Music monolith EMI have proven their worth once again by destroying the hopes of music fans everywhere. Earlier this month spokespeople for triphop producer Danger Mouse announced that the eagerly-awaited album ‘Dark Night Of The Soul’, a collaboration between Danger Mouse and Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, would not be released due to obscure legal reasons.
A spokesperson said “Danger Mouse remains hugely proud of ‘Dark Night Of The Soul’ and hopes that people lucky enough to hear the music, by whatever means, are as excited by it as he is.”
By whatever means, eh? Gee, I wonder how people could possibly find the album, given that EMI isn’t releasing it. If only there were some way to cut EMI out of the process altogether, some medium by which data could be spread without the meddling of lawyers getting in the way. Some sort of international network, a web that extends worldwide. If only.
Ignoring the setback, Danger Mouse will be releasing a CD case containing a book of still photos by filmmaker David Lynch and a CD-R containing no data, but stickered with the album artwork. Gee, I wonder what people are supposed to do with that.
The album is replete with known artists. Classic names like Frank Black, Iggy Pop, Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, Julian Casablancas of The Strokes and many more. We could speculate as to exactly why EMI is refusing to release the album, but, frankly, I couldn’t care less. The album sounds fantastic and is available for download through your favourite p2p network.
If EMI’s aim was to show that corporations are bad for music culture, then they succeeded. As more and more artists realise the power of the internet as a distribution medium megalithic names like EMI, Columbia and Universal will slowly sink into the tar pits of the past. I say good riddance.
