« Jay Rosen on How the Media is Beginning to Get It | Main | Alaa to be Released by Egyptian Authorities »
June 19, 2006
Why Danger Mouse Will Take Over the Known World
 |
Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo of Gnarls Barkley, paying tribute to A Clockwork Orange |
Danger Mouse, aka Brian Burton, is a hero to many in remix/mashup culture. Two years ago, he was flipping through his music collection and found copies of both the Beatles' White Album and an a capella version of rapper Jay-Z's Black Album. After a bit of fiddling on his computer, he realized he could mix a song from each album and make a new song out of them. Soon enough, he had an entire album of mashups - The Grey Album. The album developed a cult following on the Internet, with hundreds of thousands of copies downloaded. While Jay-Z explicitly wanted his music to get remixed, the Beatles' record label, EMI, saw things differently, and sent out their suits on a mission to quash the album. Ultimately, there was nothing they could do to stop peer-to-peer sharing of The Grey Album. And even though it was never officially released, it was named album of the year by Entertainment Weekly and The New Yorker, among others.
Now, Danger Mouse is back with a new album under a new name: Gnarls Barkley. (And no, it's not intended to be a play on the name Charles Barkley, so he claims.) His album, St. Elsewhere, is a collaboration with rapper-soul singer Cee-Lo, and it's the most brilliant musical work I've heard this year. (Though I must admit I can't stop listening to Wolfmother, the heaviest band in decades.) A brilliant mix of soul, hip hop, psychadelic 70s rock, and a few other random styles (including Klezmer of all things), Gnarls Barkley is reminiscent of both Outkast and Gorillaz, but without the gimmicks. It's intelligent, thoughtful music that's constantly full of surprises - absolutely a refreshing way to start the summer.
Here are some quotes from Klosterman's interview with Danger Mouse. It's clear that he has a whole other way of looking at music production, seeing himself as a movie director, an auteur, not unlike one of his idols, Woody Allen:
What changed everything was when I got into Woody Allen.... When I got to college, I saw 'Manhattan' and 'Deconstructing Harry.' I thought to myself: Why do I relate so much to this white 60-year-old Jewish guy? Why do I understand his neurosis? So I just started watching all of his movies. And what I realized is that they worked because Woody Allen was an auteur: he did his Thing, and that particular Thing was completely his own. That's what I decided to do with music. I want to create a director's role within music, which is what I tried to do on this album.......I have to be in control of the project I'm doing. I can create different kinds of musical worlds, but the artist needs the desire to go into that world. I won't fight with people to try and make the sounds I hear inside my head. What I want is for the leader of a group to come to me, and then I lead that person. Because even with some of my favorite bands, I only like 30 or 40 percent of what they do. I'd want to make that 30 percent into the whole album....
...Musically, there is no one who has the career I want. That's why I have to use film directors as a model. But I think there are other people who could do what I do, and maybe 'St. Elsewhere' will open things up. Like, Jack White was able to take control of Loretta Lynn, and the result was a great record" ("Van Lear Rose," which came out in 2004). "And that's cool. That's the goal.
On creating The Grey Album:
One day I was cleaning my room and listening to the Beatles' White Album. I was kind of bored, because the other hip-hop work I was doing was really easy. Somebody had sent me an a capella version of 'The Black Album,' but I was already doing stuff with Cee-Lo and Jemini and Doom, so I didn't want to waste my beats on a remix record.... So I'm listening to the White Album and I'm putting 'The Black Album away, and I suddenly have this idea: I decide to see if I could take those two albums and make one song, just because of the names of the two albums and because they're perceived as being so different and because I've always loved Ringo Starr's drum sound.I sat down and tried to make one track, and it happened really fast. Then I tried to make a second song, and it took a lot longer, but it still worked. And I thought, Wow. What if I can do the whole album? 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. And I could never do an album like that again. I still don't know where I found the patience to make those songs. It took me about 20 days in a row, and those were all 12- and 13-hour days. And the whole time I was doing it, I was terrified someone else would come up with the same idea, which would have ruined everything. Because really, the idea is pretty simple.
I thought it would be a weird, cultic record for techies to appreciate, because they would be the only people who would understand how much work was involved," he says. "But then it was taken into this whole different world, where a million people were downloading it at the same time. At best, that record is just quirky and odd and really illegal. I never imagined people would play those songs in clubs. I also think the people who love it tend to love it for the wrong reasons, and the people who hate it tend to hate it for the wrong reasons. I think some people love it for what it supposedly did to the music industry, which was not my intent. I did not make 'The Grey Album' for music fans. I made it to impress people who were really into sampling.
On the influence of (yes) Pink Floyd:
I remember hearing Pink Floyd's 'Wish You Were Here' in a bar," Burton says. "This was around 1995. And I remember thinking it was so beautiful. It just put me in a daze. I asked someone what it was, and they were like: 'You don't know? This is Pink Floyd.' Now, I had heard of Pink Floyd, but I never really knew what they sounded like. I had never actually played Pink Floyd records. And I suddenly found myself wondering, Why have I spent all these years never listening to this music? And the reason was that I was afraid to do anything that would have seemed socially unacceptable. I was afraid that people wouldn't think of me as this hip-hop guy, because hip-hop was my Thing. So then I went out and bought every Pink Floyd record.
Anyway, if you're interested in good music, mashups and intelligent musicians in general, check out the article.
The summer just got a little more interesting. -andy
Posted by acarvin at June 19, 2006 6:28 PM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
