AHFOD Era Leaks

[Roadie42]

You guys probably saw the Reddit posts here and here. Did anyone get a chance to save those songs? BTW, someone commented that they saw a MEGA folder with 75 (yes, seventy-five) unreleased songs. Do you guys have any info regarding that?

[fanofmusic05]

75? Jesus thats alot

[Holocene]

First time hearing about the MEGA leaks was also that reddit post and with all the recent leaks happening I 100% believe it happened. I'm conflicted because I love listening to demos but 75 is a lot and I don't know if/how this will hurt the band.

Where/who does everyone think these leaks originated from? Recording studio, record label?

Edited December 16, 2021 by Holocene

[dxm3557]

59 minutes ago, Roadie42 said:

You guys probably saw the Reddit posts here and here. Did anyone get a chance to save those songs? BTW, someone commented that they saw a MEGA folder with 75 (yes, seventy-five) unreleased songs. Do you guys have any info regarding that?

They're not "unreleased" per si, just different takes and mixes, claps, bass and drums takes, Chris mumbling random words over the official instrumental, and scrapped remixes of songs we already got on AHFoD. It's mostly Hymn for the Weekend, Miracles, Fun, Adventure of a Lifetime and The Race (under the title Kaleidoscope) that leaked this and last year. I think the amount of files is simply absurd... Is just too personal for the band and I hope no one ever leaks it, especially considering that we already got the best versions of all those songs.

Edited December 15, 2021 by dxm3557

[tyler21]

Afaik, Gold and Far Out are from a separate leak of session tapes, and not the 75+ song MEGA leak.

something is up with the AHFOD era, and it might be the production team.

[alexix7]

Cant believe that Break of Dawn (Vampire Symphony) did not make the cut to final album, i had that song on repeat from yesterday, it is definitely one of the better songs of AHFOD era. Also it its interesting how they completely changed AHFOD (song), it is totally different from album version of the song. 

[Saaapho]

There are around 100 files in total. When I have time, I'll list them all here with descriptions. Several AOAL, XMTS, Miracles/Out of this World, etc. Many are near identical mixes with just little differences in percussion or mixing (EX. guitar will be louder in one version than the other)

They're inevitably gonna leak in full some day, and I really don't want to be responsible, but I know y'all want to hear them. I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about this.

[szymixsiorek]

8 minutes ago, Saaapho said:

There are around 100 files in total. When I have time, I'll list them all here with descriptions. Several AOAL, XMTS, Miracles/Out of this World, etc. Many are near identical mixes with just little differences in percussion or mixing (EX. guitar will be louder in one version than the other)

They're inevitably gonna leak in full some day, and I really don't want to be responsible, but I know y'all want to hear them. I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about this.

Can you send me link to this drive ?

[RevolutionDude]

29 minutes ago, Saaapho said:

There are around 100 files in total. When I have time, I'll list them all here with descriptions. Several AOAL, XMTS, Miracles/Out of this World, etc. Many are near identical mixes with just little differences in percussion or mixing (EX. guitar will be louder in one version than the other)

They're inevitably gonna leak in full some day, and I really don't want to be responsible, but I know y'all want to hear them. I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about this.

I'd love to hear all those songs! Man, that's cool. I really don't want to be the one to ask for them, but if you do indeed have them, you have music history in your hands! What I would give to listen to them, though!

[Saaapho]

17 minutes ago, RevolutionDude said:

I'd love to hear all those songs! Man, that's cool. I really don't want to be the one to ask for them, but if you do indeed have them, you have music history in your hands! What I would give to listen to them, though!

As I said, I'm figuring out the best way to go about this. It's a sticky situation. I'll be on here throughout the day though answering questions. I'm sorry I'm not giving them up right at this moment.

[Nelson Gibb]

1 hour ago, Saaapho said:

As I said, I'm figuring out the best way to go about this. It's a sticky situation. I'll be on here throughout the day though answering questions. I'm sorry I'm not giving them up right at this moment.

I really respect your approach to this. To be honest, I don't know what I would do if I were in your position! Maybe instead of leaking the files yourself to a huge audience, you could send a small amount of people private links? But I suppose if you did that it would probably end up blowing up anyway. Definitely a tough situation...

[Saaapho]

3 minutes ago, Nelson Gibb said:

I really respect your approach to this. To be honest, I don't know what I would do if I were in your position! Maybe instead of leaking the files yourself to a huge audience, you could send a small amount of people private links? But I suppose if you did that it would probably end up blowing up anyway. Definitely a tough situation...

Yeah, you get it. I don't want to disrespect the band, but I know for a fact that I am not the only one who has access to these. They're gonna leak in mass sooner or later. I just don't want it to happen by accident. I don't want to upset anyone on either side. Doing a lot of option-weighing.

[Nelson Gibb]

16 minutes ago, Saaapho said:

Yeah, you get it. I don't want to disrespect the band, but I know for a fact that I am not the only one who has access to these. They're gonna leak in mass sooner or later. I just don't want it to happen by accident. I don't want to upset anyone on either side. Doing a lot of option-weighing.

To be honest, I would much rather hear songs like Gold and Far Out, or any other unreleased tracks that aren't just barely different versions of songs that we already know. Do you have any info regarding those songs and/or any other totally new ones? Someone mentioned above that they weren't part of the Mega leak?

[Ati ʍᵪ]

@Saaapho

You are the weirdest person i've ever seen in my life. You have something that damages the band. And you are saying something here and try to be kind. All you have to say is i'm not gonna share these things i stole. I don't care if you share or not. You alreade damaging Coldplay by taking stolen stuff and listen them selfishly. Believe me the band or their friends doesn't care if you share or not. If you have something and don't want to share just shut your mouth. Because people are being curious and giving so much energy to listen to them and being sad at the end. Show some respect, not just the band, people here too. You sharing the list here is not gonna do anything good so stop this.

[Saaapho]

26 minutes ago, Ati ʍᵪ said:

@Saaapho

You are the weirdest person i've ever seen in my life. You have something that damages the band. And you are saying something here and try to be kind. All you have to say is i'm not gonna share these things i stole. I don't care if you share or not. You alreade damaging Coldplay by taking stolen stuff and listen them selfishly. Believe me the band or their friends doesn't care if you share or not. If you have something and don't want to share just shut your mouth. Because people are being curious and giving so much energy to listen to them and being sad at the end. Show some respect, not just the band, people here too. You sharing the list here is not gonna do anything good so stop this.

Are you ok?

[Saaapho]

26 minutes ago, Nelson Gibb said:

To be honest, I would much rather hear songs like Gold and Far Out, or any other unreleased tracks that aren't just barely different versions of songs that we already know. Do you have any info regarding those songs and/or any other totally new ones? Someone mentioned above that they weren't part of the Mega leak?

I can attest to this. Someone named Admarice or something has access to the Gold one and perhaps the others. I stopped communication with them after they kept berating me on twitter for things that weren’t my fault and harrassing my friends via discord. They are the source of the Gold leak but I wouldn’t talk to them if you want to keep your sanity.

[CP-EST]

 

56 minutes ago, Saaapho said:

I don't want to disrespect the band, but I know for a fact that I am not the only one who has access to these. They're gonna leak in mass sooner or later. I just don't want it to happen by accident. I don't want to upset anyone on either side. Doing a lot of option-weighing.

If you don't want to upset anyone, then the right thing would be to keep quiet about, not doing your "option-weighing" publicly. I mean it like a very polite advice.

Remember, we are talking about the stuff, which are not supposed to be heard by wider audience at all and not even known about really.

[Captain Crieff]

36 minutes ago, Ati ʍᵪ said:

@Saaapho

You are the weirdest person i've ever seen in my life. You have something that damages the band. And you are saying something here and try to be kind. All you have to say is i'm not gonna share these things i stole. I don't care if you share or not. You alreade damaging Coldplay by taking stolen stuff and listen them selfishly. Believe me the band or their friends doesn't care if you share or not. If you have something and don't want to share just shut your mouth. Because people are being curious and giving so much energy to listen to them and being sad at the end. Show some respect, not just the band, people here too. You sharing the list here is not gonna do anything good so stop this.

Hey no need for this. She's explicitly saying she's very conflicted about this and where does it say she stole the files? The source of the leak is someone else.

"If you have something and don't want to share just shut your mouth." believe me it's not that easy. Imagine you have access to all these files but you can't talk about it anywhere, not even on a discussion forum about the band  

 

@Saaapho my advice is don't share the files at all. Not the same situation but I once found a leaked song by another band and didn't share the leak itself but ended up giving enough information for people to go and find it themselves (not my smartest move but keeping it all to myself seemed selfish) and it felt... not great. I low key still feel bad about it. You don't want to be responsible for this. And since more people have access, they will leak anyway at some point

[Captain Crieff]

I'm so intrigued by how the hell this happened though. Did someone hack a particular hard drive? is the original source of the leak someone involved with the recording/production of the album? How are people getting these files?? (Don't answer that last question lol that would be the exact same mistake I made)

[CP-EST]

9 minutes ago, Captain Crieff said:

I'm so intrigued by how the hell this happened though. Did someone hack a particular hard drive? is the original source of the leak someone involved with the recording/production of the album? How are people getting these files?? (Don't answer that last question lol that would be the exact same mistake I made)

Whoever is responsible for leaking had to feel safe enough that anyone doesn't find out about this act, unless it was leaked deliberately or accidentally. Is it known at this point, what was the source behind Viva era leaks?

There are so many things, what can go wrong with storing digital files, so let's just hope Chris' iPhone is safe. ? 

[lennyrott1]

It's fascinating what AHFOD could have been -- it sounds to me like Chris writes songs and takes instrumental bits from the band to create mixes. Then I imagine they settle on their favorite songs and record in studio together to finalize the mix. 

My takeaways from the smaller leak are: 

• Break of Dawn and the alt verison of AHFOD are very, very good. BoD reminds me a bit of this song. You have interesting percussion and guitar styles we've never heard from Coldplay and the songs have extremely powerful and catchy hooks. 
• The album could have leaned more indie rock. It sounds like Break of Dawn, Up&Up, Set Me Free (aka Birds) all leaned into a fun brit-pop alt rock indie style. 
• The album also could have been a cringey electro-pop mess. Forever, Whatever is extremely interesting -- it almost sounds like a Kanye song. But taken with Drunk & High, Legends, and this mix of Miracles, I think it sounds like they were going for a more modern pop, light and chillwave type of sound. 

In the end, we know that working with Stargate helped the band meld multiple genres on AHFOD into a pretty consistent package. However, these demos reveal some ideas that I think could have improved the era. I hope we eventually hear a completed The Race and Break of Dawn. And even some of the sonic concepts on Forever,Whatever would be interesting to hear on an upcoming volume of MOTS given the weird alien vocals. 

[Saaapho]

55 minutes ago, CP-EST said:

Whoever is responsible for leaking had to feel safe enough that anyone doesn't find out about this act, unless it was leaked deliberately or accidentally. Is it known at this point, what was the source behind Viva era leaks?

There are so many things, what can go wrong with storing digital files, so let's just hope Chris' iPhone is safe. ? 

My understanding is that someone swiped all the files from the studio and kept them hidden until the hype of MOTS. They were then sold to some people who then sent them to others, etc. How I came into them was a friend saying "hey I have these, do you want them?" and me saying "sure"

I think that these have been circulating for a while. Interestingly, Heart on Fire is not among them, leading me to believe HoF is from another era. There are no Army of One demos either. I think this was swiped well before the record was complete.

[TheLostColdplayer]

Little premise: I'm not one that listens to album leaks and I love buying CDs, which is one of my passions.

But... to those who say that leaking unreleased songs is a huge crime I ask: Have you ever listened to the (wonderful) Viva la Vida demos? "Bloodless Revolution", "Famous Old Painters", "The Man Who Swears", etc... Do you feel guilty for listening to those? Do you wish no one ever released those demos?

Because, in my opinion, the situation here is rather similar. Then the leaks happened around three years later, this time six years have gone by since A Head Full of Dreams came out, so these demos are actually quite old, compared to those. And they are scrapped or already released songs, which otherwise would remain locked in some dusty archive with no one listening to them. And even if they would be released someday, it would be in a completely different form ("Arabesque", "People of the Pride").

Many artists, like The Beatles or The Beach Boys ended up releasing or taking part in the release of scrapped songs and alternate versions. Because for fans that is a way of discovering a bit more about the creative process behind an album by their favourite artists, non-fans usually completely ignore such material.

Long story short, I'm not asking for the leaks or anything similar. But before insulting someone, I believe we should think carefully what we would do if we were in their shoes. Would I delete the files without listening to them?

[Nelson Gibb]

@Saaapho You said you wouldn't mind answering some questions, right? If not, I completely understand! My question is, are there any totally new songs in the leak, or is it ALL just incomplete versions of the AHFOD tracks? If so, do you think they will eventually leak even if you are not the person to do so?

[Saaapho]

33 minutes ago, Nelson Gibb said:

@Saaapho You said you wouldn't mind answering some questions, right? If not, I completely understand! My question is, are there any totally new songs in the leak, or is it ALL just incomplete versions of the AHFOD tracks? If so, do you think they will eventually leak even if you are not the person to do so?

The only NEW new tracks are: Vampire Symphony (Break of Dawn), Kaleidoscope (The Race), Forever Whatever, and Family Tree (what you're hearing as the early AHFOD)

I have no idea when but they have to leak at some point. And for anyone else, I'm more than happy to answer questions.