After working with the likes of Jay-Z, Gorillaz and U2, super-producer and one half of Gnarls Barkley, Danger Mouse, has delivered his latest labour of love, Rome - a spaghetti western soundscape five years in the making...
Danger Mouse (better known to his personal banker as Brian Burton) has entered the public consciousness in 2004, when The Grey Album, his mash-up of the Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album became an underground hit.
“A lot of people just assume I took some Beatles and threw some Jay-Z on top of it or mixed it up or looped it around, but it's really a deconstruction," says Danger Mouse. "It's not an easy thing to do. I stuck to those two albums because I thought it would be more challenging and more fun and more of a statement to what you could do with sample alone. It is an art form. It is music.”
He then made himself a well-respected name as the beat-maker craftsman behind albums like Gorillaz’ Demon Days, Gnarls Barkley’s St.Elsewhere and Beck’s Modern Guilt. As you are reading this, Danger Mouse is putting the last coats of varnish onto the still unnamed new U2 album.
During the past five busy years, Danger Mouse repeatedly taken time off to work on a labour of love that eventually reached shops in late May: Rome, an album recorded over five plus years with Italian composer Daniele Luppi, Jack White, Norah Jones and veteran players from the revered Ennio Morricone film scores.
Danger Mouse’s admiration of these 60s Western soundtracks began as he attended film classes in Athens, Georgia. When he met young Italian sleazy listening specialist Daniele Luppi (An Italian Story).
For authenticity, the album was recorded at Rome’s Forum Studios. Luppi’s Italian connection led to the collaboration with many of the veteran studio musicians who worked with Morricone, Piero Umliani and Gian Piero Piccioni. “We had to go to Rome to get them because I didn’t have the money to bring them out to LA and besides they were 80 years old," says Danger Mouse. "You have to go to them.”
On several tracks Danger Mouse and Luppi also employed the radiant talents of Jack White ("The Rose with the Broken Neck", "Two Against One" and "The World") and Norah Jones ("Season's Trees", "Black" and "Problem Queen.").
Rome is cinematographic but far from Hollywood, it is retro but deliciously so, it defies stereotypes in a smart and unobtrusive way and: it should be listened to on vinyl.
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