Talk about a unique collaboration!
Dark Night of the Soul is a album/book/art exhibition (probably best to just call it a multimedia experience) featuring the musical collaboration of Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse with still images contributed by none other than David Lynch. And if that wasn’t enough, the additional musical contributors include Iggy Pop, Flaming Lips, Frank Black, Julian Casablancas of the Strokes, and James Mercer of the Shins! It goes without saying that this is an ambitious project, but there is a unique potential here. By combining disparate artists with Lynch’s surreal imagery in a mutlimedia format, it stands that the album/book/exhibition could reach out to a very large audience across multiple platforms, much more so than any of the artists independently. Danger Mouse as everyone knows is adept at this so I’d say it has promise. Regardless, mutlimedia experiments like this have been popping up for a while now (such as Riceboy Sleeps – the album/book project by Sigur Ros’ Jonsi and Alex Somers) , but never with this eclectic a group. Read all about it on Pitchfork and if you are in LA check out the exhibition at the Michael Kohn gallery May 30th – July 11th. Whatever the success of the project, it should be slightly disturbing, perplexing or at least interesting if for no other reason than David Lynch’s involvement.
UPDATE: 5/21/09
Apparently a disagreement between Danger Mouse and EMI has derailed the release of the album, so Danger Mouse and Co. are encouraging fans to download the music anyway possible. Read about it here and here.
What a unique concept. Probably see this type of cross marketing a lot more in the future.