A peculiar, yet strangely exciting collaboration between collaborator extraordinaire Danger Mouse, the notoriously reclusive Sparklehorse, and, um, David Lynch (yes, the David Lynch of Elephant Man fame), entitled Dark Night of The Soul, has been oozing nothing but controversy of late.
The way it was meant to go down was Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse make the album, which features pretty much every member of the Flaming Lips, James Mercer of The Shins, the erstwhile Julian Casablancas from The Strokes, some insurance salesman named Iggy Pop, and a few other people that are less interesting; and then Lynch does a book of photography, inspired by and based on the music, to accompany the album (which is where the above photo comes into it).
As the story goes, all was traveling along swimmingly, the photo-book/album bundle was slated for release at the end of this very month…until, lo and behold, the bigwigs at EMI came storm-trooping into the room flailing legal papers about. Apparently, there are some copyright issues that EMI aren’t too pleased about, and just last week they forced YouTube to take down a video about David Lynch’s photo-book (that didn’t even have any music from the album on it!). I mean, David Lynch isn’t the kind of guy that you would want to piss off. Have they even seen how god-awfully terrifying the Twinkies diner-scene in Mulholland Drive is?
This wouldn’t be the first time that Danger Mouse has gotten in hot water over copyright infringement though. His collaboration with Jay Z, which mashed The Beatles White Album with Jay’s Black Album, and had the ingenious title of the Grey Album, also caused a fair amount of controversy on the copyright front.
Yet, the hullabaloo doesn’t end there. Now, on Amazon, you can pre-order the Dark Night of the Soul photo-book, which comes with a blank CD-R in a package labeled “For legal reasons the enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will”. Hint hint nudge nudge…
Strangely enough, could this “in your face big soulless record company” stunt from Danger Mouse and co. actually herald a new dawn for the battling music industry? Could this be the next step towards a new attempt at letting consumers have control over what they want on a CD, but still make a buck out of packaging and additional material? I’m gonna say no, and hop on the side of the fence that say’s that this is just a one off stunt by a cheeky Producer. Either way, the album (which I heard entirely legally, might I add) is something that deserves to see the light of day.
So what does everyone else make of this?
