DANGER MOUSE & DANIELE LUPPI - ROME - STARRING JACK WHITE & NORAH JONES

It has been 5 years in the making for Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi’s spaghetti-western inspired album Rome (due out on May 17). The project assembles many of the surviving performers of classic '60s and '70s Ennio Morricone scores — and, in half a dozen memorable cases, pairs them up with the vocals of Norah Jones or The White Stripes' Jack White. The duo began to record for the album in Rome in October 2006, booking Forum Studios (formerly the Ortophonic Studios) founded by, among others, Ennio Morricone. It is, as Burton puts it, “a vast space underneath a church, filled with old mixing desks”. They also tracked down vintage instruments. “One of the biggest collectors was a Vespa engineer,” says Luppi. “We went to his garage and he showed us his collection of guitars from the Sixties. He didn’t want payment for us to use them, so we bought him a crate of wine.” More difficult was reuniting the musicians, many now in their seventies and eighties. They included studio backing band Marc 4, and I Cantori Moderni, a choir led by Alessandro Alessandroni, who whistles on many of the original Spaghetti Western soundtracks. Their plan, says Burton, “got more and more specific. We wanted to work at the same studio, with the same musicians and even the same microphones.”

“None of them knew who we were, but it was an emotional moment when they assembled for the first time in decades. There were tears and hugs,” says Luppi. “Although within an hour or two they were shouting and abusing each other – also just like the old times, apparently.” Some of Grammy Award winning Danger Mouse’s credentials include: forming Gnarls Barkley with Cee-Lo Green, produced Gorillaz Demon Days and Beck’s Modern Guilt, collaborated with James Mercer (The Shins) to form Broken Bells and paired up with Sparklehorse to create the album Dark Night of the Soul. You can listen to Rome in full at NPR.

Rome Tracklist:

01. Theme Of Rome

02. The Rose With The Broken Neck

03. Morning Fog (interlude)

04. Season’s Trees

05. Her Hollow Ways (interlude)

06. Roman Blue

07. Two Against One

08. The Gambling Priest

09. The World (interlude)

10. Black

11. The Matador Has Fallen

12. Morning Fog

13. Problem Queen

14. Her Hollow Ways

15. The World