Back in the 90s, several tape chains of rare and unavaliable 4AD material circulated amongst the members of the 4ad-l mailing list. The main Rare web page documents the contents of those tapes, one track a week.

No repository of these rare tracks will be made available from the various 4AD rare sites. The tracks will be available from the main page for one week only. Each Friday night at 22:00 CET, a new track will become available.

The sound quality of these MP3 files varies wildly. Some of these tracks come from fourth-generation tapes, some come straight from CD, and most fall somewhere in-between.

The Rare series is currently in its third cycle (as of January 30, 2004). You can find the updated track each Friday on the main site. This site provides a listing of all the tracks featured in the Rare series in the complete rare-ography.

While the weekly third cycle MP3 files and Rare Bonus tracks are not hosted here any longer, you can still download the weekly track at the main Rare 4AD site.