XTC fans hoping for new music from the group may be permanently out of luck, but former bandmates Terry Chambers and Colin Moulding are getting ready to give them the next best thing.

The duo, now billed as TC&I, have reunited for Great Aspirations, an EP of new recordings that promises to offer "some truly original stuff" while leaving room for "maybe a nod and a wink here and there." A release date for the collection has yet to be announced, but pre-orders are open for the next 30 days through PledgeMusic, where fans can choose between signed and unsigned copies on CD.

Chambers, as XTC fans will recall, left the lineup during the sessions for 1983's Mummer album, and in recent years has been involved with his son Kai's musical career. Moulding, meanwhile, continued his partnership with frontman Andy Partridge through the group's 2006 dissolution; in the years immediately after XTC ended, he was said to have lost interest in making music, but that's evidently changed.

News of the EP was leaked in late 2016 courtesy of Partridge, who told Twitter followers that Chambers and Moulding were in the studio last November. News of its impending release is sure to spark a fresh round of questions about an XTC reunion, but Partridge has remained unequivocal about his desire to leave that chapter of his career closed; as he put it in a Dec. 2016 tweet, "Would you marry your ex?"

The TC&I project's arrival follows the completion of a new XTC documentary, This Is Pop, announced earlier this year — and the timing is most likely intentional. "I think the word is out," Moulding mused at the time. "It’s taken a bloody long time, but I think people are catching up and appreciating what we did."

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