My Red Book is Rick Astley's seventh studio album. It was due for release sometime in early 2013 and it would have been his first album of original material since 2001's Keep it Turned On (His 2005 album, Portrait, was all covers). Two singles from the album were released (Lights Out, way back in 2010, and Superman in late 2012) and promotional copies were given out to fans. For whatever reason, the album wasn't released and to this day, it hasn't seen the light of day. It is unknown why Rick chose not to release the album and there is little to no information about it online (there isn't a Wikipedia page and it's not listed on his official website). The aim of this blog post is to give people a chance to hear the album as, despite being more than two years overdue, it hasn't been leaked online. I had actually been searching for a download of the album for a while but I had no luck. All I could find was a bootleg with the studio versions of Superman and Lights Out, another track, Relying on You, that wasn't even from My Red Book and terrible quality live recordings of some of the other tracks. I recently had a bit of luck though. I managed to find a CDr of the album on Discogs so I ordered it. I'll admit, I was worried that it was going to be a fake. About two weeks later, the album arrived so I opened it, put it into my PS3 and, to my surprise, it was the real thing. Listening to the album made me wonder even more why it wasn't released. Rick was heavily involved in the production of the album and he plays guitar and drums on a lot of the tracks. This gives the album more of a warm, live band sound which is quite different to his early synth-pop stuff. This isn't something that I'd usually do, but I've decided to make the tracks available to download. There hasn't been any word on an official release yet and I really feel like this is his best work. If it ever does get released, I'll delete the files straight away; I might even buy the CD myself. Until then, here's a link to download it:
https://www.sendspace.com/file/rxizb5
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Released in 1990, Flood was They Might Be Giants' third studio album and their first album released under major record label, Elektra Records. This was a landmark album, providing the band's biggest Hit (Birdhouse in Your Soul), and many consider it their best work. To celebrate this momentous occasion, the band have provided a free download. A live performance of the album in its entirety. These performances are culled from a 2014 tour of Australia and according to Flansburgh, "I would be lying if I said this was something we carefully planned,". he went on to say that they "wanted to do something different for the second show. So we played Flood in its entirety in a few different cities across Australia". The band did something similar, last year, with the first album and this proved successful. It's a well known fact that They Might Be Giants are one of the most internet friendly bands, and between these two albums and making their music available to stream on Youtube, they've really been embracing the digital age. The album can be downloaded here: |