Daniele Luppi has turned a store of forgotten Italian film music into a new album called Wilma, with the British singer and songwriter Michael Kiwanuka on the lead track To Some Degree and several others. It arrives October 9 through Verve and slowplay, the first volume of an experimental trilogy.
The raw material came from an archive of thousands of recordings made by Italy's top session players of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the country's rough equivalent of the Wrecking Crew. Luppi pulled cues from obscure 1970s features, commercials, documentaries, industrial films and short subjects, including music that had spent decades in storage.
He did not simply restore them. Luppi describes working as a film-maker approaches found footage, editing and reshaping the recordings into an entirely new narrative rather than reviving old ones, and adding vocals, lyrics, synths and live drums, using a 1984 Yamaha DX7 and a Lexicon PCM70.
The result is built around longing and the complications of modern romance, played in a warm analogue palette. Luppi cast his singers the way a director casts actors, choosing them for the emotional character running through their wider bodies of work rather than for their name value.
He was explicit about why Kiwanuka. Luppi said he was drawn to a profound sense of humanity present in every lyric he sings and every performance he gives, calling that artistic perspective rare. Orion Sun splits the vocal duties, and the songwriter Shungudzo contributes lyrics.
The cinematic framing extends to the cover, a publicity still of the actress Edith Scob taken by the Spanish avant-garde artist Antonio Galvez on the set of Luis Bunuel's 1969 satire The Milky Way.
Luppi has worked with Danger Mouse and Broken Bells, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Karen O, Parquet Courts and Gnarls Barkley, alongside film and television scores. Wilma is logged on the release calendar for October 9, and it sits between R&B and soul and indie rather than in either.
The facts
- Wilma is out October 9 through Verve and slowplay
- Michael Kiwanuka sings on the lead track To Some Degree
- Orion Sun splits vocals and Shungudzo contributes lyrics
- The album reworks Italian session recordings from the 1960s to 1980s
- Luppi used a 1984 Yamaha DX7 and a Lexicon PCM70
- It is the first volume of an experimental trilogy
- The cover is a photo of Edith Scob by Antonio Galvez
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