‘You wouldn’t be able to hear another cover with such great, funky beats and not think it’s a Mark Ronson record.’ Alright, so he may have an ego the size of a small country, but Sir Ronson has certainly been up to some interesting stuff of late. Taking Britney for a spin, teaching Coldplay how to funk and bringing The Smiths into our shiny new century, Mark’s new ‘Version’ album imparts that Marmite factor Channel 4 producers have wet dreams about. Reactions on a postcard please!

HOW DID YOU SELECT THE TUNES YOU WERE GOING TO RE-WORK ON ‘VERSION’?
Songs that I loved...I’d just try one verse, sit at the piano or with my guitar and find what worked stripped down in another arrangement. I mostly stayed in the indie guitar realm, because I’m supplying songs with a beat.

BUT YOU MAKE THE BEAT-TASTIC ‘TOXIC’ SLOW DOWN...
Totally, it slows down a lot. It’s like a dusted-out Wu Tang head-fuck version!

WERE THERE ANY TUNES YOU COULDN’T MAKE A VERSION OF?
Songs from Bloc Party or Franz Ferdinand or The Cure use ‘white type’ minor progressions closer to classical or blues - they don’t lend themselves so well.

IS IT YOU SINGING ON ‘TOXIC’?
It’s a guy from New York I work with a lot. He played guitar with Jeff Buckley, and I loved his spooky kind of psychedelic T-Rex 70s glam voice, it just worked.

WHAT DOES THE RAP SECTION BRING TO THE TUNE?
It makes it slightly different; typically raps come in at the beginning or the end. I did a bunch of songs with ODB before he died so I had that verse lying around. We just fucked around with it and he was saying a line about burning up, which is in Britney’s. ODB’s voice is so charismatic, larger than life - that’s the point.

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE LILY ALLEN TO SING THE KAISERS’ ‘OH MY GOD’?
It had to be someone English...I love how she takes over, changing the melody from ‘Too much time spent dragging the past up...’ It’s cool putting your own stamp on a song without changing it too much or ruining it.

HOW DO YOU RETAIN THE ESSENCE OF THE ORIGINAL TRACKS?
With songs like (Radiohead’s) ‘Just’ and (The Smiths) ‘Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before,’ Morrissey and Thom Yorke both have these pure voices singing something disturbing, but you never know unless you mark the lyrics. You have to at least be true to the emotional sentiment, even if you’re changing the beat. You have to preserve the mood or it’s karaoke.

BUT WITH YOUR COLDPLAY COVER THE SENTIMENT SHIFTS...
With that song I loved the guitar melody more than anything, and the blurriness of the arrangement is why it strays from the original sentiment. I just couldn’t wait to get to the chorus part with the horns!

CAN ‘VERSION’ BE PINNED DOWN TO A PARTICULAR STYLE?
I have DJ disease! I put the driving drum beat upfront, I want to make something for a club. So it’s a party record but with complex arrangements.

DO YOU VIEW YOUR COVERS AS ORIGINALS IN THEIR OWN RIGHT?
I’m a producer first and a songwriter second. When people go, ‘Man, I never liked ‘Toxic’ until I heard your version,’ I think that’s stupid because I didn’t write the record, I just interpreted it. If you like mine, you do like the original, there’s just something in it you didn’t first hear; you turned off because it was Britney or whatever. I wanted to make these songs work for different crowds when I DJ. It’s like making a remix at home when the beat isn’t strong enough for clubs.

DOES YOUR HEART STILL LIE WITH HIP HOP?
Still so many of my production heroes come from hip hop, but not enough excites me now. Around half of my radio show is hip hop and when I DJ I still play a lot, but it doesn’t consume me anymore. There’s a sort of 60s New Orleans southern soul vibe to my stuff, but it’s also just as much a dusted out kind of Wu-Tang.

YOU STARTED OFF DJING IN 90S NEW YORK...HOW HEALTHY IS THE SCENE NOW?
It’s coming back around, but for a while it was just all about this kind of people sitting around drinking champagne and I was like, ‘Why am I DJing for this? There’s no dancefloor!’

IS LONDON A MORE INSPIRING PLACE MUSICALLY?
Oh yeah! One guy will go, ‘You heard the new something something record?’ and everyone gets so excited. There’s definitely more energy for it here. I love playing at Yo Yo at Notting Hill Arts Club and Newcastle’s World HQ.

YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE DEPORTED...WHICH THREE RECORDS WOULD YOU TAKE?
Can I cheat? (Gets out his laptop) I would take At The Drive In’s ‘Relationship of Command,’ David Bowie’s ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and Fiona Apple’s ‘Window.’

VERSION’ IS OUT 16TH APRIL (SONY)

Text: Lucy Wilson