Figli Di Madre Ignota

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 with cool, exciting and also playful and funny music.

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, a productive collaboration began 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, trombone and vocals. Imagine a Balkan band playing a twangy rock combo – this is quite close to the sound of Figli Di Madre Ignota. Their 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 having 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 as they started their offensive in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in 2008. So they played several terrific club shows and rocked festivals like Fusion in Germany. In autumn 2008 their album Fez Club was finally re-released on Eastblok Music in order to give fans in the Western parts of Europe the chance to get the full Figli impact.

In the following two years after this album release, the band played a lot of shows and festivals in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany (Das Fest, TFF Rudolstadt), Netherlands (Lowlands Festival), Belgium, Hungary (Sziget), Ukraine, Croatia, Greece and Turkey.
Produced by Tod Ashley (Firewater), mixed by Tamir Muskat (Balkan Beat Box) and distributed by Universal, their new album “Combat Disco Casbah” was released in 2010.
This year, they will certainly continue their conquest!