Spirit Touches Ground
| Spirit Touches Ground | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Josh Clayton-Felt | ||||
| Released | February 12, 2002 | |||
| Genre | Pop rock | |||
| Length | 59:37 | |||
| Label | Dreamworks | |||
| Producer | Josh Clayton-Felt | |||
| Josh Clayton-Felt chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Entertainment Weekly | B+ |
| PopMatters | Favorable |
| The Wichita Eagle | |
Spirit Touches Ground is the third studio album by singer-songwriter Josh Clayton-Felt, which was released through Dreamworks Records in 2002, two years after his death from cancer.
After the success of his first album, 1996's Inarticulate Nature Boy, Clayton-Felt prepared to release a new batch of songs under the title Center of Six.Record label A&M suspended all contracts and placed a freeze on recordings during their buyout by Universal Records, preventing the release of Center of Six; subsequently, over 200 artists were dropped during the post-acquisition "cleaning house" process, including Clayton-Felt. Further, the new owners refused to allow Clayton-Felt to use or buy back his previously recorded material, and he was contractually prevented from re-recording it for five years, though he continued working on the material.
Over the following years following the change of ownership, Clayton-Felt developed new material, self-releasing two recordings – ...Felt Like Making a Live Record and Beautiful Nowhere; whilst also continuing to lobby Universal to release its claim on his earlier work.
Clayton-Felt finished the final mixing and production of Spirit Touches Ground in early December 1999, just one week before being admitted to hospital with what turned out to be choriocarcinoma (a rare form of testicular cancer with the worst prognosis of all germ-cell cancers); he died at the age of 32 less than a month later. Universal relinquished its claim on his unreleased music while Clayton-Felt was hospitalized in a coma, his family whispering the long-sought news into his ear. Led by Laura Baker, Clayton-Felt's sister, a network of friends and fans lobbied for the promotion and distribution of this long-delayed material, eventually organizing for the album completed shortly before his death to be released under the Dreamworks label in 2002.
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Wikipedia