“I don't know where the record business is going to be in six months," said Beck, whose new album, Modern Guilt, is his last under a recording deal that began in 1994.
SEVERAL months ago Beck Hansen finally fulfilled a promise he'd made to himself: to archive the heap of personal recordings in his closet. It was a chore that reacquainted him with the performer he had been early in his career and the artist he has since become, and as he wandered through more than a decade's worth of unreleased music, he found himself feeling nostalgic, relieved and occasionally mortified.
“It is a bit random, what ends up getting released and what stays in the can," Beck, who is known by his first name, said in his ambling So-Cal drawl. “Some of it's embarrassing, and some of it's better than you thought. Some of it should be burned."
He compared his unreleased songs to planes on a runway, some still waiting to take off and some that never will, and marveled at the many unexplored destinations where his muse might have led him. “There's so many directions things could have gone," he said.
The paths taken and not taken have brought him to another valedictory point in his mercurial career. On Tuesday, his 38th birthday, Beck will release Modern Guilt, his eighth major-label studio album. It is his first collaboration with Danger Mouse, the D.J. and producer who is half of the funk-rock group Gnarls Barkley, and his final release under the recording deal that began with Beck's 1994 breakthrough, Mellow Gold, which featured the ubiquitous novelty song Loser.
The completion of his contract with DGC Records, which has since been absorbed by Interscope Geffen A&M Records, could be a climactic event, occurring as the music industry continues to implode. Beck could now seek a new deal with a major label, an indie or a concert promoter, or he could go it alone, as contemporaries like Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead and Tori Amos have done. Or his label could decide not to sign him again.
