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Album review: Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi, “Rome”
It’s one of the year’s most adventurous unions, this teaming of Italian composer Daniele Luppi and Danger Mouse, the producer and artist who is one half of both Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells, with help from
capricious doer of cool things Jack White.
The end result, “Rome,” is vast and ambitious and atmospheric and weird: the spaghetti western reinvented as a hipster art project. It’s a jumble of interludes and semi-conventional tracks (such as White’s spindly “Two Against One” or the spacey indie-country song “Black,” one of several tracks here featuring Norah Jones) with the feel of a soundtrack.
In addition to White and Jones, Luppi and Danger Mouse recruited a number of Ennio Morricone old-timers, many of them veteran musicians and singers from such classic Morricone scores as “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” They lend the proceedings an equal measure of liveliness and sobering authenticity.
— Allison Stewart
Recommended tracks: “Theme of Rome,” “Black,” “Two Against One”
By 11:01 AM ET, 05/13/2011
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