Beck Hooks Up With Dangermouse

Editorial

Beck has spent his career mixing genres and reinventing himself as an artist at a rate incomparable to any other act (except maybe for the wonderfully crazy Ween), but fans were perhaps perplexed at the electronic-pop of his last record, 2006's The Information. His resulting world tour, however, was a huge hit, and included his infamous use of stage puppets eerily mimicking his actual band.

The move to bring in Dangermouse makes for a more than interesting prospect, with Beck having already looked into folk-tronica, electro-lounge, wonky-rock, sun-blasted Latina flavoured funk-rock and a million genres in between. Dangermouse, aside from his work as one half of Gnarls Barkley has also worked on production for Gorillaz, The Rapture, The Black Keys, Ike Turner and Sparklehorse, himself caring little for any notion of genre. His own work on Gnarls, for instance, has run the gamut of soul, pop and hip hop as easily as Beck.

On paper, this is like God teaming up with Buddha to bring home the deity championship. Let the salivating at this prospect begin.

Jaymz Clements, March 2008