Kurt Cobains’s home recordings will form the meat of the Montage of Heck soundtrack album, which is being released on 20 November.
The album is to feature recordings Cobain made on cassette at home, comprising snippets of songs, demos, “musical experiments” as well as tracks that ended on Nirvana albums. In addition to the album, Cobain’s home recording of the Beatles’ And I Love Her is to be released on 7in single, backed by an early demo of Sappy.
The album will come in two versions – a 13-track standard edition and a 31-track deluxe edition.
Since Cobain died in April 1994, fans have not been deprived of the chance to hear most everything he happened to sing while a tape player was rolling. There have been three posthumous live albums, a rarities box set featuring scores of unreleased recordings, two singles box sets, and two greatest hits albums. All three of Nirvana’s albums have also been rereleased in 20th anniversary editions, with bonus discs of live recordings, demos and alternate versions. The amount of posthumously released material far outweighs the amount Cobain released while alive.
One reason for the continued hunt for new material might be that Cobain’s catalogue continues to generate revenue even as income from most performer’s recordings tails off. In 2013, CNBC reported, Nirvana sold 350,000 albums and 900,000 singles, as well as generating revenue from 72m online streams, 300,000 radio plays and from merchandise.
“[Cobain’s] catalogue has an income stream that has maintained a very steady pace and even growth when most music catalogues have fallen dramatically,” said music executive Larry Mestel, who owned the rights to a portion of Nirvana’s publishing from 2006 to 2013.
