Further to our previous items regarding the news that Roger Waters was making two new tracks available soon on the internet, for his fans to download, we now have the great news for you that these are now live on Roger's website - RogerWaters.com - and they are free!

Many thousands of Roger's fans have been patiently waiting today for the site to be updated with the tracks, and were rewarded at the end of the afternoon (UK time) with a stark new home page on the site.

It displayed the graphic to the right, along with links to the songs in three popular formats - Quicktime, Real Audio, and Windows Media. There are also links to the full lyrics of the songs, which are high quality, work in progress versions.

The two new songs are "To Kill The Child" (approximately 3 and a half minutes long) and "Leaving Beirut" (approximately 12 and a half minutes). Both feature strong lyrics, and are very timely in subject matter.

The tragic events in Beslan, Russia over the last couple of days, with the siege in the school and the resulting murder of hundreds of small, innocent children, are echoed to a degree in "To Kill The Child" - which questions the reason behind senseless slaughter, especially of civilians, in the name of war.

"Leaving Beirut" has already had some coverage, thanks to an interview on Icelandic TV last year which is transcribed on this site (click on the link). However, the lyrics give a lot more detail than Roger was able to impart in the interview, and it is a fascinating look at his younger days, interspersed with some biting, topical comments about the war, and the role of the various politicians and world leaders in recent events.

Musically, they are both akin to Roger's later work - for example, on Amused To Death. Being in effect demos, the songs were recorded with a somewhat reduced band than normal, but sound no worse for that. The credits give the band as follows: Roger - Vocals, Guitar, Bass & Keyboards, Graham Broad - Drums, Andy Fairweather Low - Guitar, and Katie Kissoon, Carol Kenyon and PP Arnold on vocals.

When Roger's manager Mark Fenwick contacted us with the news that today would see the tracks becoming available, he also confirmed that they will also be available to purchase through the recognised download sites, either as a pair or individually, from Tuesday 7th September. Roger's site lists the "download partners", which are as follows:

BuyMusic, iTunes, MusicMatch, MusicNet, MusicNow, Napster, Real / Rhapsody, SonyConnect, and Walmart.com.

We believe that the retail version of the tracks will be of higher quality than the free ones on Roger's site - but we will confirm this soon. Having said that, certainly the "Hi" quality Windows Media version of both tracks would be hard to better in our view.

The tracks are great tasters for Roger's forthcoming rock album, currently expected within the next year or so (dependent on the release of his opera, Ca Ira). However, Mark Fenwick was not sure at this stage whether they would be appearing on the new album.

Our thanks as ever to Mark for the information, and for his time in responding to our queries. And to Roger himself, for releasing this new material!