Less than a month after dropping its debut EP, Peter Hook’s triple-bass supergroup Freebass — which also features The Smiths’ Andy Rourke and Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield of The Stone Roses and Primal Scream — today released its five-years-in-the-making album, ‘It’s a Beautiful Life.’

Ex-New Order bassist Peter Hook’s long-gestating Freebass — a triple-bass supergroup featuring The Smiths’ Andy Rourke and Gary “Mani” Mounfield of The Stone Roses and Primal Scream — today released its debut EP and will make its official live debut in London and Manchester in June.

Primal Scream will perform its 1991 classic Screamadelica— the album that saw the band shed its C86 indie-pop sound in favor of house-influenced, druggy dance-rock — in its entirety for the first time ever Nov. 27 at London’s Olympia.

Peter Hook last night christened his new Manchester club FAC251 — housed in the former headquarters of Factory Records — with members of The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays helping perform a career-spanning set that included the live debuts of an unfinished Joy Division song and a New Order outtake.

In some ways it’s the antidote to the schmaltzy, celeb-soaked remakes of “We Are the World” and R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts”: a new Haiti benefit single recorded by iconic punk and post-figures such as The Pogues’ Shane MacGowan, Nick Cave, Mick Jones of The Clash, the Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock, Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders and Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie.

Alan McGee’s legendary Creation Records label — home to such ’80s and ’90s Brit luminaries as The Jesus and Mary Chain (shown above), Primal Scream, Teenage Fanclub, My Bloody Valentine, The House of Love and Oasis — will be the subject of ‘Upside Down,’ a new documentary expected to hit theaters, DVD and television next year.

Former New Order bassist Peter Hook’s long-gestating Freebass project — which also features the four-stringed talents of The Smiths’ Andy Rourke and Gary “Mani” Mounfield […]