CD Pre-order link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004E0Z4XK/?tag=imwan-20

Vinyl Pre-order link:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004GFGUAY/?tag=imwan-20

Tracklisting:


1. Theme Of Rome
2. The Rose With The Broken Neck
3. Morning Fog (Interlude)
4. Season's Trees
5. Her Hollow Ways (Interlude)
6. Roman Blue
7. Two Against One
8. The Gambling Priest
9. The World (Interlude)
10. Black
11. The Matador Has Fallen
12. Morning Fog
13. Problem Queen
14. Her Hollow Ways
15. The World

Product Description:

Some five years in the making, the conception of Rome actually dates back even further, to the 2004 meeting of Brian Burton a/k/a Danger Mouse and Italian composer/arranger Daniele Luppi. Burton was emerging from the aftermath of the media storm around his Grey Album and beginning work on Gorillaz now multi-platinum and Grammy winning Demon Days. Luppi was amassing acclaim for his album An Italian Story, which paid tribute to the cinematic sounds that shaped his childhood, while writing music for the screen (Sex In The City, Nine, etc.) and soon thereafter contributing arrangements to Burton projects including Gnarls Barkley, Dark Night of the Soul and Broken Bells.

United in their shared passion for classic Italian film music, Burton and Luppi have created a record like no other: Intense songwriting periods both together and apart and travels to Rome during which Luppi reunited for the first time in decades original musicians from the scores of 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 laid the groundwork. Recording took place in Rome's cavernous Forum Studios formerly Ortophonic Studios, founded, amongst others, by the great Ennio Morricone -- employing vintage equipment, for which Burton and Luppi would pay with bottles of wine, and making every effort to replicate the recording practices of the 1960s/70s golden age, recording live to tape, with no electronics, computers or 21st-century effects.

Crucial to the completion of Rome has been the enlistment of two lead vocalists who not only do justice to but complete the three songs each written for a man and a woman. While on tour with Gnarls Barkley, Burton met Jack White and a year later, White recorded his contributions The Rose With The Broken Neck, Two Against One and The World in Nashville. White s counterpart, in a revelatory turn, is Norah Jones, who flew to Burton s L.A. studio from New York to sing on Season's Trees, Black and Problem Queen.

With acclaimed director and photographer Chris Milk brought in as "Visual Director", half a decade of hard work and unstinting perfectionism would draw to a close as the album and package were completed.

From Rome's opening with soprano Edda Dell'Orso's dramatic voice (the same haunting vocal presence from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 44 years ago) gracing Theme of Rome to the closing strains of The World, Rome -- for all its cinematic qualities -- is not the soundtrack to an imaginary movie, but rather a complex, nuanced pop record rife with counterpoints of intensity and darkness as well as uplift and light. (Luppi calls it "a small window on human life, touching on love, death, happiness, desperation, and the visceral connection of a man and a woman".) It's an ambitious work with a uniquely modern sound achieved through traditional, vintage means. It is, above all, a fully realized album, perfectly formed and hauntingly beautiful.

Cover artwork:

The good, the bad and Jack White
He and Norah Jones lend their talents in homage to Spaghetti Western music

May 30, 2011
By Chris Talbott, Associated Press



It seems just right that the making of "Rome," Daniele Luppi and Danger Mouse's homage to Italian film soundtracks, should unfold like one of those old movies that still fascinate decades later.

The screenplay would start with Luppi, the Los Angeles-based Italian composer who scores films, and Brian Burton, the outrageously creative producer known as Danger Mouse, driving around the streets of Rome, bartering for the use of vintage gear from the 1960s. They needed to match instruments and equipment used by the masters like Ennio Morricone in films by Federico Fellini and Sergio Leone and others.

Luppi would knock on a door not knowing who he would meet. One time it was an 80-year-old man in his pajamas. The next a Vespa mechanic.

"He was wearing a jumpsuit and all that," Luppi said. "In between Vespa parts and stuff like that, he had vintage microphones and guitars. It's really weird. At the end of this meeting, he actually came up to me with a microphone and said, 'I stole this from Ringo Starr when The Beatles played in Rome. ...' So we had these characters. It was almost a Felliniesque experience."

Luppi and Burton outfitted their project, hired vintage musicians to go with the vintage instruments and reassembled the surviving members of Alessandro Alessandroni's Cantori Moderni, the choral group heard in Spaghetti Westerns like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

After recording the basic instrumental tracks they added a male star, the at-turns menacing and conflicted Jack White. They asked Norah Jones to be their femme fatale.

Jones was drawn to the project because of its unique approach and the chance to work with Burton and White.

Though there's no script or story on "Rome," released May 17, Jones and White take on personas through their songs.

White saw the possibility to create complex characters with his three entries, and seems to play the victim to Jones' heartbreaker. His doubletracked vocals on "The Rose With the Broken Neck" add a strange sense of loneliness. He mirrors the interior conflict in those Spaghetti Western heroes of yore on "Two Against One" and is left to bleed to death of a broken heart on album-ending "The World."

"I did write the lyrics to the songs, but I forgot to tell Brian what they were about," White joked in an e-mail. "Probably some girl."

Once White, a fan of Italian film scores "and sometimes Italian women," made his contributions, Burton finished off the parts that would go to Jones and a project that seemed to take forever finally wound down after five years and three trips to Italy.

There is a limited edition vinyl version of this being released that includes a bonus LP of all instrumental.

● Incredibly limited (150 only in the UK) double vinyl set.
● The extra disc is an exclusive to this edition full instrumental version of the album.
● 180-gram vinyl.
● old style, tip-on sleeve.
● black-foil print on cover.
● double-pocket gatefold.
● die cut (heart-shaped) poster.


TRACK LISTING

LP 1:
Side 1
1. Theme Of ''Rome''
2. The Rose With The Broken Neck (feat. Jack White)
3. Morning Fog (Interlude)
4. Season's Trees (feat. Norah Jones)
5. Her Hollow Ways (Interlude)
6. Roman Blue
7. Two Against One (feat. Jack White)
8. The Gambling Priest

Side 2
1. The World (Interlude)
2. Black (feat. Norah Jones)
3. The Matador Has Fallen
4. Morning Fog
5. Problem Queen (feat. Norah Jones)
6. Her Hollow Ways
7. The World (Feat. Jack White)

LP 2:
Side 1
1. Theme Of ''Rome'' (Instrumental)
2. The Rose With The Broken Neck (Instrumental)
3. Morning Fog (Interlude) (Instrumental)
4. Season's Trees (Instrumental)
5. Her Hollow Ways (Interlude) (Instrumental)
6. Roman Blue (Instrumental)
7. Two Against One (Instrumental)
8. The Gambling Priest (Instrumental)

Side 2
1. The World (Interlude) (Instrumental)
2. Black (Instrumental)
3. The Matador Has Fallen (Instrumental)
4. Morning Fog (Instrumental)
5. Problem Queen (Instrumental)
6. Her Hollow Ways (Instrumental)
7. The World (Instrumental)