The inventor of the phrase ‘silence is golden’ was definitely not a journalist. When you’re in the business of conducting trans-Atlantic ‘phoners’ with difficult rock stars (tired and on the road), silence is anything but. Black Keys front man, Dan Auerbach, was – shall we say – a man of few words…

2008 has seen the Ohio blues-rock duo (of Auerback and drummer Patrick Carney) team up with super-producer, Danger Mouse, for the release the much-celebrated Attack And Release on Nonesuch Records. Their fifth (and arguably best) studio album, it’s their first to actually be produced in a proper studio.

So, having finally traded the basement for more refined surrounds (and having brought in some extra staff for the first time), has Auerbach seen the pay off?

“I think it’s the worst one we’ve made, honestly,” jokes the singer. “No, I really love it. I guess it’s just another step forward for us really. We’re slowly moving forward I guess.”

Despite the decision to move into the studio for the first time and the perhaps surprise choice of producer, the sound on the new album is as raw and bluesy as ever.

Having formed Gnarls Barkley, and worked with Jay Z and MF Doom in the past, Danger Mouse (aka Brian Joseph Burton) is not someone you’d naturally associate with Auberach and Carney’s stripped blues-rock sound – but it’s clear that on Attack And Release the threesome found some common ground.

“If you listen to his (Danger Mouse) records it’s all real instruments,” says Auberach, his downbeat Mid-West drawl about as enthused as it seems to get. “We had a lot in common, and we found that out working with him. We like so much of the same music and we just really got along.”

And were you fans of his before? “I really appreciated what he did, you know. I didn’t listen to a lot of his stuff, and now I’m certainly a lot more aware of it, but I always knew Gnarls Barkley. I mean I always knew a lot of what he’d done because you hear it all the time. It’s all over the radio.”

Mr Mouse must have had have had some power of persuasion. Having got the band to collaborate with – of all people – Ike Turner, they were then convinced to enter a studio.

“Yeah, it’s the first time we’ve ever been in the studio for a long period of time and it was great. It was really cool. We’ve tried to record a song or two a couple of times before in studios and it was just always the worst environment for us personally to be in.

“We’ve had really bad experiences with engineers not letting us touch any of the equipment. You know, we wanted to mess around and experiment with sounds and they really wouldn’t have that.

“Before this we did all of our records in basements and things like that. We did one of them in an old factory. It’s not that it’s more laid back it’s just that we had more control in those places. Do you know what I mean? That’s all it is, we’re just control freaks. Everything else was just self-produced.”

Prior to production on Attack And Release the band were working – though long distance – with Ike Turner. The project, initiated by Danger Mouse, came to an end due to Turner’s death in December 2007 and The Black Keys need to work on their own stuff, but eventually led to the DM/BK collaboration on 2008’s Attack And Release…

“He (Danger Mouse) was a fan of ours apparently and he wanted us to work on a record with him and his friend, Ike. We started working on that and spent a couple of months on and off working on it long distance - you know getting stuff recorded from a studio at home - and we’d send him tracks and he’d bring them to Ike.

“We basically did that for a couple of months and we then realised that we needed to make our record. Our free time was running out and the record label was hounding us. So we told him we needed to make our record and he expressed an interest in wanting to produce it. So we just asked him and he came out to Ohio and it was pretty cool.”

Having gone into the studio for the first time and brought in their first outside producer, the band decided that it was time to really throw caution to the wind. Having not used any musicians other than themselves on their first four albums, Auerbach and Carney brought in legendary guitarist, Marc Ribot, multi-instrumentalist Ralph Carney (Patrick’s uncle) and bluegrass/country singer, Jessica Lea Mayfield.

“We were just fans of theirs and we figured since we’re gonna break all our own rules and get a producer in and work in a studio we might as well invite some other people out to get involved too. It’s normally just always us two. So we invited Mark out and Pat’s uncle and they were both really good and it turned out great you know.”

And will they be coming on tour? “No, it’s just the two of us. I think we’ve always looked at the studio and live as two completely different things you know. They’re separate. When we’re in the studio we’ll add instrumentation – all kinds of instruments, whatever we want – but if we’re doing live shows it’s just the two of us.”

You know what they say… Three’s a crowd! Like The White Stripes (a band they’ve often been compared to), the Black Keys’ live show is something that defies the parameters of how much noise you’d expect a duo to make on stage. A man of few words in conversation, when Dan Auerbach gets behind the mic, the ‘noise is golden’!