Deliverance: Prince EP of unreleased tracks to arrive on anniversary of death

Out on Friday 21 April, Deliverance delivers intense gospel-blues tunes recorded while the star was without a record label and at odds with digital music trends

Prince … tracks completed by collaborator Ian Boxill will be released independently. Photograph: Liu Heung Shing/AP

An EP of previously unheard Prince material will be released on Friday, the first anniversary of the star’s death.

Entitled Deliverance, the EP will feature six newly unearthed songs recorded between 2006 and 2008. It is said to feature Man Opera – a track which includes a “four-movement medley”; I Am and an extended version of the same song; Touch Me; Sunrise Sunset; and No One Else. Its title track can be heard now on Soundcloud, a euphoric, gospel-infused blues ballad.

The songs were written and recorded during a period in which Prince was without a label and was ardently against the climate of online music sharing and downloads. The EP will be released independently via RMA, a Vancouver-based record company, and at present will only be available to download in the United States. It is not yet confirmed who will benefit from profits of these recordings.

Ian Boxhill, a long-time Prince collaborator who has also worked with the likes of 2Pac, Gladys Knight and Janet Jackson, co-wrote and co-produced all of the tracks beginning in 2006. Following Prince’s death, Boxill continued completing the compositions for this purpose. “I believe Deliverance is a timely release with everything going on in the world today, and in light of the one-year anniversary of his passing,” Boxhill says. “I hope when people hear Prince singing these songs it will bring comfort to many.

“Prince once told me that he would go to bed every night thinking of ways to bypass major labels and get his music directly to the public. When considering how to release this important work, we decided to go independent because that’s what Prince would have wanted.”

Variety claims to have heard the whole EP, and says it features a “gentle ballad”, “a complex, almost classical segment” and that it is overall “strongly reminiscent of Prince’s 2006 album 3121”.

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