What's Sparklehorse up to?

http://www.sparklehorse.org/news.html

Sparklehorse set to release first album in five years
And it features some very special guests

Sparklehorse are set to release their first album in five years.

The as yet untitled album will be the follow up to 2001's It's A Wonderful Life.

The album, which is scheduled to be released in September, features special guests Danger Mouse, Tom Waits and Stephen Drozd from The Flaming Lips.

According to the bands official site the album was "recorded in the style of VivaDixie/Good Morning Spider' by Mark (Linkous, Sparklehorse mainman) alone in Static King were mixed at Smart Studio in Westconsin."

© NME

http://dnots.com/

Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous were rumoured to have been working on new music together under the tentative names of either Danger Horse or Sparklemouse, but it now appears their collaboration involves lots of other people, too.

A poster that says "Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse present Dark Night Of The Soul" is making the rounds. The project is promised for this summer, but what's much more intriguing is the list of featured artists on the poster:

Black Francis (a.k.a. Frank Black or "that guy from The Pixies"); The Strokes' Julian Casablancas; partially paralyzed singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt; The Flaming Lips; film director, yogic flying advocate and quinoa enthusiast David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart); Grandaddy's Jason Lytle; The Shins' James Mercer; The Cardigans' Nina Persson; Iggy Pop; Super Furry Animals' Gruff Rhys; and Suzanne Vega.

Danger Mouse (real name Brian Joseph Burton) first came to prominence with 2004's Jay-Z/The Beatles mash-up, The Grey Album. He's since released two records as half of Gnarls Barkley, been part of The Good, The Bad & The Queen, and produced albums for Gorillaz and Beck.

Singer/multi-instrumentalist Linkous has recorded much of the material on Sparklehorse's four albums in his home studio, usually in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Scott Minor.

Sparklehorse's last record, 2006's Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain, featured contributions from Danger Mouse. Sparklehorse and The Flaming Lips covered Daniel Johnston's "Go" for the film The Sasquatch Gang.

WTF. this could be good or it could be like Handsom Boy Modeling School, more interesting in theory than it is to listen to.

I hate over half the people involved in this now. sigh

looks kinda ugh..

Dark Night of the Soul has leaked:

01 Revenge (feat. Wayne Coyne)
02 Just War (feat. Gruff Rhys)
03 Jaykub (feat. Jason Lytle)
04 Little Girl (feat. Julian Casablancas)
05 Angel's Harp (feat. Black Francis)
06 Pain (feat. Iggy Pop)
07 Star Eyes (I Can Catch It) (feat. James Mercer)
08 Everytime I'm With You (feat. Jason Lytle)
09 Insane Lullaby (feat. James Mercer)
10 Daddy's Gone (feat. Nina Persson)
11 The Man Who Played God (feat. Nina Persson)
12 Grain Augury (feat. Vic Chesnutt)
13 Dark Night Of The Soul (feat. Vic Chesnutt)

It's pretty boring

is this supposed to be a regular new Sparklehorse album? i mean it obv. looks like some kind of duets fun side-project thingie judging from the tracklist.

It's Sparklehorse + Danger Mouse + David Lynch

is a kind of mixture of interesting and awful. anything with a good vocalist is a write off. some of the first few have that nice twinkly production of better sparklehorse stuff, getting it wrong etc

is this really going to cost £40 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-David-Lynch-Sparklehorse-Danger/dp/1576875245/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242228042&sr=8-1)?

because if so i will have to resort to piracy

although it seems you get a nice book and poster included in the price...

i like the last song but there are bits of this lp (frank black, even iggy) when hiring like vic chestnutt to ramble over their carefully honed soundscapes seems like a really bad idea.

a sword waving TOUCHE to the strokes guy though.

this is not going to come out after all:

http://pitchfork.com/news/35373-more-dark-night-of-the-soulemi-drama/

Wednesday, May 20

More Dark Night of the Soul/EMI Drama

Record company removes video from YouTube More Dark Night of the Soul/EMI Drama

Previously on Dark Night of the Soul: Due to a legal dispute with EMI, there will be no official release of the album portion of the Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse/David Lynch CD/book project. However, you can now buy the Dark Night of the Soul art book, featuring Lynch photos and a blank CD-R that you can use "however you see fit."

But the drama doesn't end there. Yesterday, EMI ordered YouTube to take down a short trailer for the DNOTS project, which features David Lynch photos and no music from the actual album. According to a Danger Mouse spokesperson, "What EMI pulled from YouTube is a 15 second clip of David Lynch's photographic images from Dark Night of the Soul. It's perplexing why they had it removed and questionable that they even had the right to censor it." Perplexing indeed!

You can still watch the video in question at the official DNOTS site. (EMI have yet to return our request for comment.)

We're hoping an EMI bot programmed to remove copyrighted material on YouTube did this, because who would knowingly fuck with David Lynch? They've seen Lost Highway, right?!

Posted by Ryan Dombal on May 20, 2009 at 10:55 a.m.

this is okay, I would have liked it more as a regular sparklehorse album with Linkous on vocals I guess.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31kxQ4jb2KL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Dark Night of the Soul will be released on July 13, 2010 on Capitol Records.

from Amazon:

Dark Night Of The Soul is an album by audio auteur Danger Mouse and the already much-missed Sparklehorse. The record sees the pair joined by the following remarkable roll call of guests: The Flaming Lips, Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals), Jason Lytle (Grandaddy), Julian Casablancas (The Strokes), Black Francis (The Pixies), Iggy Pop, David Lynch, James Mercer (The Shins/Broken Bells), Nina Persson (The Cardigans), Suzanne Vega and Vic Chesnutt. Rumors of this mysterious collaborative project began to circulate in early 2009 sparking widespread anticipation and excitement. Now, following months of talks, Danger Mouse and EMI are excited and proud to announce that Dark Night Of The Soul will be released worldwide in July.

While this beautiful, haunting record being made widely and legitimately available is undoubtedly a cause for celebration, the news is shadowed by sadness following the recent passing of Mark Linkous, who released and performed under the Sparklehorse pseudonym. Dark Night Of The Soul will now stand as a de facto tribute to this well-loved, stunningly talented yet often-overlooked artist. In addition to featuring on two songs, celebrated fi lm director David Lynch has created a series of original photographs for Dark Night Of The Soul adding a spectacular visual dimension that will be incorporated in to the artwork for this already unparalleled project.

I kinda feel bad about reviving a Sparklehorse thread to ask about Sophie Michalitsianos/Sol Seppy, but has she been heard from since 2007? Fell back in love with Bells of 1 2 this afternoon and looked around to find absolutely nothing. She's listed as a Gronland past artist and her Discogs info is totally blank post-2006.