We knew something was cooking between Danger Mouse and Jack White after the pair were spotted dining in LA last week, and now some answers have arrived… The Broken Bells/Gnarls Barkley member and producer du jour has teamed up with Italian composer Daniele Luppi for an album paying homage to 1960s spaghetti western soundtracks called Rome, reports The Guardian. (Not a huge surprise, given that Brian Burton’s biggest hit sampled the score of a 1968 film from the genre.) Guest musicians on the project, due out next year, include original session players from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West, Conan’s BFF, and Norah Jones. Danger Mouse described how the White collaboration came about:
I played some of the music for Jack White… 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?
I had trouble envisioning a White-Danger Mouse collab at first, but add spaghetti western music to the mix and it sounds just about perfect, no? Check out the full interview with Burton and Luppi here.