkins and their online community Society Of Sound.

“we go to quite an extent to make our music sound the way we want it to and it’s great to be able to offer a 24 bit version of the first draft of the album through society of sound. this exclusive release ‘square peg in a round hole – draft 7’ is mastered at abbey road studios by geoff pesche straight from our studio masters so what we listened to in studio is what you will hear”, the band says in a new blog post on the Society Of Sound website.

The whole blog post, where the band talk about the recording process and the fan collaboration project can be found here.

The new Apparatjik album Square Peg in a Round Hole, which was released exclusively for iPads last month, is now available for everyone to stream and download on Apparatjik’s Facebook.

It features Magne on lead vocals at the beginning of “Combat Disco Music” and at the end of “Control Park”.

However, this is only the “first draft” of the album. Apparatjik now invite fans to submit ideas and even remix the songs, resulting in a new “draft” being released each week until the final version of the album is released on 21 February 2012.

Full album stems in WAV-format can now be downloaded from Apparatjik.com, where you can find further instructions on how to proceed.

UK music site thefourohfive.com quotes a new press release about the album project:

“Apparatjik is chiefly a conduit for creative trip-wiring: first you find out how a thing works, then you break it. all children learn this way. all adults too. on the new album we have collaborated with other artists and now we want to invite our fans and other musicians to contribute by commenting, voting for ideas or taking raw elements from the album and work with, embellish and submit back to us. we have collaborated with our fans in this way for visual projects like ‘everybody is a pixel’ at the Neue Nationgalerie in Berlin and our new iPad magazine ‘apparatjik world’. this time we’ll try with music.”

Thefourohfive.com also reveals ambitious concert plans for next year:

“The group are also set to bring ‘Apparatjik World’ (iPad Magazine/new album/live performances) to 11 cities starting mid 2012 including London, Oslo and Copenhagen and their first dates in the US. More on that soon.”