David Bowie will be putting out two newly recorded songs, "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" and "'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore," as both a digital single and 10-inch vinyl release this month. The latter track, a dizzying collage of chaotically arranged drums, piano and distorted vocals, has been released after debuting on BBC Radio 6.
A post on Bowie's Facebook calls the tune a "demo track," which the singer wrote, performed and recorded in his home studio, and offers a description of the song from the singer: "If Vorticists wrote rock music it might have sounded like this." Vorticism was an art and poetry movement in the U.K. around the time of the First World War. The Facebook post claims the song "acknowledges the shocking rawness" of that war, though its title is a play on the 1629 theatrical tragedy 'Tis a Pity She's a Whore.
The vinyl single will come out in the U.K. first on November 17th, followed by a "Black Friday" Record Store Day release in the U.S. on November 28th.
The A-side, "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)," will also appear on the Bowie box set Nothing Has Changed, out November 18th, which presents songs from Bowie's entire career in reverse chronological order over two or three discs, depending on the version. In addition to "Sue," the box set contains two tracks from Bowie's unreleased 2001 album Toy.
