Music
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Figli di Madre Ignota is probably the most orginal, best sounding band I've heard in the last several years. Combining elements of ska, surf, punk, rocksteady, swing, gypsy jazz, Italian ballads and Balkan brass, Figli di Madre Ignota cuts across styles, genres, decades and continents. Kinda reminds me of the old Mano Negra, but much more kick ass, it just makes you want dance like a fool. Their latest album "Fez Club" (2007) has been on repeat play in my car's CD player for several weeks now. It's currently my favorite album, with only "Electric Gypsyland 2" for competition. - pittsburgh.tribe.net
Discography
- Orangot angotopless, Demotape 1999
- Kanakapila, 2001
- Tamboo tamboo, 2004
- Fez Club 2007
Photos
Bio
Figli Di Madre Ignota literally means “son of an unknown mother” and used to be the legal term for orphans whose mothers wouldn`t or couldn`t recognize their child. Behind that obsolete and nowadays not anymore offending phrase lies the musical attitude of the 60ies, when music uncoupled from its roots was played live and the aim wasn`t to recollect to some cultural root, but to make people dance, cool, exciting and also playful and funny.
Starting with the “electrification” of Italian popular music like Tarantella the sons of unknown mothers found a lot of inspiration in Balkan music as well as in Klezmer and like every self-declared rootless artist they pitched on the spirit of it and provided it with a lot of dance-or-die rock. The result is, as a music reviewer pointed it out “…a genetically-compromised combination of Danny Elfman, Tom Waits, the Cramps, plenty of mad scientists, and the Count from Sesame Street, all having taken up Klezmer-polka-ska-swamp-o-billy…” Anyway it`s unusual, nice and quirky and it spreads smiles better than a virus.
In 1999 “Orangotangotopless“, the first demo CD of the band was released, which was followed by their first self-produced CD „Kanakapila“. They started to play smaller tours in Croatia and North-Italy and gained good reviews for it.
The next release “Tamboo Tamboo“ was issued on Saphary Deluxe, the label of their former agency and was distributed only in Italy. As the CD got mostly positive reviews, the band started to tour across Italy and also in the Balkans once again.
In 2005 began a productive collaboration with Banda Osiris, an Italian theatre company well-known for their ironic and humorous attitude to music, very close to the self-ironic, hilarious attitude of Figli di Madre Ignota.
The actual line-up consists of drums, bass, two guitars, sax, trumpet and vocals. Who can imagine a Balkan band playing a twangy rock combo, is quite close to the sound of Figli Di Madre Ignota.
Ther newest CD “Fez Club” which was released in February 2007, features a cover version of the 80ies hit “Paradise” from the motion picture with Phoebe Cates and was recorded and produced with brilliant trumpeter Roy Paci who played amongst others for Manu Chao. A video clip of “Paradise” was made, directed by Cosimo Alemá, who was also responsible for some videos of Apollo44. The video was broadcasted by MTV Italy and RockTV.
In 2007 the band toured across Italy again and played festivals like Arezzo Love Wave and Ariano Folk, but this was only the beginning…
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