But the squeak Danger Mouse currently touts is the one he's making with masked marvelous trick rapper MF Doom for DANGERDOOM and its debut, The Mouse and the Mask. Though released by Epitaph Records/Adult Swim and based on the skits and voices of Cartoon Network fare like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021, Mouse's twitchy, melodic orchestration and overloaded backgrounds serve as a force field for Doom and pals to play upon with serious sketchiness.

What's with the Mouse imagery and all its incumbent Danger?
I was in college on a much more serious music tract than I am now, very soundtrack-sounding. I had a different alias, Pelican City, and everything. But I wanted to start doing hip-hop and DJing for fun. I suddenly remembered the Dangermouse cartoon from when I was a kid. It was a cult thing then.

The funniness of the mouse was apt for how serious you were about hip-hop. What sort of cinematic sound were you influenced by, though, for your more serious work? What composers?
I think it was the specific films that grabbed me. I actually wanted to make my own movies. But without the money or materials to do my own films, scoring soundtracks was the next best thing. I did like Morricone and Lalo Schifrin. But overall I was a fan of dark music. Portishead. Radiohead. That's what made me move to England in 2001: the music. Before that, I was in Athens, Ga., which is another indie rock town. But London was different.

London is as darkly down-tempo as the music you like. And beautiful - your music is beautiful, heady and dark; the violins on "Sofa King," the Esquival lounge thing on "El Chupa Nibre." Even the Grey Album was rife with elegant sound.
For me, it's all about melody, along with experimentation and being compact. I mean, I love John Cage. But, at the heart, I need a melody. At the end of the day, I need to find the most interesting way to get that melody across. More melancholy, sure. And it can be a small melody. It doesn't have to be about verse-chorus, either. No matter what I liked - hair metal, synth pop that I listened to in high school - or what music I made, it had a visual sensibility; make you see something as opposed to just hearing an instrument being played and following it. I wasn't trying to be different with what I was writing and playing. I just didn't know. I wanted to get into music quickly. So I skipped a lot of basics. This is the result. The best I can do. For two-and-a-half, three minutes, tops.

You refer to it - your take on hip-hop - as a song. Not a track. Very interesting. That in itself shows consideration toward the musical. You moved a lot. You're back and forth now between L.A. and London.
I'm doing the new record with Damon Albarn; a live band project we have neither a name nor a singular sound for.

But it's not Blur or Gorillaz or a solo project?
No. It's amazing who is on the record. But I can't tell you anything other than that I'm producing, Damon is the lead singer and it's a new modern rock record that won't sound like anything you ever heard before. And no sampling. Hey, the Gorillaz record has no musical programming. It has some drum programming. But not the music.

You're doing so, so much. Your name is always out there. Are you worried about over-saturation?
A little. I'm supposed to, at least. I'm still early on musically. I've only been doing music for nine years. I don't have as much, I guess, admiration for myself as a musician so that I think I'm doing my best work any time soon. That's why I'm doing so much stuff. I'm learning from other people.

For all the continued learning, was the attention given The Grey Album a shock?
No, not really. I always thought, somehow, that I'd tied together those two worlds. So that when I did it, I wasn't shocked. It was that experiment, and that's all it was. I mean, when I say that all I used was only the White Album for music, I mean, the drums sound was from that album: everything. I was looking to re-contextualize something using just that source. That's why it's so raw and crazy sounding - that those drums are found on fills in between the singing.

That's what makes The Grey Album pure. It was an art experiment with a border: White Album. Black Album.
If you get the album, that's where the purity comes from - the drums. The frame. And as soon as you told people they couldn't have it ...

... that purity got bastardized. It was very fast - its notoriety.
It was all kind of numbing. I quickly became the Grey Album guy. But it got a lot of people looking at what I do. And luckily, I've been working with really good people right afterwards. I really like the whole collaborative process. I probably wouldn't do as much without it.

Hooking up with Albarn. Did you like the first Gorillaz CD?
You know, I never really got into it. I wasn't listening to much hip-hop when I moved to London, around the time it came out. I didn't not like it. And I loved the concept - hiding behind the cartoons and such. And as soon as we met, we hit it off, started working on "Dirty Harry" immediately. Next thing you know, I'm heading back to L.A. and got a kids' choir to sing on it. I'm down with him. Definitely learning a lot from him and the way he works and the songs we write.

MF Doom. How does he fit into the layered, crowded street scene of your sound? How does the whole Adult Swim thing come into play?
I've been doing music for the Cartoon Network for years. That's how I was able to survive for so long. Fast forward to this Prince Paul record I was producing. Doom was on that. I loved his voice, the way he structured lyrics.

He doesn't do choruses.
No. He's very unorthodox. Like me. His verses are as long as they need to be. He jumps all around the track. Adjust with the breaks. He has a lot of musical elements. And he likes going overtop with the lush stuff. So, I just gave him beats while we started hunting for a concept. Next thing you know, we both realize we're big Adult Swim fans.

But you definitely kept it loose - the cartoon thing.
Oh yeah. If you don't know the characters, it's no thing. If you do, it's an extra, added bonus. The funny thing is, IÔve been doing this CD with Doom, before I even started The Grey Album. Doom, the thing with Jemini - all that came before the Grey Album. But with that and the Gorillaz thing - it gave me the year that I had. So essentially, I'm still doing all the same stuff. It's just that more people are looking.

So then going back to the movie thing, are you the director to a certain extent?
A little bit, yeah. My ultimate goal is to establish a sound. To create a director's role for musicians, with my star as whoever it is I'm working with. Like, I don't want to just do the next Blur record. I'd want them to step away from what they're normally doing and do a Dangermouse record. Be in my world, so to speak.

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