It has been touted as “the No. 1 most highly unanticipated release in over a decade.”

Coming from an artist who hasn’t put out a record since 1981, it’s no wonder.

I’m talking about the new, just-released album by Jim Van Buskirk and the AVANT GARDE recording project, and I am proud to have been a part of it — both in 1981 and 2020.

With a gap of 39 years between releases, this album, called “The Shellers,” ranks No. 5 on Wikipedia’s list of longest gaps between studio albums. (Yes, there really is such a list. If we’d waited four more years, we could have tied the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s gap of 1969 to 2012.)

And, yes, this album, like its predecessor, actually has been pressed into vinyl discs that are played on old-fashioned machines that use a needle to wondrously draw music out of grooves on a spinning platter.

But before I wade any deeper into this story, let me give you a little background.

Back in 1981, Jim Van Buskirk and I were both students at Clemson University. He was an electrical engineering major, and for his senior project, he, with a little help from his friends and classmates, converted a classroom at the music department in Daniel Hall into a temporary recording studio.

So we recorded an album that summer, called “Hot August Rendezvous.” There were probably 10 or 12 different musicians who played on the album at various times — including Browning Bryant, who wrote one song for the record and played acoustic guitar on it. I wrote one song, called “Cauliflower Heaven,” which remains my only composition listed in the U.S. Copyright Office.

It was just a class project, but the record did get some airplay. Years later, we discovered that the title cut, on which I played two guitar solos, rose to No. 16 on college radio jazz charts in California during the winter of 1982-83. Whoopie-doo! A remix of that song is also included on the new album.

Anyway, life went on. Jim graduated and became an electrical engineer and a pioneer in digital music recording technology. As a music engineer, Jim created technologies used on titles by Spyro Gyra, the Doobie Brothers, Paul McCartney and a host of other big-name musicians. Jim’s GigaStudio music processing was also used on such iconic films as Gladiator, Enemy of the State, The Power Puff Girls, The Poseidon Adventure, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, King Arthur, Hannibal, Spirit, Black Hawk Down and countless other blockbuster films.

But through the years, as he was doing all this work making other people sound great, he did some recording sessions of his own. I had pretty much lost touch with him until some months ago, when he contacted me and asked me to play on a song he wrote called “Krupa.” It was inspired by jazz drummer Gene Krupa, who was one of Jim’s early influences.

So Jim, who now lives in Austin, Texas, emailed me his recording, and I laid down some guitar tracks and sent them back to him. Then, a couple of weeks ago, he told me the album was about to be released.

The liner notes on the back cover tell the story of how the master tapes were moved from place to place over the years, surviving “numerous dumpster threats,” and even a tornado and an earthquake.

“To my astonishment, the dusty analog tapes survived their treacherous journey. Befuddled and amazed, I recently rediscovered these resilient and defiant recordings and decided to clean and restore them. After all, for better or worse, some things just refuse to lay down and perish!”

I think I’ll take that as my new credo.

Now for the record, I don’t have any financial interest in this project. I was just a session man, playing for the love of it for a friend. I don’t believe Jim figures to get rich off it either.

“Like the first album, we only pressed 300 retail copies of the new album,” he said. “We hope this may become as rare as the first album, yet be more interesting musically.”

When your goal is to make a “rare” record rather than to sell a million copies, well, that says something about the motivation behind the music. It is some very interesting music, unlike any you’re likely to hear anywhere else. It’s all instrumental, except for one song, which has a woman singing — but no words!

Jim plays drums and keyboards and wrote, or co-wrote, all of the songs, and of course, engineered and produced the whole project.

Anyway, if you’d like to hear the album — which has some other musicians on it who are a cut way above me — you can hear some samples at virtual-LP.com.

“Jim Van Buskirk” and “AVANT GARDE” can be followed on Spotify and YouTube, as well as other streaming sites.