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Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse: It's out there: Find it, hear it

DANGER MOUSE & SPARKLEHORSE: DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL ***1/2

Tribune file photo

Danger Mouse's collaboration with Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous is widely available on the Internet despite its official release being stalled in litigation limbo.

By CURTIS ROSS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 2, 2009

Google this album's title and artists and you'll discover that "Dark Night of the Soul" may be this year's most discussed and written-about album. Not bad, considering it hasn't been released.

The CD was to be released with a book of photographs by David Lynch. Instead, thanks to a dispute between producer Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse's label, EMI, the album is stalled in litigation limbo.

Instead, the book came out with a CD-R. No one's saying exactly what the dispute is about - guesses tend to revolve around EMI's furor over mouse's appropriation of Beatles tracks for his "Grey Album" mashup of Jay-Z's "The Black Album" and the Fabs' "White Album." But no one had to be told twice what to do with the CD-R.

Those wishing to be strictly law-abiding can stream the album at npr.org.

Whichever side of the street you walk, hear this album. The music was created to accompany Lynch's photographs, but even without the visual component, "Dark Night" conjures a Lynchian blend of the alluring and the horrific.

Guest vocalists range from Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne to the Cardigans' Nina Persson to Lynch himself, but all 13 tracks are of a piece, drawing the listener deeper and deeper into its beautiful sonic nightmare.

Stream here: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104129585

CDs are rated on a scale of zero to four stars.