David Bowie’s Blackstar ended his career in a manner that was jaw-droppingly perfect, so much so that the idea of hearing any more material from the great man seems strange. But it’s important to remember that he was continuing to work on new material up right to his death — he had an entire new album planned, and who knows what else hidden away in an archive that apparently rivals Prince’s in terms of exhaustiveness.
That new album is not the one that’s being released on an upcoming box set, however — instead, it’s The Gouster, a soul-funk experiment that later ended up evolving into Young Americans. The Gouster has never seen the light of day, and we can but hope it’s not an exercise in barrel-scraping. For what it’s worth, longtime Bowie producer Tony Visconti seems upbeat about the release: he’s written about it on Bowie’s official Facebook page, and describes it as the result of “want[ing] to make a killer soul album, which was quite insane, but pioneers like the Righteous Brothers were there before us.”
The album will be released as part of Who Can I Be Now? (1974-76), full details of which will apparently emerge next week.