||||Mediocre Music Blog

Mondo Cane is Mike Patton‘s most ambitious project to date: a 65 piece orchestra & band performing only Italian pop songs from the 50′s and 60′s. Seriously. Here is a comprehensive review of the album from Prefixmag. To quote the man himself:

I lived there [Italy], off and on, for about 6, 7 years. In that time I developed a love for this stuff and I found myself listening to a lot of singers from that era. I also realized the orchestrations were incredible, and that a lot of people who were playing and doing studio work at that time were really on point. I just found myself listening to a lot of that stuff and at a certain point I said to myself “What if?” So I just penciled in a project in my mind–this was about 8 years ago, probably–and I finally got around to it, basically.

At that point, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I was thinking about a 4 or 5-piece band. What it ended up growing into was, like, 65 people onstage, with strings and brass–its much more orchestral. I’m glad I waited, because the opportunity presented itself and I took advantage and it was definitely worth waiting for. The stuff is not pop music like we would say. It’s very intricate, there’s a lot of shit going on, it’s incredibly dense. I added, of course, a little bit of my own special sauce, but for the most part it’s a crooning record.

Below you will find a MMB exclusive: A side-by-side comparison between the original recordings and their newly released patton productions. I’ve also included Frank Sinatra’s The World We Knew (Over and Over) as a bonus track (this is the original english version of Ore D’Amore and it is awesome). Disclaimer: you do not have to speak Italian to enjoy this music!

The streamer on the left contains all of the original versions (from the 50′s and 60′s) of the Mondo Cane tracklist. All of these songs came from either Grooveshark, lala or were converted to mp3s from youtube videos. The streamer on the right contains Mike Patton’s 2010 rendition of the same songs. I have found that the modern tracks in many cases exceed the both quality and intensity of their originals. I encourage anyone reading this to click around and discover some new/old music from Italy!

Be sure to check out the new versions of:
• Il Cielo In Una Stanza
• Che Notte!
• Ore D’Amore
• Deep Down
• L’Uomo Che Non Sapeva Amare
• Ti Offro Da Berre

Godere!

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