Hasta La Ideas

Musician and owner of record label Clown & Sunset, Nicolas Jaar, has just released a new collection of tracks entitled Don’t Break My Love, not on CD or vinyl, but on a small aluminium cube called The Prism…

Don’t Break My Love is a 12-track label showcase and the 4x4x4cm cube it is released on (above)  sports two holes (headphone sockets) and four unlabelled buttons. Jaar tells us that it as well as vinyl, the small metal cube will be the primary format for future releases on Clown & Sunset.

The Prism’s four buttons, allow users to play, pause and skip tracks and the two headphone sockets invite the user to share the listening experience with a friend. This was inspired by the fact that the music on the Prism is collaborative so Jaar wanted to offer a collaborative listening experience too.

The development of the Prism came about shortly after Jaar’s debut album, Space is Noise was released last year on CD. Jaar told Creative Review that he felt a massive sense of anti-climax receiving a copy of his first album on CD, and so wanted to find away to make future releases more special.

It’s great to see an artist and label looking to find new ways of maintaining  the physicality of music releases in an age of downloads and overpriced CD packages. No, it won’t sit snugly alongside your records or CDs, or even in your pocket. And no, there’s no graphic artwork to speak of, save for the text printed on the Prism. But the Prism does feel like a piece of sculptural artwork, a keepsake of sorts. And that, is no small achievement for a music release these days.

The Prism costs $40 and is available from csa.fm/theprism