Back in 2001, David Bowie recorded an album that never saw a release due to a dispute with Virgin Records. Now, thanks to the album surfacing online, it is finally available for the Thin White Duke’s rabid fans to hear.
Antiquiet reports on the leak of the album, titled Toy, that emerged on file-sharing websites as a CD-quality mp3. The 14-track album is rather unique, in that Bowie rerecords and reinterprets a number of his early and obscure songs, that many Bowie devotees have been chasing for years and the casual fan will have never heard.
The old songs have been given a modern going-over production-wise, with many of them written during the 60s before Bowie became the household name he did, and indeed one would think before he was even known as David Bowie (his early performing name, of course, being his real name, David Jones).
A number of songs from Toy ended up being on Bowie’s 2002 album Heathen, such as Afraid and Uncle Floyd (titled Slip Away on Heathen). Toy also includes the wonderful Let Me Lay Beside You, which also popped up on Bowie At The Beeb: The Best of the BBC Sessions 1968-72, hear that below.
Bowie has not released an album since 2003’s Reality, and doesn’t seem likely to any time soon. The leaked album is thus the most we might hear from him for a little while.
