This year, a pretty mind blow­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion hap­pened– and some­how it went entirely under my radar.

I the event that you missed it too, I feel com­pelled to tell every­one on the planet.

Dan­ger Mouse made an album with Sparkle­horse.
It’s called Dark Night of the Soul, and it’s got cameos by peo­ple like The Flam­ing Lips, Super Furry Ani­mals, Julian Casablan­cas of The Strokes, Frank Black, Iggy Pop, Nina Pers­son of The Cardi­gans, and Suzanne Vega.
As if that wasn’t amaz­ing enough, they are releas­ing it as a book, with visu­als by none other than film leg­end David Lynch.

As awe­some as all this is, and as much as I want to share it with you, there’s another rea­son entirely why I’m bring­ing it up.

Wikipedia says:

Due to a dis­pute with the record label EMI, the album may never be released.
how­ever the book is avail­able for sale on the offi­cial web­site for Dark Night of the Soul along with a blank record­able CD-R and all copies will be clearly labeled:

“For Legal Rea­sons, enclosed CD-R con­tains no music. Use it as you will.”

Let’s think about that for a sec­ond, shall we?
This is a way that an artist is encour­ag­ing the con­sumer to find the mate­r­ial by any means necessary. 

Read­ing this con­jures up images in my mind of things like attend­ing ille­gal base­ment shows– read­ing direc­tions on pho­to­copied fly­ers that say things like:
Take a left at the weird inter­sec­tion and keep dri­ving until you hear noise.
It makes me think about graf­fiti and pub­lic art– about punk rock, and about Doing It Yourself.

This is putting the effort of actu­ally obtain­ing this music into the hands of the consumer.

It’s a fun idea– made even more fun by the prospect of break­ing the law.
Shak­ing up the sim­ple for­mula of going to a store (or a web­site) and buy­ing it, and instead hav­ing to get it by some other means.

In my head there’s some bizarre Lynchian scav­enger hunt going on, where one has to fol­low a num­ber of clues and meet a num­ber of pretty ladies and back­ward talk­ing midgets to obtain the fabled album.
In real­ity, it’s just a mat­ter of nav­i­gat­ing the inter­net or ask­ing friends if they have it.
But still, there’s an ele­ment of scarcity there– and the added value that scarcity implies.
There’s effort involved, as well as inter­ac­tion, not to men­tion that since it’s released with a book, it’s got a phys­i­cal com­po­nent, too.
This thing is clearly more than just an album, it’s a full scale art experience.

• What do you guys think about this idea? 
• Is it dif­fer­ent because it *has* to be this way for legal rea­sons, as opposed to being a cho­sen aspect of the artwork? 
• What kind of lengths would you go to, to get a copy of a favorite band’s album? 
• Would you be more or less inclined to par­tic­i­pate in find­ing it if it meant break­ing the law in a minor way? 

Lis­ten to the whole album for free on NPR
Dark Night of the Soul on Wikipedia
Dark Night of the Soul exhi­bi­tion at Art Basel Miami