The Hidden Archives

My recording sessions frequently produce more material than can be released on an album.  In my world it's pretty routine that there is additional material that goes unreleased for each album.  

For me, the reasons that material isn't released are:

1. Pieces that were not released on the initial album is because those pieces didn't fit the overall direction or theme of the album. 
2. All material did fit the thematic direction and concept, but there was more material than would fit on a single CD.
3. There are so many other ongoing projects in continual work that the unreleased material is archived and all but forgotten after the initial album release.

I think it's sometimes assumed that if a track wasn't released, then it was deemed not good enough to be released.  That's not been the situation in my work; material remains unreleased due to one or more of the preceding reasons.

There are instances wherein entire unreleased albums are eventually released.  A couple of examples are my album Nograd, recorded with Sandor Szabo in 2009 that was not released until 2020, 11 years after it was recorded.  Another is the album I dreamed of invisible journeys, with Mark Wingfield.  That was recorded in 2015, but not released until 2022.  The delays in these instances were due to so many other projects happening concurrently, and their release dates being continually pushed back.  An 11-year delay is, for me, very rare.  Usually an album is released within a year or two of when it was recorded.  However, as of this writing, there are a few entirely completed and finished albums that are unreleased; merely waiting for an available slot in the release schedule.

And what becomes of the unreleased material that is not an entire album, but is additional material?  This refers to pieces which were recorded during the original recording sessions for a released album, but did not make it onto the record and remain in a kind of archival limbo.  They don't get added to the next album by the same artists, as that new album has nothing to do with what preceded it, and no doubt that newer record may also have some unreleased pieces of its own.  What becomes of the unreleased material is that the master recordings are all archived and kept in safe storage.  

Right now, I likely have almost as much unreleased material as I have in released material.  Hours and hours of it.  If it were all released, my discography would likely double in size.

So why does it all remain archived, hidden, and not released?  Releasing an album involves an extreme amount of time and work.  For me, the recording sessions are actually the quickest phase of an album project.  After the recording sessions, it goes into post production which usually requires several months.  Then the cover art and design and all the legal steps required for an album release.  While this is all happening, other recording sessions are taking place.  I am always simultaneously working on multiple album projects.  I suppose the short answer to why none of it has yet been released is a simple lack of time.  

I would like to determine a system of releasing some of the unreleased material.  I would like to find a method of constructing album releases and creating a release schedule for this material.  Of course, this is easier said than done, as I already have a full album release schedule that never seems to diminish, and in fact grows a little each year.  Maybe there's a way of adding one album to the annual schedule that is an album of unreleased material.  I don't really know how I can squeeze it in to an already crowded release schedule.

Getting someone to help with the backlog of material might be a positive step.

I'm not sure how to make it work.  But of late I have been thinking about this issue rather extensively.

-kk