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Wu-Tang Clan have set the modest sales target of one for their upcoming 31-track double album Once Upon A Time in Shaolin, which will be sold as a ‘single-sale collector’s item’ as though it were a fine painting.
A challenge to the increasing disposability of music in the digital era, the album will be owned by just one person and only heard by a few.
The group plan to tour it around museums, galleries and music festivals (provided all recording devices have been confiscated), with RZA telling Forbes: «We’re about to put out a piece of art like nobody else has done in the history of [modern] music.
«We’re making a single-sale collector’s item, this is like somebody having the sceptre of an Egyptian king,» he added.
Produced by Tarik ‘Cilvaringz’ Azzougarh, the album is currently lying in a hand-carved nickel-silver box and locked in a Moroccan vault.
«I know it sounds crazy,» Cilvaringz said. «It might totally flop, and we might be completely ridiculed.
«But the essence and core of our ideas is to inspire creation and originality and debate, and save the music album from dying.»
Standing at 128 minutes, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin is said to be in the «original Wu Tang style of the 90s» and encapsulates the Clan’s «legendary dark funk and avant garde sound».
There is no word on the price tag yet.
The LP is rumoured to get a play in the UK at the Tate Modern, with paying visitors being patted down for recording devices before listen to it on closely-monitored headphones.
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As Cilvaringz put it: «One leak of this thing nullifies the entire concept.»
Wu-Tang Clan have another album on the way this year which will be released to the wider public, entitled A Better Tomorrow.
