Interview

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If music today has become a producer's medium-and some might argue that it has, with fractured audiences, disintegrating record labels, and increasing desperation for foul-weather hits to keep the whole thing afloat-then 31-year-old Brian Burton, a.k.a. Danger Mouse, might very well be the most prolific knob-twiddler around. Four years ago, Burton's The Grey Album, a homespun (and illegal) mash-up of the Beatles' "white" album (1968) and Jay-Z's The Black Album (2003), infamously announced his presence. Free, unofficially released, and available almost exclusively online, the songs were downloaded, file-shared, and bootlegged by the millions before lawyers got involved. (Burton had never received permission from either the Beatles or Jay-Z to use their music.) The project, though, did prove valuable in other ways: Despite Burton's almost patent inscrutability-a character named "Dr. President" appears in many photographs taken of him, and he has a long-standing propensity for dressing up like a giant mouse-he has very quickly become one of the industry's most in-demand producers. Burton mostly produces full-length albums, and the list of artists that he's worked with-from hip-hop square pegs Gemini and MF Doom to Damon Albarn's cartoon electro-pop quartet Gorillaz and indie dance-rock band the Rapture-continues to grow both in length and eclecticism. In the last four months alone, Burton has delivered three very diverse records: The Odd Couple (Atlantic), his second effort with Southern soul singer Cee-Lo Green under the banner of Gnarls Barkley; Attack & Release (Nonesuch), by ragged, bluesy rock duo the Black Keys; and Beck's latest, Modern Guilt (Interscope). Here he talks to filmmaker Steven Soderbergh about the peculiar-and sometimes perilous-business of being the man they call Danger Mouse.

STEVEN SODERBERGH: I'm going to start by doing that thing that people have done to me in interviews: I'm going to read back a quote of yours from another interview. I read this article where you said that you felt you were drawn to a sort of "sadder side" of music, a "darker side." When I was growing up, certain kinds of music caught my ear. Later on, I was able to find out that even though the kinds of music I listened to were all different, there were some technical similarities and certain chords that hit me in particular ways. So when you say that you are drawn to sadder or darker music, what do you really mean?

DANGER MOUSE: Well, part of it does have to do with things like chord structure and movements. It is definitely more than a coincidence that particular notes and structures make people feel certain ways. But I find that the kinds of music I'm drawn to are those that a lot of people take for granted. I actually didn't find out about a lot of music until I was older. Some people have been listening to the Beatles their whole lives; I didn't discover them until I was 18 years old. As a result, I'm still very affected and moved by their music-maybe in a way that's different from someone who grew up around it. I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people. I suppose I could try to be some avant-garde artist if I wanted to, but that doesn't interest me as much.