Danger Mouse Teams Up With Jack White and Norah Jones For Project

Producer extraordinaire Danger Mouse likes to keep his fingers in many bowls at once, so it’s no surprise that his latest project is out of left field again. Brian Burton, AKA Danger Mouse, has collaborated with Norah Jones and Jack White on a new project called Rome that was put together with help from Italian composer Daniele Luppi. As Burton and Luppi told The Guardian recently, the project is inspired by 1960’s Italian spaghetti western soundtracks, and has been in process for around five years. Supposedly it was put together in three separate sessions in Rome using some of the musicians that actually played on the soundtracks of original 1960’s westerns. Concerning Jack White’s place in the scheme of things, Burton notes,

For the lead vocalists, I definitely wanted a man and a woman. The female vocal needed to be soft, not polarizing. But the male needed to have a bit more angst to it. I played some of the music for Jack White when I was on tour shortly after doing the first session, just to show him what I was doing, because at the time everyone thought I was just a hip-hop guy, or whatever. He liked it, but at the time I wasn’t even thinking of using him – you know, it’s Jack White. But in the end, I thought, he’s really into it – why not? We all understood that if it didn’t work, it didn’t work. But he tried it in different voices – a high voice, a low voice, and I thought, why don’t we leave them all in? And it sounded great. There’s a bunch of his vocals on “Rose With the Broken Neck”, and it doesn’t always sound like him – sometimes you’re like, is that Jack or not?”

Burton goes on to say, “I get a lot of offers to do film soundtracks and I’ve never said yes, because no one has heard this yet, and I think some people still think of me as a hip-hop producer. But this is what I would actually do, if I were to make a soundtrack. I’m really happy it’s out.” The release date is not yet public knowledge, but will perhaps be early next year. In other Jack White news, he’s recently announced that Meg White and he will be returning to the studio in the near future for new White Stripes material. It’s been three years since the band dropped out of the spotlight, and we can't wait to hear what they come out with next!