Rice's third solo record is set for an early November release.

Those of you who'd all but forgotten about Damien Rice could be forgiven seeing as it's been eight years since the former Juniper man released an album. The Kildare man's prolonged hiatus from the music industry is set to come to a close in a matter of months though, after Rice took to social media recently to tease the release of his forthcoming new record 'My Favourite Faded Fantasy'.

Rice has long been rumoured to be working on new material but yesterday evening's announcement was the first concrete announcement as to his plans. The ten track album will be released on October 31st and, according to a tweet from George Ergatoudis from the BBC, a track called 'The Greatest Bastard' rivals anything the Irishman has released thus far.

Damien Rice burst on to the music scene back in 2002 with his debut album 'O' which was released to rave reviews worldwide. His follow-up, 2006's '9' charted higher than his debut but failed to achieve the same comprehensive acclaim as its predecessor.

Rice recently played a two-and-a-half hour set in Whelan's to mark the live music venue's 24th anniversary, his first live date in Ireland in six years.

*UPDATE* The album is available for pre-order on www.damienrice.com and the album's title track will receive its first airplay after 7PM today on bbc.co.uk/radio1