David Bowie‘s lost 2001 album Toy, which leaked online back in 2011, is finally getting an official release. It’s set to arrive on January 7, the day after Bowie’s birthday, via Rhino. Today’s news comes with the announcement of David Bowie 5: Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001), the latest in a series of archival box sets chronicling the artist’s career. Listen to a radio edit of the Toy song ‘You’ve Got A Habit of Leaving’ below.
Toy was recorded shortly after Bowie’s 2000 Glastonbury performance alongside Sterling Campbell, Gail Ann Dorsey, Earl Slick, Mike Garson, Holly Palmer, Emm Gryner, Lisa Germano, Gerry Leonard, and Cuong Vu. “Toy is like a moment in time captured in an amber of joy, fire and energy,” the album’s co-producer Mark Plati said in a statement. “It’s the sound of people happy to be playing music. David revisited and re-examined his work from decades prior through prisms of experience and fresh perspective — a parallel not lost on me as I now revisit it twenty years later. From time to time, he used to say “Mark, this is our album” — I think because he knew I was so deeply in the trenches with him on that journey. I’m happy to finally be able to say it now belongs to all of us.”
Toy is also included in David Bowie 5: Brilliant Adventure, along with Black Tie White Noise, The Buddha Of Suburbia, Outside, Earthling, hours…, a collection of non-album singles and B-sides called Re:Call 5, and more.
