Fish Fans Rejoice: Beloved Prog Icon Launches ‘Open Vaults’ Project with Free Weekly Releases

•  Fish Fans Rejoice: Beloved Prog Icon Launches ‘Open Vaults’ Project with Free Weekly Releases

Prog rock legend Fish has unveiled the kind of gift for fans devotees once only dreamed about: an open-ended digital series called “Open Vaults,” delivering previously unheard studio outtakes, live multitracks, handwritten lyric scans, and personal commentaries—absolutely free—every Friday for a full year.

Speaking from his garden studio in Haddington, the 66-year-old singer explained that lockdown archiving sessions made him realise “there’s an ocean of music and memory sitting on shelves, gathering dust, when it could be breathing in someone’s headphones.” Rather than license the trove to a label, Fish partnered with the non-profit Internet Archive to host lossless audio, 4K-scanned artwork, and high-resolution concert footage dating back to 1981.

The inaugural drop goes live this Friday at 18:00 BST and features the complete Hamburg ’87 soundboard—long whispered about on bootleg forums—plus alternate vocal takes of “Sugar Mice” and an unreleased acoustic song, “Paper Boats.” Each release will be accompanied by a ten-minute podcast in which Fish recounts the context, the arguments, and the triumphs behind the tapes.

Fans erupted within minutes of the announcement. Hashtags #OpenVaults and #ThankYouFish trended across X and Facebook as longtime followers praised the decision to forgo paywalls. “This is the ultimate love letter,” wrote one fan. “He’s turning nostalgia into a living, breathing archive.”

Streaming platform Bandcamp will mirror the downloads so “no gem is lost again,” and observers predict the move will inspire other veterans to reclaim their legacies without corporate mediation.

Fish stressed the project is not a farewell. “It’s a conversation—one reel at a time,” he smiled. “If these songs meant something to you then, let them mean something new now.” Open Vaults is scheduled to run through June 2026, promising a steady tide of rediscovered

treasures.