Dark Night of the Soul to see the light of day?

Back in May 2009, EMI put out an injunction to stop the release of Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse’s musical accompaniment to the limited edition David Lynch photobook Dark Night of the Soul. EMI were citing the reason behind the block being Sparklehorse face Mark Linkous contract with the label , and the breach of that contract that would occur if the self released album hit the shelves. That and the fact that they were still pissed over Danger Mouse’s hacking up The Beatles’ White Album  and gluing it back together as a backing bed for Jay Z lyrics on hysteria inducing The Grey Album.

The Dark Night of the Soul package came out last May, but with a blank CD-R accompanying the Lynch book. The CD-R was embossed with "For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will."; an push from the musicians to use the disc to copy the “leaked” album from the net, and complete the set.

Well news is that we might just see the release of ‘DNOTS’ sometime soon, and that came from the mouth of the Mouse himself, Brian Burton. "The problems of last year are last year, so hopefully it will be out soon in June or something like that,". However, that comment made to the BBC came a few days before Mr Sparklehorse decided to cut his life short, so it could probably go either way.

So, if EMI decide to play ball, what can we expect? Well, the original package featured a limited edition (5000 copies) of the David Lynch book, hand numbered no less, so we’ll probably end up with a mass produced, less expensive hardback version. It’ll be nice, but it won’t be what the original idea was intended to be.

Below are some snatches from the Lynch book, and if you CLICK HERE, you can listen to Dark Night of the Soul right now.

Surfer Blood Heading for Broken Britain

Scrawny indie-popeaters listen up, nerd hyped Floridians Surfer Blood will be thumbing their way across the grey waters for a UK tour in May, in support of their recently released, dormroom recorded long player Astro Coast.

Over two weeks they’ll be doing 10 shows, starting with a couple at The Camden Crawl and culminating at All Tomorrows Parties. It starts on the 1^st of May and will snake around these isles, taking in Nottingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and Brighton’s Great Escape.

There are two good reasons to head over to the Kanine Records webstore right now and drop your sweetie money on the Astro Coast. Reason 1, Look Up: the artwork is the shit! Reason 2, Look Down: ‘Swim’ is Auralsex!

The Dizzee Rascal Story

www.nme.com is reporting that Canongate Books will be releasing 'The Dizzee Rascal Story' this October, with the man himself rumoured to be authoring, as well as joint publishing through his new Dirtee Books label. It's a bit premature, but I guess he needs to capitalise on his current creative and celebrity peak. It should be an interesting read, just to hear about the Roll Deep days while it's still fresh, and hopefully find out who it was that stabbed him in Ayia Napa?

Why not check out our recent piece on Dizzee and the rest of the new black stars crashing the UK chart party in the post Brit Soul Rebels ?

“I have to return some videotapes” and other fine Patrick Bateman excuses

“I need to engage in homicidal behaviour on a massive scale. It cannot be corrected but I have no other way to fulfil my needs.”

“I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has over flown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.”

“Listen, you'll have to excuse me. I have a lunch meeting with Cliff Huxtable at the Four Seasons in 20 minutes.”

“I don't want to get you drunk, but, ah, that's a very fine Chardonnay you're not drinking.”

“Hey, I'm a child of divorce, gimme a break!”

“Harold, it's Bateman, Patrick Bateman. You're my lawyer so I think you should know: I've killed a lot of people. Some girls in the apartment uptown uh, some homeless people maybe 5 or 10 um an NYU girl I met in Central Park. I left her in a parking lot behind some donut shop. I killed Bethany, my old girlfriend, with a nail gun, and some man uh some old faggot with a dog last week. I killed another girl with a chainsaw, I had to, she almost got away and uh someone else there I can't remember maybe a model, but she's dead too. And Paul Allen. I killed Paul Allen with an axe in the face, his body is dissolving in a bathtub in Hell's Kitchen. I don't want to leave anything out here. I guess I've killed maybe 20 people, maybe 40. I have tapes of a lot of it, uh some of the girls have seen the tapes. I even, um... I ate some of their brains, and I tried to cook a little. Tonight I, uh, I just had to kill a LOT of people. And I'm not sure I'm gonna get away with it this time. I guess I'll uh, I mean, ah, I guess I'm a pretty uh, I mean I guess I'm a pretty sick guy. So, if you get back tomorrow, meet me at Harry's Bar, so you know, keep your eyes open.”

Xiu Xiu: Gray Death

These guys are called Xiu Xiu, and they've gone and put down an early marker for the most beautiful song of 2010, with Gray Death.

Their new album Dear God I Hate Myself, came out on Kill Rock Stars last week. Hipsters are bustin' nuts over it, but don't let that put you off. Go buy it, don't steal it. But if you must steal it, steal it from a Hipster.

Uriah Heep & A Promise Unfulfilled

“If this group makes it I'll have to commit suicide. From the first note you know you don't want to hear any more. Uriah is watered down, tenth-rate Jethro Tull, only even more boring and inane. UH is composed of five members: vocals, organ, guitar, bass, and drums. They fail to create a distinctive sound tonally; the other factor in their uninteresting style is that everything they play is based on repetitive chord riffs. According to the enclosed promo information, Uriah Heep spent the past year in the studio, rehearsing and writing songs. No doubt their lack of performing experience contributed to the quality of the record; if they had played live in clubs they would have been thrown off the stage and we'd have been saved the waste of time, money, and vinyl.” 

The above review of Uriah Heep’s self titled (in America) debut album was written by Rolling Stone journalist Mellissa Mills in 1970. Nearly 40 years and 30 million albums later, Miss Mills still hasn’t followed through on the promise of the reviews opening line. Whilst musical taste is a very personal thing, it’s hard to fathom how this particular journalist was driven to write such a stinging review, considering the album opens with one of the greatest heavy rock anthems ever scraped in to wax; Gypsy.

In fact, her declaration that “From the first note you know you don't want to hear any more” is all the more startling considering that Gypsy boasts one of the most monumental riffs in Heavy Metal history. It makes me feel a little bit sick that a magazine with the heritage of Rolling Stone would have had a writer on staff that couldn’t identify the sheer majesty of the song.

Of course, the last laugh went to The Heep. They even went on to be the first band to play in Soviet Russia as part of Gorbachev’s policy of ‘Glasnost’.

See, even the Commies knew a classic riff when they heard it!