Noise du Jour’s Mashups: “Encore” by Danger Mouse

Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album may be one of the most well known mash-ups in recent memory. Created by a then relatively unknown producer, it combined a commercially released a cappella version of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and music taken exclusively from The Beatles’s The White Album. The result was a meticulously constructed and fluid combination both sonically and thematically. The effort required to mix the two so seamlessly was extraordinary and both fans and critics recognized that almost immediately.

EMI, who held the copyright for The Beatles, also took notice and on February 10th, 2004 they sent out a cease-and-desist order to Danger Mouse as well as a number of stores who were selling the extremely limited pressing. This prompted the activist group Downhill Battle to organize an event they dubbed Grey Tuesday, claiming that “the sampling is fair use and that a statutory license should be provided in the same manner as if a song had been covered.” On February 24th they and roughly 170 others hosted the album on their sites for download for twenty-four hours, during which time it was downloaded 100,000 times.

The video featured above was a promotional piece — specified for legal reasons — for the single “Encore” which features samples from the songs “Glass Onion” and “Savoy Truffle”; the video footage itself is taken from a Jay-Z performance and the film A Hard Day’s Night. Even with the occasionally clumsy CG animation the video still succeeds in cementing the integration of these two seemingly incompatible icons. I’ve always found myself impressed with this album not so much in terms of the music — insofar as I am not a fan of either The Beatles or The Hova — but from a technical angle. It is much more a testament to the abilities of Danger Mouse than either of the aforementioned parties and I am quite happy to appreciate it for that.

The Grey Video [YouTube]