Via Wired, The Great Beyond has learned of a baffling cultural crosswire.

Car insurance fan and rock star Iggy Pop is apparently making a new jazz-influenced album called Preliminaires, based on the work of a science-obsessed agent provocateur of French literature.

“There was an inspiration for this record … that’s a novel by Michel Houellebecq, a great novel, a funny novel, called The Possibility of an Island,” Pop said in March. “I think it’s about death, sex, the end of the human race and some other pretty funny stuff.”

The Possibility of an Island explores what it may mean when humans are finally cloned, via a fictional comedian called Daniel. The NY Times explains:

Daniel, it turns out, is not the novel’s only narrator; he is designated “Daniel1,” and as the story unfolds, we realize he is the progenitor of a line of cloned Daniels. A second narrator, designated “Daniel24,” picks up the story of “Daniel” and of human history (these now conveniently intersect) far in the future, where Daniel24 and his fellow “neohumans” live in a world ravaged by environmental disaster and almost completely devoid of human interaction.

A Previous Houellebecq novel (Les Particules Élémentaires) also gave a prominent role to cloning.

Preliminaires is released 25 May. Cloning, environmental devastation, Iggy Pop and jazz. What more could you want?