When Arthur Russell died on April 4, 1992, he left behind an archivist’s dream: hundreds upon hundreds of tapes and reels of music gone unreleased and unheard. Most of what the world knows of Russell’s work has been posthumous; only one “proper” album, the masterpiece World of Echo, ever saw release before he succumbed to AIDS. Arthur Russell has, both on his own and with his tireless collaborators (including David Byrne, Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass) proven himself a master of everything from early disco to classical minimalist compositions, constantly reconstituting himself in these vastly discordant spaces of music.

Today sees the release of Love Is Overtaking Me from Audika Records , a collection of tracks that see Arthur writing and recording within territories with no real personal referent: country and folk. Spanning form 1974 to 1990, these songs include bedroom demos, recordings from his many attempts at forming bands, and even some studio recordings with the likes of John Hammond. This record, curated in part by his late partner Tom Lee and edited and restored by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, is unlike anything one could imagine under the name “Arthur Russell”; that is, the songs are, in a sense, diametrically opposed to his often difficult and operose experimental compositions. And yet, in another sense, these simple pop songs are simply extensions of those compositions — extensions of an oeuvre unified, more than anything, by its sheer honesty.

Click here to hear several tracks.