Mouse And Man

Brian Burton is a tough man to get hold of. The Music grabs time with him during a cab ride between LAX and the studio – a standard journey for the highly sought-after producer. Burton, who is better known around the world as Danger Mouse, has plenty of musical muses, but right now he only has eyes and ears for Broken Bells.

The experimental pop duo – completed by James Mercer of The Shins – have remained a fairly elusive entity, even after the success and acclaim brought on by their eponymous Grammy winning debut of 2010. But with After The Disco it already seems like they're giving more of themselves away. Thanks to a pair of connecting music videos – directed by Jacob Gentry and played out over snippets from After The Disco as well as first single Holding On For Life – you're able to gauge just what the duo are trying to say with their sophomore release: that love and connection drives our urges, however, these feelings come with the baggage of distance and loneliness.

“I think it touches a lot on that, yeah; if there's any themes it's things like that,” confirms Burton. “It's more of a question too – the After The Disco in the title could have had a question mark after it. It's everything you think you know, you've learned and then it's something else, and really you're just asking, 'Is this what I should be getting from this?', and I dunno, there's a little bit of disillusion but there's not necessarily anyone to blame it on. Do I really want the reality? I dunno, it's a question. And that's the thing with James and I, what you're hearing is a crossover; he's a lot more poetic than I am when it comes to words, my stuff is a little more straightforward, so there's a good mixture on there I think.”

Beneath the cosmic tones of After The Disco, that human element seems to underpin the entire record. It's futuristic in sounds, but drips in honesty. Burton admits the project comes from a pure place for both him and Mercer, and it's why he thinks this music is so special. “All my friends know how much Bells means to me,” he says. “From the beginning it just clicked with me, it felt like I could do all kinds of different things, and James is such a good friend now – it's just a benefit to have his voice.

“It's something we love to do, and it reminds me of when I first started making music and why I do it. I don't care about the results nearly as much as I care about doing it. James and I have very similar reasons why we got into music I think so there's no pressure for one of us to try and make this kind of music or that kind of music. It's an unspoken thing for us, we just want to make something we both like and then we go from there.”