Ever since the 16th century, “the dark night of the soul” has come to symbolise the depths of man’s loneliness and desolation. It’s a state of mind you want to avoid – ask Mark Linkous. While touring with Radiohead back in 1996, the frontman of Sparklehorse ingested a near-lethal cocktail of hard drugs and booze before blacking out in his hotel room, alone, slumped on top of his own legs. When he was pulled up over 14 hours later, his heart briefly stopped as a result of the built up potassium. He was lucky to ever walk again.

A decade and two acclaimed albums later, Linkous found himself in a musical rut, searching for inspiration. Oblivious to its content, he picked up The Grey Album by Danger Mouse, thinking it “was probably some band from North Carolina”. Hearing Jay-Z ripping up Beatles beats not only gave him a fresh perspective on music, but also led him to an unlikely collaborator – its creator, who had long been a fan of the Virginian songwriter’s surreal fables.

For the next three years, the pair would trade songs and instrumentals while Danger Mouse collected Grammys and number ones with Gnarls Barkley and Gorillaz. The project slowly became a concept album, with the likes of Iggy Pop, Julian Casablancas, Gruff Rhys, Vic Chesnutt and Wayne Coyne writing lyrics about twisted dreams, revenge and war, with no prior knowledge of anyone else’s stories.

Unable to ignore the Lynchian themes that coursed through each set of lyrics, Danger Mouse wrote to the cult director to see if he’d like to make a video for the album. The Twin Peaks legend wrote back saying that he’d actually prefer to shoot a series of photographs to illustrate each song – and also sing on a few tracks.

This month, the world gets to witness the results, with a gallery show in Los Angeles and a limited-edition run of Lynch’s pictures. In the book will be a blank CD – due to a dispute with EMI, Danger Mouse can’t release the album for fear of being sued, so, like The Grey Album, fans will have to rely on word of mouth to hear it. With so much mystery surrounding the project, Dazed stepped into the shadows with its creators to find out what inspired their cast of paranoid housewives, sinister schoolgirls, and hallucinating dinner party guests.

SPARKLEHORSE

In a traditional sense the Dark Night of the Soul is a metaphor for loneliness and desolation. Have you experienced that since becoming a performer?

I don't produce much material because I do have problems with the darkness in my head that can debilitate me, that's why I'm much more productive around other people. Everybody has their little devils, and maybe we all felt it was a chance to bring out some of the darker aspects of our lives and express them.

How did the lyrics come about – did you all trade bleak nightmares?

No one was given any direction whatsoever for the songs or the lyrical content. It was never discussed that it would be character or narrative driven, or that it would be about darkness and pain. I don't know why it came out like that (laughs). Recording was very pleasant. All I could think about was music. It just seemed like a happy time in my life. I didn't get into my brain too much because I didn't have time to like I usually do when I make music in solitary situations. If I had done it in my studio or even in the South it would have been a lot different.

Did you ever think David Lynch would get involved?

Brian didn't tell me because he knew how much of a fan I was and that I would have been bugging the shit out of him about it. He just called me one day and said that David Lynch was interested in being involved in the project, and then I freaked out.

What is it about Lynch that inspires you?

His stream of consciousness. There's this theory about music, that the quiet parts are just as important as the musical parts. I really applied that to my music and that came from David Lynch's films; some of the quiet parts would be foreboding but in another context they could be beautiful. Sometimes in his films, like Inland Empire, it's so grainy you can hardly see an image on the screen and then suddenly there's four beautiful girls dancing to “The Locomotion”.

Why do you think he’s drawn to dark projects?

He's not a guy who lives in a surreal world with flashing red lights, velvet curtains and midgets talking backwards all the time. He seems like a pretty active guy who just enjoys life. It was a good thing for all of us. I don't know if we all look to the darkness to stop our heads from exploding or what. I'm just glad I've been involved in this thing while I'm still here on earth.

What were you expecting from the photos?

Sometimes I really have a hard time writing lyrics literally and I was surprised that he was able to photograph and represent some of the songs fairly literally and not so surreally as I do in my songs, and for the songs that were a little more twisted he was able to go wild with. Overall I think he nailed it. He can do no wrong in my book anyway. I don't mind such an obvious minion!

Are you kindred spirits?

I don't think I could be so pretentious to compare myself to him. I don't understand every scene in his movies but I love everything he does, so I guess we're kindred spirits in that way.

Did you work closely together?

Yes. He has this specific vocal sound that he likes and it's very specific. He's got a studio of his own and he did some overdubs with the Laura Palmer synthesizer. When I heard that I was like, 'oh man', so we stripped back some parts to the title track to let the Laura Palmer part breathe. You cannot deny that synthesizer part; it's totally Twin Peaks. It may sound like a geeky thing to do but it sounded beautiful to me.

No, it was just as far as mixing that sound into the song. When I say Laura Palmer it's just out of respect for an iconic thing that he created that has become part of the world out there. I certainly didn't ever envisage or want to use that as some kind of marketing tool. I just wanted people who were David Lynch fans to say, "oh I didn't even know he could sing" and then hear the third verse with all the other tracks taken out and just his music and that recognisable sound.

Some people think it's going to be called either Sparklemouse of Dangerhorse. Obviously it's not, but which do you prefer?

Dangerhorse. I hated Sparklemouse. Brian liked it but I didn't. I think he was just trying me nice. It sounds like a brightly lit British children's television show.

Would you advise people to listen to this album before they go to sleep or will it give them nightmares?

(laughs) Oh.... I think both really. I guess on the whole it's probably best absorbed late in the evening hours. Not that I wish to give people nightmares, but sometimes they can be good. Sometimes you wake up and you realise it was just a nightmare.

What came first, the music, the pictures or the lyrics?

The visions came later. There wasn’t a huge discussion about what each singer should write about. It was almost as if we took a story and gave each person a chapter to write, but they don’t know the chapter before or after that. It was very important to choose the right people.

Were you ever worried that the weight of the guest list would overshadow the concept?

No, not really, I’ve never been worried about it. I just wanted the cast to get involved with what we were doing, particularly the music. It was never gonna be some big commercial record.

Gnarls Barkley was your attempt at pop soul music, but this is soul music of a different, darker kind.

Let’s see how people digest it. I definitely have tried not to predict how people are going to think about it, so I am curious in that respect. I’m excited about people looking at it in a different way. I just need to create a lot. I’ve looked at other artists and I think about how much work they did. And I think, well, if I have the chance to do a lot of work I have to find the time. I’m fortunate to be able to create a lot.

Do you feel overwhelmed by darkness, surrounded by the other two, and putting out such a bleak record?

No, I guess I don’t look at the record as being bleak, but I can understand somebody else looking at it that way I guess. There’s a lot of different parts, like a movie in some way, there’s parts that are dark and there’s part that are not.

So this isn’t your melancholic period?

I don’t know, I look back and I personally think that all the music I’ve done has been somewhat dark. Maybe not The Grey Album so much, but most of the other things I see as being more dark. The records I work on with other people seem to have a dark feel to them. I just kinda get that way. I guess the last few years have put me in a more “lost” position, musically, you know, because there’s the slight addition of a little bit more people watching what I’m doing.

Why did you ask Lynch to collaborate?

Once I thought about him being involved visually I really couldn’t think of anybody else that it would work with. I felt like if it didn’t work with him I wouldn’t try it with anybody else. But I figured that if he did it then it would work, I really did.

What is it about his world-view that you vibe off?

I love that his films let you imagine what everything means. There’s a lot of dreamlike aspects to what he’s doing, and some things don’t always have to make total sense, or not so obviously. But you know that as an artist there’s a reason to it all even if that’s just in his head. He brought that to this project.

They do. I think they do, that’s the way it was presented, but I don’t know, I’ve never asked David. They could all be tied together in some way as well, I don’t know. I like the idea that I don’t know. I’ve never asked him and I don’t wanna know. They are separated in groups of three to five pictures, depending on the song, but how they all interact with each other I don’t know. David was the only collaborator who was able to hear the whole record, so he definitely had an outlook on the whole thing that the other people involved didn’t, which I liked because he was doing the visuals. I like to think that they are all connected, but I don’t really wanna know. It’s a lot more fun in my head to make up how they’re connected with each other.

Would you advise people to listen to this record before they go to sleep or do you think it would scare them?

Scare them? I don’t think the record’s scary. There’s definitely changes of pace that might wake you up somewhere in the middle, but that would be the only thing I would say. I go to sleep with records on all the time, but I’ve never gone to sleep with this one, because it would probably wake me up somewhere. Once it gets to the Iggy Pop song I’d probably wake up. Some people can sleep through anything. Maybe I’ll try it tonight and see what happens.

Some people think that you're going to be rapping on the album

(laughs) No, I'm not rapping!

Have you ever tried to rap?

No I never tried it. I've tried talking on music, but it's not rap. I don't know if I could rap! I love the concept of it though. It's such an incredibly modern use of words and music. 

You sing on that album though. Do you find that more enjoyable than directing or taking photos?

No, I never sang till recently, I was just totally embarrassed to sing.

Why?

I don't know. I'm sure there are others like me. I started singing, and I don't quite now how it happened, but Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse liked it, so I sang for them. The songs just came out of their music. They give a sense of freedom and that's the part of the concept that I like. They do the music and then they see what happens when they give it to person A, B and C. They share their music. I like that a lot.

How important is music to your creative process?

Every element of the cinema is important. I was always really interested in sound with pictures and of course music as well. I just love this world of music. So many times ideas come from music, ideas for so many things. It's just a magical, deep world. My favourite form of music right now is blues based music. I'm working on my own album inspired from blues. We're talking Chicago electric blues. I appreciate Delta southern blues, but it doesn’t do it for me. When they went electric, like John Lee Hooker, I just thought, 'man, there's some power in that music'.

A lot of bluesmen were real outsiders. Do you feel a kinship with those characters?

Yeah, I think so.

Did you start making films as a way of being accepted? 

No, no, no, no. It wasn’t like that at all. I made films because I would get ideas and inspiration came with the ideas. I just translate ideas.

No. Artists traditionally think that anger and despair and depression or anxieties feed their work, and in a little bit of way that's true because they understand those things. But you can understand those things and not have to suffer from them. That's the key. You can get ideas that are dark, ideas that are light, ideas that hold both things, but the artist doesn't have to suffer to show suffering. Transcendental meditation lets you dive into the big ocean of creativity, of infinite energy, of infinite happiness. This stuff starts swelling up and you start to enjoy your work so much more, ideas flow more freely and the heavyweight of negativity lifting gives you freedom. You have to understand the world and the human condition to get deep into it, but you don't have to suffer those things to show it, you see what I mean?

Okay, but looking at your work you seem to have a real empathy with troubled characters

I love troubled characters, I love the human condition, I love stories that reflect those things, but I don't set out to do those certain things. I suddenly get ideas and then I go 'whoa, cinema can do a fantastic thing with that, or a song, or a painting' and then I go to work.

So the big pre-conception with David Lynch being drawn to the dark thoughts is rubbish?

No, it’s not exactly. Every human being is different, so when I fall in love with certain things, other people fall in love with different things. I like stories that involve absurdity and trouble, and characters that are involved in different things like that but I am so happy doing it I am not suffering doing it.

That's good to hear, I'm glad you're not suffering David!

(laughs) People generally say that I make dark films, but if you look at all of them, some of them are very light, and so each idea is different, it's just a question of which ones you fall in love with, and how want to translate that idea. I like stories that hold a concrete base along with abstractations, just like life. Music is one of the most abstract things, but cinema is a magical language, it holds music, but it can be as abstract as music.

You once said that "ideas are like fishing, you need to have patience, a good hook, and a bait, and if you want to catch a big fish you need to go deeper". Do you think you've caught a big fish with this project?

These are good fish. How deep, well I got the great honour to work with Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse on two songs and to do the photographs, so it was a very pleasurable experience. I'm really glad I got the opportunity to do it.

Uh huh, there's some of that for sure, but again it came from the music and I think that Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse may say that it's about anger and revenge, but their music just holds something. When other people hear it something comes to life in their brains. And then the lyrics come and a way to sing them, a feeling but it all starts with the music.

It seems to me that this book further consolidates your view of society, how you like to subvert classic American characters...

Oh no, I'm not trying to, what was the word you used?

Subvert

Subvert. I'm not trying to subvert. A lot of people do that and a lot of people see art as a political thing. These things are ideas that came from the music and I am not trying to do anything other than translate those ideas that came to me. There's no other motive, this is what came out of the music.

Your work has been so widely referenced and plagirised, have you ever felt that your world view was in danger of becoming a cliche?

No. There's always new fresh ideas waiting. They do pass through the machine, and the machine is a certain way, but if ten directors made a film out of the same script there would be ten different films. We will never run out of ideas. I just don't know what the next thing will be in terms of cinema, but right now I'm interested in painting and music.

Do you approach painting and photography in the same way as you would creating a scene for one of your films?

Yeah, exactly. If an idea comes for furniture, you will see a table in your brain. You will see what it's made of and the shape of it, and if that idea is something you love, then you go into the wood shop and start making that table. If you get an idea for a painting and you're all fired up about it then you go right into the painting studio and start working on those. Making a film is just a longer process, but when you're in love you don't care how long it takes to make something.

Would you recommend that people listen to this album before going to sleep or will it give them nightmares?

I don't think it will give them nightmares. I think they can listen to pretty much at any time of day. Or night.

And when do you like to listen to it?

Well, I was listening to it mostly in the day (laughs)

© TIM NOAKES 2009

Dark Night of the Soul is out there, somewhere, now