Bryan Ferry - Horoscope (1991)

In 1991 Bryan Ferry started recording songs for his first album of original material for four years, and the sessions yielded enough material for the 'Horoscope' album to be released. However, Ferry did not feel that the songs were good enough, as he'd become self-conscious about bringing out a new album, feeling that he had to write his masterpiece, and as the technology got more sophisticated, his opportunities expanded and the possibilities became endless. Initially he was upbeat about the prospect of releasing it quite quickly after the relative failure of 'Bete Noire', but by 1992 he found himself without either a manager or a producer, and with no one there to call a halt to his increasingly grandiose designs, the recording sessions just went on and on. The situation only stabilized when he hooked up again with his original manager, David Enthoven, who had come out of a ten-year retirement. Listening to the tracks intended for 'Horoscope,' Ferry, Enthoven, and the record company decided that even after all the years of work, they were still not ready, and while some reports claim that Virgin Records simply rejected the album out of hand, this is rigorously denied by Ferry himself, although he does admit that Warner Brothers in America didn’t like it as much. The consensus of opinion was that the main problem was the lack of anything commercial enough to be released as a single, and so the solution was to simply put the album on hold and try something else, releasing a covers album instead, in the form of 1992's 'Taxi'. Two years passed and a new album of original material was once again on the cards, so some of the songs from 'Horoscope' were revisited, with 'N.Y.C.', 'The 39 Steps', 'Gemini Moon', and 'The Only Face' being exhumed and included on 1994's 'Mamouna'. The rest of the songs have remained locked away, and apart from a much shorter version of 'Midnight Train' appearing on 'Avonmore' in 2014, they have not subsequently turned up on later albums, so this is definitely worth hearing as an idea of Ferry's vision in the early 90's. 

Track listing

01 The 39 Steps
02 The Only Face
03 N.Y.C
04 Midnight Train
05 Your Love Has Died
06 Gemini Moon
07 Blinded By The Life I'm Living
08 Mother Of Pearl 

Following a comment by Geof McM I've speed-corrected the album to slow it down by 5% and it does now match the available re-recordings, so I've replaced the original album in the folder.