When Danger Mouse released The Grey Albumin 2004, it was a deliberately provocative move. By mixing Jay-Z's The Black Albumwith The Beatles' The White Album, the artist/producer created the ultimate re-mix album. And it was 100% illegal from start to finish. Naturally, EMI (The Beatles' label) issued mountains of "cease and desist" letters but that didn't stop the album becoming one of the most sought-after musical downloads on the net.
For Danger Mouse (real name Brian Burton), it was not only an artistic statement but also a clever career move. On hearing The Grey Album, Damon Albarn got Burton in to produce The Gorillaz' second album and the producer went on to form Gnarls Barkley, who had the massive hit Crazy.
Danger Mouse regards himself as an "auteur" record producer – his work is a reflection of his own musical vision. For him, The Grey Albumwas not just chucking Jay-Z's words over The Beatles' backing tracks but also a "deconstruction" and a "statement about the art form that is sampling". Technically, it was "stealing", but, as millions of fans would attest, it was a magnificent musical creation.
For his just-released album, Dark Night Of The Soul, Danger Mouse spent two years collaborating with Sparklehorse head honcho Mark Linkous. They wrote a bunch of tracks and sent them out to a number of their favourite vocalists – including members of The Strokes, The Flaming Lips, The Pixies and Nina Persson.
“We’d say: ‘We thought you might be great on this song’, but didn’t tell them anything else,” said Danger Mouse. “‘Just listen to the music, and see if you have any ideas – some lyrics, or some vocal melodies. We trusted each person without having to guide them very much.”
As an added bonus, Dark Night Of The Soulincludes a large format book with photographs about the project taken by the noted film director David Lynch.
When you buy the album on Danger Mouse’s website (www.dnots.com), you get the book/CD package but the CD is a blank CD-R.
A message reads: "For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will." A bit of digging reveals that the 13 songs from Dark Night Of The Soulare freely available on www.npr.org, the website of National Public Radio in the US.
Back to Danger Mouse's website and it turns out that there is no music on the disc because of an "ongoing dispute with EMI" – his old friends from The Grey Albumdays.
Over to EMI: “Danger Mouse is a brilliant, talented artist for whom we have enormous respect. We continue to make every effort to resolve this situation and we are talking to Brian directly. Meanwhile, we need to reserve our rights ”.
It turns out that early in Danger Mouse’s career, he signed a deal with a small indie label called Lex Records. This label is now in a “joint venture” deal with EMI. If he had released this album conventionally, ie with music on it instead of a nod-and-a-wink blank CD-R, then EMI (because of their partnership with Lex Records) would ultimately own it.
For whatever reason, Danger Mouse wasn't happy with this state of affairs, but he still wanted to release his "new art project" which he had worked very hard on for two years. Because he has released a disc with no music on it, EMI have no claim over the project but fans can still easily go to a website and fill the blank disc themselves. It's DIY distribution brought to a whole new level and makes the fuss surrounding The Grey Albumseem minor.
“I didn’t want anything compromised in order for this to come out,” says Danger Mouse. In that he’s succeeded. But the legal loophole he has used here is a massive, gaping copyright hole. And how to close it down will be far from easy.
