DANGER MOUSE & DANIELE LUPPI - Rome

The man on the street will surely like "Rome" by Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi. Listening to it the way he would — and we know him, we know him well — there's that rumbling bass that takes him back to the good old days, to those bold listening experiences that now elude him but that he ties to memories he's sure he has. But it's all so undefined, latent, out of focus. And yet he feels that "Rome" belongs to him a little, because that old-fashioned sound of its makes him feel young again, and as his mind opens up, it closes in on itself, imploding into a warm analog dream. The man on the street is listening to an album from 2011 that sounds familiar because it's inspired by those very same memories he can't quite pin down.

In 2006, Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) meets Daniele Luppi, and out of mutual admiration comes the idea for an album simply inspired by the music of Ennio Morricone and the iconography that the Maestro, through his work, helped build. A lot has been said and written about Danger Mouse and Luppi lately. One is an established producer in the hip-hop/rock world (Beck, Black Keys and soon U2, among others), who rose to popularity mainly thanks to his collaboration with Gorillaz and the superb "The Grey Album" made with rapper Jay Z using music from the Beatles.

The other, perhaps slightly less known, is a not-so-up-and-coming composer of film scores, producer of albums like the Patton-esque "Mondo Cane" and arranger of the excellent "St. Elsewhere" by Gnarls Barkley, aka Mr. Burton & Cee Lo Green.

If the premise suggested the start of a qualitatively fruitful collaboration, things took an unexpected turn when, not content with simply revisiting the aesthetics of a bygone celluloid world, the pair set their minds on involving the very people who had championed and sung that world's praises. The participation of musicians such as Alessandro Alessandroni (born 1925, Morricone's shadow) boosts the project's credibility — especially when it's backed up by the now-legendary Cantori Moderni choir he assembled for works like "C'era una volta nel West" and "Il grande colpo dei sette uomini d'oro," or Gilda Buttà (harp) — plus two now-legendary figures of Italian pop music, Dario Rosciglione and Luciano Ciccaglioni.

Of course, the man on the street immediately notices the involvement of Jack White and Norah Jones, but that's not really the point here. The real merit of this work lies in the fact that it doesn't set out to imitate the atmospheres of the spaghetti western in a parodic way, nor does it look for antiquated means to sound retro, dusty, or, as the man on the street now knows to call it, vintage. Quite the opposite: the greatness and appeal of an album like this lies precisely in its ability to sound modern using antiquated means, to rewrite history with a modern vision of it in mind rather than a mere celebration of the good old days.

And so the music of "Rome" takes on a Zero 7-like quality, with lounge settings and pop dynamics amid vaguely ambient hazes and smooth jazz. Jack White and Norah Jones, as we said, add value to a work that is certainly not a masterpiece but that carries within it almost historiographical intentions, which give it a value of its own, as if the resulting music were the means rather than the end of the research. The voices are thus instrumental, maintaining at the same time a low profile, artistically understated and far removed from the jazz leanings (Jones) and the blues and garage excesses (White) we'd been prepared for.

Soundtrack to a film that was never written, “Rome” wanders into properly easy listening territory while keeping one foot firmly planted in music that's cinematic regardless (but then again, which Danger Mouse album isn't?). Its real merit lies in being just as accessible to music obsessives as it is to undemanding radio stations. That's the beauty of the record: you can write about it name-checking Gershwin, even if only implicitly, and still have it reach the average listener. Because in the end, it's the average listener (and above all Vincenzo Mollica) who determines its rightful, deserved success.

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14/06/2011