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Neil Young's Archives Vol. 2 will include 4 unreleased albums

Even as he continues to tour and finalize a new Daniel Lanois-produced set of songs, work pushes ahead on the second installment of Neil Young's multi-volume career retrospective, Archives.

According to a post on Young's own news page, NY Times, the second set of the Archives series will include three unreleased studio albums plus a live set.

"Four unreleased albums from this period are being rebuilt and will be available in the NYA Special Release Series. Chrome Dreams, Homegrown and Oceanside-Countryside are the three unreleased studio albums. Also from this period is the unreleased Odeon-Budokan live recording produced by David Briggs and Tim Mulligan."

The post says the Archives team is working on the interactive Blu-Ray optimized platform developed by Young's late collaborator Larry Johnsonm but adds that the unreleased albums "initially will be released in vinyl from analog masters as they originally were created for that format. So now is the time to get your new phonograph player. The new players, built with today's technology, are exceptionally good." Young's team similarly advocated that fans purchase Blu-Ray technology for the first volume of the Archives series.

"Volume 2 promises even more content than Volume 1, with many unreleased tracks," the site says. For my post speculating on what might be up for consideration on Volume 2, check here.

Comment by John Flavell on July 25, 2010 at 8:08pm: Haven't some of these been released as bootlegs or imports?

Comment by Paul Cantin on July 25, 2010 at 8:19pm: We are talking about stuff released by Neil. Yes various versions have been released on bootleg and in fact, if you believe the reported track listings, Neil used some of the songs (or versions of songs) from Chrome Dreams and Homegrown on other "officially" released records.

Comment by RP N10 on July 26, 2010 at 3:09am: What isn't clear yet is whether these records will form part of the Archives Vol 2 box (as happened with the performance series) or be discrete releases. Timing seems to be well into next year as well. Neil and team are clearly banking on increased life expectancy amongst his fans.

Comment by Paul Cantin on July 26, 2010 at 5:30am: Given the reference in the message to all the materials collected for this batch, I think it is reasonable to infer that all that stuff is for integrating into the blu-ray versions and not simple standalone CDs. But it's Neil, so you never know. I agree timing wont be imminent. He has the Lanois record to release. And trunk show on DVD.

Comment by Paul Cantin on July 26, 2010 at 6:14am: Reading into the original post at NYTimes, I think this is what is likely to happen. Archives presents the material in the chronological order of its creation. So if you think about Vol. 1, ATGR or Harvest weren't presented as complete albums either, there was just a flow of songs spread across the discs. In this upcoming case, the unreleased albums will be extracted from the chronological flow of Archives 2 and presented as they would have been released had they not been cancelled. So it is probably a fact that the same material will be released once again in two configurations, as with the performance series discs and Archives Vol. 1. I think this approach explains the NYTimes reference to these albums being "rebuilt."

Comment by RP N10 on July 26, 2010 at 2:07pm: The Archives Guy's posts on rust don't add a lot either; he may well not know either. I take your point on the 1st 4 studio records which then surfaced as Original Release Series post Volume 1 but a fair amount of those tracks were different mixes/ versions. The Performance Series OTOH was issued before and then issued again as a chunk of NYA 1. The new/old 4 are a new Special Release Series so we don't know how they'll be treated for Archive purposes. Interestingly no word on Time Fades Away either as ORS or in extended version in the Perfomance Series.

The one thing we can be sure of is whatever we think it might be it'll most likely be different.

Comment by Paul Cantin on July 26, 2010 at 4:59pm: Def agree, ESP on last point, only to add that whatever Neil intends to do today ... Wait a week and see what he wants to do then, bless him.

Comment by Easy Ed on July 27, 2010 at 9:15am: December 21,2039/Palo Alto Home for the Aged
Neil Young has announced today the release date for Archive Volume 2. "We have completed all the mixes and are proud to present these to my fans in the new Holographic Internal Memory Chip format. I hope to have this out by Christmas 2043 if all goes according to plan". Those of you may recall that Young was one of the first people to be placed in a cryogenic chamber back in 2019 to await new medical advances and was defrosted just three years ago. He'll be appearing on Larry King's show tonight to talk about this new box set.