The controversy surrounding Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine will be back as Epic has penciled in an October 4th release date for the long delayed album. The NY Times' Jeff Leeds reports today on the reworked version of the album that was leaked on the Internet. It will have nine re-recorded versions, two unchanged versions and one new song, "Parting Gift."

Now that fans have grown accustomed to the older versions, there's sure to be some people who will not like the new versions as much. But record execs insist Fiona never considered the leaked songs to be the final versions. Mike Elizondo, who produced the songs, said, "I think from right out of the gate, this is the collection of songs she wanted for her record."

That's a far cry from the Sony-bashing statements in the press when the album was leaked. Back then Epic Records was said to be holding back Fiona. Now the story given is that Fiona herself held back the songs.

Via the Free Fiona forum Coolfer found a blog post from a person who claimed to have worked on the set of the video for the song "Parting Gift." (Picture above.) Leeds' article said Epic will "take a laid-back and low-cost approach to marketing the album, relying partly on word-of-mouth to build an audience." Looks like they'll rely partly on the standard heavy video rotation -- because that's what sells records.