Dark Night of the Soul

With the ‘Grey Album’ (2004) Brian Burton made quite an impact on the music scene for a couple of reasons.
For one thing his mashup of instrumentals from the Beatle’s ‘White Album’ (1968) and vocals from Jay-Z’s ‘Black Album’ (2003) marked him out as an incredibly gifted producer while his failure to get permission to use any of the material from either album showed him to be largely unconcerned with the niceties of copyright control.
In terms of the vocal material from Jay-Z this was not much of a problem. The vocal tracks had been released in an a capella format to encourage use in remixes and mashups so, while protected by copyright, it’s use on the ‘Grey Album’ could be seen as ‘fair use.’ The attitude of EMI, the owners of the copyright on the ‘White Album’, would be more difficult. Protective of their highly lucrative Beatles back catalogue EMI sent out a court order to stop all distribution of the ‘Grey Album.’
Burton, better known as the producer Danger Mouse, had put together a limited distribution of 3,000 copies and had largely put the ‘Grey Album’ together for his own amusement and to share with friends. However, it soon found it’s way online and quickly spread across the internet, mostly due to the publicity the project received from EMI’s court order.
Danger Mouse has gone on to have a hugely successful career working with The Gorillaz, MF DOOM, The Good, The Bad and The Queen, Beck and most notably Cee-Lo Green with whom he formed Gnarls Barkley.
In March 2009, at the South by Southwest music festival, Danger Mouse’s latest project was announced.
‘Dark Night of the Soul’ is a collaboration with Sparklehorse, the late singer-songwriter Mark Linkous, which also features appearances from a host of other performers including Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega and Julian Casablancas. David Lynch has also contributed a series of photographs inspired by the album to form the artwork.
However, legal problems with EMI soon emerged again. Lengthy negotiations lead to the albums release being pushed back repeatedly. Various sources for the problems have been mooted including a deal that Danger Mouse has with Lex Records which could affect the album’s distribution and EMI’s frustration at the availability of tracks from the album online before its physical release.
Eventually Danger Mouse tired of the delays and released a 100-page book of David Lynch’s photographs for the project. Included with the book is a blank, recordable CD-R.
All the copies of the book are labeled:

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