Photo: Steve Schapiro

At long last, a special David Bowie album has finally made its way out of the vault and into the spotlight. The Gouster, a previously unreleased Bowie album from various 1974 studio sessions, is now available to stream (or legally listen to) for the first time ever. As Spin notes, the soulful album — which laid the groundwork for his 1975 album Young Americans — is part of a larger Bowie compilation box set called Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) that was released earlier this week. (There are 12 albums, in total, included in the set.) “Gouster was a word unfamiliar to me, but David knew it as a type of dress code worn by African-American teens in the ’60’s, in Chicago,” explains producer Tony Visconti in the album’s liner notes. “But in the context of the album its meaning was attitude, an attitude of pride and hipness. Of all the songs we cut, we were enamored of the ones we chose for the album that portrayed this attitude.” Stream it away on Spotify — The Gouster tracks begin at number 50 — below.

