Things have been quiet from David Bowie since his 2004 heart surgery, but last week, a high quality digital rip of a shelved album from 2001 began appearing on various torrent trackers. Toy, as the 14-song album was called, consists mostly of songs from the earliest part of Bowie’s career re-recorded several decades later.

Toy was to be released as the follow-up to 1999’s Hours…. A dispute with Virgin Records saw 2002’s Heathen released instead. Two of the songs, “‘Uncle Floyd” and “Afraid’” made it onto Heathen. Three others saw the light of day as b-sides.

The Toy tracklist:

Uncle Floyd
Afraid
Baby Loves That Way
I Dig Everything
Conversation Piece
Let Me Sleep Beside You
Toy (Your Turn To Drive)
Hole In The Ground
Shadow Man
In The Heat Of The Morning
You’ve Got A Habit Of Leaving
Silly Boy Blue
Liza Jane
The London Boys

Gotta say, it’s a somewhat lackluster affair. I’m one of those Bowie nuts who thinks his youthful material is some of his best work, but with these re-recordings, he’s just phoning it in. So are the band. Still, it’s a free gift, so what am I complaining about? It’s good, it’s certainly not bad, but the originals were perfect and didn’t need tinkering with.

Below, a video for the original “Let Me Sleep Beside You”
 

 
The Toy remake: of “Let Me Sleep Beside You”
 

 
The original “In The Heat of the Morning:”
 

 
The Toy remake of “In the Heat of the Morning” can be heard here

Thank you Omaha Perez!