Billy Corgan plots “two LPs” of Zwan vault songs: 60-plus tracks, remixed and remastered

Billy Corgan has confirmed a concrete release plan for Zwan deep in the vault: all songs on the original “Mary Star of the Sea” will be “remixed and remastered,” and he’s “maybe two more LPs” of unreleased tracks away. He also puts a number on the stash, saying there are “60-plus unreleased Zwan songs that have never been released,” not just alternate versions but “other songs” too. In other words, this is not a vague nostalgia promise. It is a segmentation plan with a stockpile behind it.

The “two LPs” line matters because it is a direct answer to the scale problem he previously described. In 2023, around the 20th anniversary of “Mary Star of the Sea,” Corgan told Rolling Stone he was “working on a box set” and had “65 unreleased songs” to work with, while also admitting he was “not sure” when it would be released. He then floated a strategy that sounds like any producer trying to avoid an overwhelming product: release the music in segments instead of as one massive set, because asking fans to consume everything at once would be “too much.” Now the Stereogum update effectively locks in that approach, with remixing and remastering as the first leg and “maybe two more LPs” as the second.

For context, Zwan was a short-lived supergroup formed in 2001 during a Smashing Pumpkins hiatus. Corgan built it alongside Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, A Perfect Circle’s Paz Lenchantin, Slint’s David Pajo, and Chavez’s Matt Sweeney. They released one album, 2003’s “Mary Star Of The Sea,” and broke up shortly after. Corgan later rejoined Smashing Pumpkins in 2006, and the band has remained active since. That background matters for how catalog assets behave: when a project stops, the recordings can go quiet, but writing does not. Corgan’s point that “There was a lot of writing in that band” explains why the vault exists at all.

Now zoom out to why this is strategically interesting beyond hardcore fan forums. Music releases are increasingly catalog-led businesses, and vault material is the closest thing the industry has to durable inventory. But vaults come with frictions. There are rights to clear, credits to confirm, and masters that may or may not already exist in the form you want to sell. Remix and remastering also repositions the product technically, turning older recordings into something presented as newly refreshed. When an artist like Corgan says he is revisiting the album and remastering it, he is effectively re-launching “Mary Star Of The Sea” for a new listening environment, while using the remaining unreleased tracks to extend the monetization window.

The rollout logic he describes is also a business case. He explicitly compares what could happen if everything shipped at once: he says a box set “would be, like, 20 records long… and it’s just too much to ask fans to take on.” That is not just an artistic preference. It is product packaging and demand management. For executives, that is a familiar tension: scale vs. attention. Too many records can suppress conversion because consumers do not know where to start, and the buying instinct softens. By contrast, a segmented approach gives each release a clearer story arc, which can improve marketing focus and create repeated moments of relevance.

There is another layer: this is happening alongside Corgan’s broader career activity. The source notes that Corgan got back together with Smashing Pumpkins in 2006 and they have been routinely active since then. It also says Corgan has revealed Smashing Pumpkins are wanting to be asked to bring their “A Night Of Mellon Collie And Infinite Sadness” live show to the Las Vegas Sphere, and they are set to co-headline a July 4 concert hosted by America250 in Los Angeles alongside Chris Stapleton. Separately, it mentions a “requiem” show for his character “Zero” and that he confirmed he would be bringing his operatic reimagining of the hit 1995 record with a 60-piece orchestra to the UK later in 2026. For boards and investors, that simultaneous runway matters because it suggests the vault plan is not floating in isolation. It likely complements live programming and ongoing brand momentum.

Finally, look at the signal this sends to peers. When a well-known frontman talks publicly about “remix and remaster” plus “two more LPs,” he is describing a repeatable pattern for monetizing archival output: refresh the flagship, then roll out the unreleased backlog in digestible chunks. NME originally gave “Mary Star Of The Sea” a four-star review, calling it “a euphoric and consistent hour of genetically-tweaked stadium rock” that re-establishes Corgan as “a great, rather than ridiculous, frontman.” Whether you agree with that review or not, the commercial takeaway is straightforward: if the core album can be re-presented and the deep cuts can be organized, a dormant catalog can become a multi-phase product cycle rather than a one-off event. In 2026 and beyond, the teams that win may be the ones that treat the vault like a portfolio, not a landfill.