Apparently an unreleased Sufjan Stevens album was found in a Brooklyn dumpster. Michelle Geslani, writing for Consequence of Sound:
“I used to work next door to Sufjan’s studio in Brooklyn,” an anonymous poster recounted on Reddit yesterday. “One day, while he was renovating the place, he threw a bunch of stuff into the building’s dumpster. I salvaged this…as far as I know, I don’t think it’s ever been released.”
And from an interview with the album’s finder, via Stereogum:
I deleted the Reddit post because I felt awful about sharing the album after Asthmatic Kitty’s spokesperson kindly asked me not to. That was definitely a misstep on my part. I should have respected his wishes. On the other hand…this is trash we’re talking about. Publicly available trash. I didn’t Frankenstein the album together; it was right there, perfectly intact, complete with a clean-cut square of album art and a track listing. After discovering that it was never released, and reading the desperation from Sufjan fans who really wanted to hear this little piece of his history, I decided it best to allow Stalker to live through the self-multiplying preservationists that make the internet what it is. The alternative was a sad, quiet death for an album that I think shows a wonderfully playful side of Sufjan’s early career.