Steve Kilbey has announced on his Facebook page this morning that tapes from sessions he was working on in 1998 have been unearthed and that he fully intends to complete them in the near future.
The recording was a collaborative piece with Irish musician Frank Kearns that Kilbey travelled to Ireland to record, but was never finished. In the post, he intimates that it was a heroin habit that got in the way of the record being completed.
“In 1998 I went to Ireland to record an album with Frank Kearns,” the post begins. “Although I smuggled enough heroin in with me to keep an army of horses sedated for a month I quickly ran out (I got very very sick) we never finished our record.
“Frank just sent me the 'tapes' and I'm gonna finally get it done! It sounds beautiful. As fresh as ever!”
Kearns recently appeared on the church's most recent studio album Untitled #23 and previously produced an album for Idol winner, and fellow Irishman, Damien Leith.
Kilbey has been open about his relationship with heroin in recent years, even crediting its influence to much of the fluidity on the band's eighth record Priest=Aura.
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Speaking with the Sydney Morning Herald prior to that album's reissue last year, he admitted that opiates were a big part of his life around the time the band made that record.
“I was deliriously in love with opium and heroin,” he said. “I was using them every day … drugs were becoming very important to me.”
Later in the same interview he talks about being happy without the drug.
“I didn't leave heroin behind, it left me behind,” he said. “One day it suddenly occurred to me … that I was happy and heroin wasn't a part of the equation.”
Kilbey was arrested in New York City's Alphabet City district trying to buy heroin while on tour in 1999. He missed the band's show that night and was sentence to a day's community service after spending a night in prison.
