Part of what's refreshing about electronic dance music is how utterly pragmatic its makers tend to be, driven as they are by a single aim: getting butts moving. On this count, producers don't get much more successful than Ewan Pearson, an Englishman who's remarkable for his facility with a wide variety of forms, from the extravagant psychedelia of cosmic disco to the steely-eyed restraint of German minimalism to the drunken chaos of Brooklyn-style dance-punk.

Pearson's versatility is documented on Piece Work, a recent two-disc collection of his remixes, including turns for the Chemical Brothers, Franz Ferdinand, and Depeche Mode. His embellishments of other people's songs recall '70s-era pioneers like Walter Gibbons and Patrick Cowley, the guys who basically invented the extended mix not remixes, really, but faithful elaborations of tracks that were already great to begin with. For Pearson, taking what's best about a song, especially a pop song, and stretching it out over eight minutes is the essence of what he figures is his humble work.

"When I started making music, I thought it would be about projecting something of myself into the world, whether it was something emotional or intellectual," says the producer, reached at a recording session in Sydney, Australia. "But the older I've become the more interested I've become in form and process, and less interested in venting my feelings through my music."

That functional approach extends to his production work on recent albums by the Rapture (Pieces of the People We Love) and Tracey Thorn (Out of the Woods). As with his remixes, there's nothing identifiably Pearsonesque on these albums just artists sounding comfortable in the contexts he's helped create.

"I want what I do as a producer to be a response to the people I'm working with," he says. "I don't want to turn them into something they're not, and I don't want to turn it into the Ewan Pearson show. I don't really see myself as a musician, but I think I'm good at listening, good at helping people refine their ideas, and good at suggesting new ways of doing things."

The new year will see the release of Pearson's recent collaborations with two lesser-known acts: French synthesizer-pop specialist M83 (aka Anthony Gonzalez), and an Australian indie-rock outfit called Lost Valentinos. The Brit is also recording new material as Partial Arts, his techno project with Al Usher. The duo's first single on Kompakt, this year's "Trauermusik", was almost shamelessly epic, an affective riposte to the clinical sound that has recently taken over clubland.

"When I was younger, I loved producers like Trevor Horn, who was doing everything on this grand scale and using the most powerful and expensive electronic equipment you could find at the time," he says. "So much dance music is about reducing and streamlining especially these days but with Partial Arts, we want to make things as maximal as the form will allow, to brush up to the border where we're almost overwhelming people with sound."

Ewan Pearson plays Celebrities on Friday (December 7).