Wu-Tang Clan’s album ‘Once Upon a Time in Shaolin’ will be played in Tasmania

A decade ago, the Wu-Tang Clan released a single CD-only album, placed it in an embossed nickel-silver box, locked it in a vault, and said the public wouldn’t be able to hear it until the year 2103.

The move was seen as a protest against the devaluation of music in the era of streaming. But a year later, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin fell into the trap of capitalist endeavors that Wu-Tang had tried to avoid, when it was purchased by Martin Shkreli, a disgraced pharmaceutical speculator who had been convicted of crimes. Fraud in 2017

He bought the album at auction for $2 million, only to have it seized by the government and sold to pay off Mr. Shkreli’s $7.4 million debt.

As things stand, an NFT group bought the album for $4 million in 2021. And soon, if you can get to the island of Tasmania off the southern coast of Australia in a couple of weeks, you might be able to hear what RZA and producer Cilvaringz have to say, which was created 79 years ago by Going public – or part of it, anyway.

From 15 to 24 June, the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania’s capital, will host a series of special listening events where visitors will be able to ‘experience’ a selection of 31 tracks from the group’s seventh studio album. “You hear talk about opportunities that come once in a lifetime.” The museum wrote on the exhibition page. “Maybe this is one of them.”

The museum said free tickets can be reserved, “if you are lucky enough to secure one,” starting Thursday.

The hearings will be part of a larger exhibition called “Name drop“, which will run until April next year and will cover celebrity, status and culture. Other names associated with the exhibition include Porsche, Madonna, Henry Kissinger, Air Jordan, McDonald’s and Henry VIII. The Wu-Tang album will be available to listen for those 10 days only.

“Every now and then, something on this planet has mysterious properties that transcend its physical conditions,” said Jarrod Rawlins, the museum’s director of curatorial affairs. He said in a statement to The Guardian. “‘Once Upon a Time in Shaolin’ is more than just an album, so when I was thinking about the stature, and what a transcendent name it could be, I knew I had to get it into this show.”

The Mina Museum, as it is known, opened in 2012, to the dismay of locals and the delight of tourists and museum curators. The $200 million project was the brainchild of David Walsh, a wealthy local gambler and mathematician.

Mona seemed like a perfect fit for an NFT group looking to “support RZA’s vision” for the album, the group, called PleasrDAO, said in a statement to The Guardian.

It seems that the group has been teasing the news for several days. a The video appears on social media Hand-painted sign reading “Do you like Wu-Tang?” Aboard the Staten Island Ferry and at other locations in New York City where passersby hear excerpts from the album. The album title is a reference to “Shaolin”, How the group refers to its hometown of Staten Island and a regular subject of lyrics by the Wu-Tang Clan, a nine-member group formed in New York in the early 1990s and best known for hits like “CREAM” and “Protect Ya Neck.”

As owners of the album, Blesserdau She can listen to the 31 songs on her two CDs, which are accompanied by a leather book, according to the 2021 deal. But the original restrictions that the RZA and Silveringz imposed on Mr. Shkreli were part of the sale to PleasrDAO, including that the album could not be released to the general public in any form From figures until the year 2103 (88 years after its initial sale in 2015).

However, at the time of purchase, PleasrDAO said it had ambitions to make the album more accessible to the public through listening parties and gallery-style exhibitions. It was not immediately clear what evidence PleasrDAO provided to the museum that the collection and the museum had the legal right to operate it.

The RZA, PleasrDAO and Mona Museum did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“It’s not an album you just listen to or hear, it’s something you experience.” RZA wrote when the album was released. “Some of the songs are long and trip-like, others are short like a shot of adrenaline. Sonically, this is what Wu-Tang fans have fallen in love with, sonically, raw, melodic, strange, dark. Hence the title, Because Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, it looked like this.”