CityLife

Musical roads lead to Rome

From left, Daniele Luppi, Norah Jones, Danger Mouse and Jack White

You might not be immediately familiar with the name Danger Mouse. No, not the crime-fighting rodent created in Chorlton. Rather a multi-award winning New York record producer, who up until now has been keen to take a back seat on his many projects.

However it’s likely that you may have heard something Danger Mouse, aka Brian Burton, has either written or recorded. He’s one half of Gnarls Barkley, for starters, the neo-soul duo he formed with Cee Lo Green who had a global hit with Crazy.

The 33-year-old has also produced albums for the Gorillaz, Beck and The Black Keys, while last year’s highly acclaimed Dark Night Of The Soul album saw him collaborate with the likes of Iggy Pop, David Lynch, The Flaming Lips and The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas.

Despite producing some of alternative music’s finest albums during the past seven years or so, Danger Mouse has also, for the most part, secretly been toiling away on what might just be his masterpiece.

Rome, a collaboration with Italian film composer Daniele Luppi, was released on Monday, and sees the duo pay tribute to their shared love of Italian film soundtracks of the Sixties and Seventies.

“I started the first Gnarls Barkley record in 2003, and didn’t finish it till 2005, so I guess we met between that time,” begins the laid-back New Yorker, gesturing to the extremely dapper Luppi to his left.

Both men are wearing suits, although with very different results. Danger Mouse, slightly hungover, with shades on indoors, looks like the king of the slackers. Luppi meanwhile, immaculate hair, neat moustache and near-perfect English, oozes continental cool. “I was having trouble finishing a few things on that Gnarls album, and Daniele stepped in and added some cool instrumentation and things here and there,” continues Danger Mouse. “There were some touches he made that I could never have done. He’s worked on string arrangements on most of the records I’ve done since.”

Before their meeting, Luppi had released An Italian Story, his own tribute to the likes of Ennio Morricone, the composer of many an iconic Spaghetti Western score.

“I’d bought that record and loved it,” says Danger Mouse. “It sounded so great I thought it was an old album. When we met, it was the first thing we talked about and bonded immediately. This was our common ground.”

Rome was recorded in the Italian capital over a period of five years. Whenever time could be made, Danger Mouse and Luppi would meet in Rome and work away. A self-financed labour of love, they didn’t have to explain their concept – a soundtrack to a film that doesn’t actually exist – to any record label, and were free to go develop it in their own way.

They also managed to keep the whole thing a secret, telling only a handful of friends, fearful they might never actually complete the challenge or, worse still, that external interest would ruin what they were trying to achieve.

Fittingly, the album was recorded using the musicians whose idiosyncratic playing brought the soundtracks of the Sixties and Seventies to life.
Despite being in their 80s, the old session musicians were pin-sharp, and, says Luppi, genuinely pleased to see two relative upstarts recording in a traditional way. “We were keen to get hold of vintage instruments, to recreate the sound of those lost Italian soundtracks. A lot of those instruments aren’t available now, and if they are, not easy to find in Rome.

“We had to go through personal friends and a network of old players, and finding a certain bass [a Fender six-string bass] was really difficult, but we managed. When we handed it to the bass player in the studio, he couldn’t believe we’d tracked one down.”

It’s this bass, with its characteristic ‘plucky’ sound, along with subdued, melodramatic string arrangements and slinky, funk-style drumming that brings Rome to life.

The album conjures up images of driving along a winding mountain road in a frog-eyed sports car, while a chic-looking lady in giant sunglasses sits in the passenger seat, puffing effortlessly on a Gitanes.

Other moments on the album could just as easily sit underneath the arrival of a silent gunslinger on horseback, riding into town to clean the place up, before departing, anonymously.

On the album, that particular Man With No Name seems to be played by Jack White, in his first recorded appearance since the demise of The White Stripes.
He sings on three tracks, The Rose With The Broken Neck, Two Against One and album finale The World and, while he doesn’t bring the histrionics of his own work, is no less effective with a more pared-down approach.

Norah Jones also appears on three songs, Season’s Trees, Black and Problem Queen, and has perhaps never sounded better than she does here.

Danger Mouse certainly has a way with choosing vocalists. Cee-Lo Green was a virtual unknown before Gnarls Barkley emerged and is now one of the biggest stars on the planet. While not as famous, James Mercer of The Shins, and one half of Danger Mouse’s side project Broken Bells, is one of indie’s most distinctive voices.

“We knew we wanted the album to be half vocals, half instrumental, and within that, half female voice, half male,” says Danger Mouse, now easing himself out of his jetlag and hangover with a pot of tea.

“It came to the time we had to think of someone to come in and sing. It was the first time we were making a leap outside the project.

“But we knew we were going to need something else to take the album to a new territory. Jack was the first person we went to, and after that Norah came.

“With singers I just have to believe what they’re singing. There are some great singers out there, but that quality is much rarer.”

Rome is out now.