In a digital age where music is produced, consumed and discarded in the blink of an eye, Rome is brilliant anachronism: a defiantly analogue album that took five years to perfect and has been made to pass the test of time.
Brian Burton and Daniele Luppi met in Los Angeles in 2004. Burton, better known as Danger Mouse, had just created a media storm with The Grey Album, begun work on Gorillaz Demon Days opus and was also embarking on his hugely successful Gnarls Barkley project with Cee-Lo Green. Luppi, a composer from Italy, was receiving acclaim for his album An Italian Story, which revisited the cinematic sounds of his childhood. (He has also written music for the screen – Sex and the City, Nine – and later worked with Burton on arrangements for Gnarls Barkley, Dark Night of the Soul and Broken Bells.)
United by their shared passion for classic Italian film music, they decided to create something special. After an intense songwriting period – writing separately at first, and then together as the songs evolved – they travelled to Rome in October 2006. Luppi made some calls and they assembled the original musicians from films such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West – including the legendary Marc 4 backing band and Alessandro Alessandroni’s ‘I Cantori Moderni’ choir. Most of the musicians were in their seventies and hadn’t worked together for several decades.
Out March, 2011
www.romealbum.com
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