The artist Danger Mouse considered his “biggest influence”
Danger Mouse has always kept an eclectic musical taste compared to most big-name producers. No matter which artist he works with, Brian Burton relies on getting the best out of the person at the moment rather than focusing on what stamp he can put on the music. Outside of his work with Gnarls Barkley and countless others, Burton holds one of his collaborations as the most vital to his career.
Around the turn of the millennium, Burton was just starting to make a name for himself in the underground hip-hop scene. Riding the waves of certain tracks he produced, it wasn’t until the release of his remix album, The Gray Album, that people began to notice. Containing instrumentals from The Beatles’ The White Album and verses from Jay-Z’s The Black Album, the hip-hop world was introduced to a bold new talent with an ear for finding the right samples and backing tracks for anyone.
Burton wasn’t just looking to splice beats together for the rest of his life, though. He had wanted to expand the limits of what he could do, and he found just the person to help him from the world of alternative rock.
Around the time Burton was breaking onto the scene, Damon Albarn was disillusioned working with the Britpop legends Blur. After the release of 13, Albarn began assembling the beginnings of what would become Gorillaz with Jamie Hewlett, creating one zany song after the next, coupled with Hewlett’s fantastic knack for animation and artwork.
Though the first album was geared towards hip-hop with guest verses from Del the Funky Homosapien, Burton wanted to take the band even further on the record Demon Days. Outside his pedigree, Burton told Albarn about his desire to work with the digital act, only to get a bit of pushback from the Blur frontman.
As Burton recalls: “At first, he didn’t want me to do the whole Gorillaz album or anything. He was curious about me to see whether we could work together. The first track we did was ‘Dirty Harry’, which was a really raw, stripped-down demo. I had this vision of choirs and Gregorian chants and rapping, and Damon was like, ‘Well, go ahead and do it!’”.
Creating a dystopian vision behind Albarn’s words, Burton had built the basis of what would become Demon Days’s signature sound with ‘Harry’, marrying an alternative aesthetic with the sounds of hip-hop, electronic music and everything in between. Though Burton was about getting the record’s sonics down, he would speak at length about the impression that Albarn left on him.
Rather than focus on the groove, Burton talked about being taught the importance of the song from Albarn, explaining, “Damon’s Songwriting is the strongest part of that record, not any fancy production. It’s only when you have really good songwriting that you can do all the other stuff. That’s what allows me to do what I do. He gave me respect and that sense of confidence. His is the biggest influence anyone’s ever had on me.”
That ear for songwriting would come in handy for Burton when working with Cee Lo Green on the first two Gnarls Barkley albums as well. From there, Burton knew that he could work outside of strictly hip-hop or alternative music, working with artists as varied as the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Burton may have a distinctive approach to production, but his knowledge of a good song is something that he developed from Albarn directly.
