Musical artists like Nouvelle Vague and Björk have already started using mobile and tablet apps as a way to promote or add value to their records, but a recent project calledThe Book of Sarth is using the app format to a slightly different end. A graphic novel and album mash-up, the app is an intriguing rethink of what album artwork can be in the digital age — and may even prove to be a platform for a new kind of narrative storytelling.

Read more…

Book of Sarth: I wouldn’t mind rolling a j before playing with this trippy app. It’s an immersive album/book with art from seven different artists and music from Sarth Calhoun. You can totally lose yourself in it. $7.99

View on Gizmodo…

Brooklyn-based electronic musician/composer/improviser Sarth Calhoun a.k.a. Sarth has spent the last few months working on what at first sight looks like just any other iPhone/iPad app but actually has a lot more to it than that: it’s a book, it’s a story, it’s an illustration, it’s an album, it’s a graphical album (hence the name “The Gralbum Collective”)… and it might even, potentially, be a new way of distributing music all together!

Read more…

Is it a graphic novel? A concept album? An animation? An App? A book?

The Book of Sarth is all of these things plus a narrative about an ear worm that is, itself, an ear worm! The Book of Sarth is the first example of an entirely new art form for the early 21st century.  The initial offering of the Gralbum Collective, a self-described group of musicians, artists, and programmers working to establish new forms for creative expression, The Book of Sarth is available now in the App Store and has to be experienced, more than described, but an attempt at a verbal description follows:

Read more…