Ben Folds, Damian Kulash, Amanda Palmer, and Neil Gaiman to Write and Record 8 Songs in 10 Hours

It seems like artists you love can never quite get an album out fast enough, doesn’t it? Whether it’s Panic! at the Disco who take years between releasing albums or Lady Gaga who puts out a new album annually, fans are always demanding that musicians release their music FASTER.

Well, okay, is 10 hours fast enough for you?

Because on April 25th Amanda Palmer, Ben Folds, Damian Kulash and Neil Gaiman are going to record an 8 song album. But they will only have from 4 PM until midnight to do so.

Ben Folds believes this is a way to show the power of digital media in music. “Digital technology allows singers who can’t sing and musicians who look better than they play to sing and play in tune and in time. At the same time, it empowers the musician to distribute music without a middle man and directly to an audience within moments of its creation. It even allows two-way communication during the process so that the audience might collaborate to some extent or be present in some way — like live music.”

Palmer is no stranger to writing music in a short period of time, she wrote her most recent single “Map of Tasmania” (availabe online for free or with optional donation) in roughly half an hour (you can read the whole story behind it here). She has also mentioned the power of social media in relation to the creative process. “The four of us are creative internet addicts with our own huge Twitter circles. This project is exciting as it will give us the opportunity to collide our circles.” Neil Gaiman, author and Amanda’s husband, says “…it shows people how art is actually made. Or would actually be made if you locked three songwriter performers and an author in a box for a day and forced them to collaborate with Twitter to craft and record songs.”

“Can the album cycle actually be reduced to a single day? If the recording industry is supposed to be a means of connecting musicians to music listeners, well, then, here it is — spontaneous and circular,” Kulash says. “They send us ideas and a day later we have an album, a show, and some semblance of a documentary. And then the next day (we hope), a big public flameout and a battle over rights and the release of competing slanderous autobiographies.”

The writing process will be livestreamed on Rethink Music‘s website, and the final album will be performed at an exclusive concert at the Berklee Performance Center. The finished album will be released via Bandcamp.com and proceeds will benefit Berklee City Music, a program that provides music education to teens.