E-Dribble

DJ Danger Mouse is one of those guys that everyone knows but don’t know they know.  He’s produced albums for The Gorillaz, Beck, he’s half of the Gnarls Barkley project and he’s been tapped by a bunch of musicians for a dose of hipness.  He’s like The Timbaland of non-shitty music.

A couple years ago, he got his ass into a sling by releasing a mashup called the Gray album, which took The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album and stuck them in a blender.  EMI wasn’t very impressed and sued the shit out of him.  Since then, he’s popped up in the news ticker for continuing to piss off entities protected under the RIAA’s umbrella.

Well, he’s released a new album, this time in cahoots with Mark Linkous, of Sparklehorse.  Putting both DM and Mr. Linkous together on an album puts you at risk of overdosing on brooding alt hipness. I own a few of Sparklehorse’s albums and must say that this one follows closely stylistically behind the others, which may explain why the mp3 shows Sparklehorse as the artist, not mentioning DM anywhere, at least on the copy I have.

Remember when I said that he’s a favorite target of the RIAA?  Well, in an effort to save himself a lawsuit, he’s releasing the album sans music. He’s going to release a case with artwork and a blank cd-r.  You can of course do anything you’d like with the cd-r.

Regardless of whether it’s solely an attempt to keep from losing everything he owns in future lawsuits, an attempt to get some free publicity or a mix of both, it’s welcome to see.  The more music that gets passed around via alternate methods to the tired and broken system that the labels use, the more comfortable people will be with it.  Hopefully there will come a day when people don’t find a release like this to be newsworthy, but commonplace.