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Off the record
Evening Standard 22.02.08
Dressed to thrill: Super-producer Danger Mouse, aka Brian Burton, right, with his Gnarls Barkley partner, singer Cee-Lo
Duet: Jarvis Cocker and Beth Ditto are releasing a cover of Eighties classic Temptation
Look here too
David Smyth asks how Brian 'Danger Mouse' Burton can follow his mega-hit Crazy, and looks at what's new on the net.
MOUSE THE MAVERICK
If he wanted to, producer Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton could help Madonna back into the saddle, donate beats to Beyoncé and dry Britney's tears.
After his global success as half of oddball duo Gnarls Barkley with their gigantic hit Crazy, his phone must have been close to melting with big money offers.
Instead he now has four unexpected new projects on the go, none featuring major names. Sneak previews of the new songs have left me convinced that he's one of the most visionary music makers around.
The 30-year-old New Yorker may be a hip hop obsessive but he has an ear for almost any musical genre. Most major producers have a distinctive signature - like Phil Spector's wall of sound or the minimal R&B of the Neptunes. Burton has many.
He's currently making psychedelic soul on the second Gnarls Barkley album, blues rock with the Black Keys, distinctively English indie pop with The Shortwave Set and trip hop alongside Martina Topley-Bird.
An early example of his magpie tendencies was the illegal 2004 bootleg, The Grey Album, an inventive mix of rapped vocals from Jay-Z's Black Album with rearranged music from the Beatles' White Album.
He knew he could never sell it - but he made it anyway and watched its rapid spread on the internet. "It was almost this Andy Warhol moment, where I made a decision to do something artistically without a clear reason as to why, except to show people what I could do," he claims.
The only album he's ever made under any commercial pressure is Gnarls Barkley's second, The Odd Couple, due for release on 8 April (Atlantic/WEA).
The record company bosses might long for another Crazy, but that doesn't interest Danger Mouse.
"We stopped trying to make Crazy the day after we recorded Crazy," he says.
Instead he has issued the comeback single Run, a frantic soul stormer with wild organ, bongos and children yelling in the urgent chorus. It's a certain showstopper when the duo don their trademark fancy dress for live dates later in the year.
On an entirely different tack is Attack and Release by Ohio blues duo the Black Keys, out 31 March (V2/Cooperative).
Their sparse sound has prompted persistent White Stripes comparisons but Burton inspired them to vary their style by asking them to compose new songs for an proposed Ike Turner album.
Turner's death late last year might have ended the project, but the band decided to complete and release the tracks themselves. The new material has genuine soul.
"Danger Mouse was a great collaborator," says guitarist Dan Auerbach. "He has a real ear for melody and arrangement that was a big part of this record."
The poppy piano loops of Martina Topley-Bird's single Carnies from May's album, The Blue God (Independiente), sounds like another Danger Mouse hit to me. So, too, do Now Til '69 and No Social from The Shortwave Set's diverse second album, Replica Sun Machine (out 28 April on Wall of Sound).
Burton's refusal to go for the big money has protected him from complacency, allowing him to work only with those whose music genuinely inspires him. In turn, he has a vital hand in music that will inspire the rest of us.
A RACKET ON MYSPACE
The critics made their attempt to predict the stars of 2008 at the start of the year, with some success if the careers of Adele and Duffy are anything to go by. Now the people behind MySpace have had a go. The list ought to be on the money as the site has insider knowledge of where exactly the kids are clicking.
Interestingly, the names on the list (at www.nme.com/news/ nme/34405) are completely different from the critics'.
It suggests that musical genres we'll be nodding along to in the near future include Toystep, Bassline and Acousmatic.
Tipped artists include RiUvEn (rap with a thick Scouse accent), Naz-T (a 14-year-old grime artist whose voice has yet to break), Partyshank (bleepy dance music more likely to be number one in Super Mario World) and Ebony Bones (a Day-Glo clothes horse whose big number is called Don't Fart on My Heart). Some of it sounded better when my computer accidentally started playing several bands at once.
I thought music was now so easily accessible that everyone was more or less into the same thing, but if some of this stuff does succeed, the familiar cry of "Turn that racket down!" will soon echo across family homes once more. It looks like the generation gap is alive and well.
NEW ON THE NET
• Madonna's latest album is due on 28 April, and she's keeping her new sound strictly under wraps.
Rolling Stone had a sneak preview this week, calling the new songs "more urban-oriented, thumpy funk". The previously leaked Pharrell Williams collaboration Candy Shop has now been wiped from the web, but there is 17 seconds of 4 Minutes To Save The World, available (for now, anyway) at www.thatgrapejuice.net/2008/02/madonna-4-minutes-to-save-world-ft.html.
• Stockholm's Lykke Li is set to follow in Robyn's footsteps and become the Swedish singer of choice this year. Her ascent to stardom should be fast if all her songs match the dreamy quality of her lovely first single, Little Bit, in download stores now.
• Mountainous Gossip frontwoman Beth Ditto and human rake Jarvis Cocker team up for the homeless charity Shelter. They're releasing a live cover of Heaven 17's Eighties classic Temptation, downloadable from the iTunes store this week.
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