Roma di Luna - Casting the Bones

Official album art, courtesy of Google Image Search

I fall more and more in love with this band, the more I listen to them. Usually, I don't want to go too much into band history in these album reviews, but I think it's story time.

Roma di Luna was founded by a husband and wife duo, Alexei Casselle, a local Minneapolis rapper, and Channy Moon Casselle, a classically trained violinist. They started this band as a wedding gift to each other, and it quickly developed into a deep study of traditional folk music. They started out making money by busking on street corners, learning and playing dustbowl folk and gypsy songs.

Somewhere along the way, the magic started to happen. They started writing songs--mostly to each other. Their roots began to show through, with songs featuring both the traditional duende of gypsy folk music--the strong emotion portrayed by the singer, which makes gypsy music so strong and charismatic--as well as thematic elements noticeable in the music of Crescent Moon, Alexei's rapper moniker. They managed to fuse all of these elements into a unique style, with haunting vocals by Channey Moon, classical violin and folk guitar melodies, and sweet and subtle baselines to bring all of the music together.

I have to admit that, for a while, I was not sure that this band existed. This album mysteriously landed on my computer one day, and I originally wrote it off, since I could not find anything about this band to suggest that they truly exist. However, the Shuffle elf did not give up as quickly as I did, and kept bringing them up to m attention, and the songs tugged at me more and more with each listen. I dug a little deeper and deeper every time, and only found small scraps strewn across the Interwebs.

This was until recently, when their brand new album, Then the Morning Came was mentioned in a Rolling Stone article, and the band blew up (well, relatively). They received some local Minneapolis coverage, as well as a few indie mentions, and they became visible online.

I have yet to look at their latest album, but this self-released debut is a masterpiece in itself to deserve a mention.

    Roma di Luna - Red Walls

I love this style of interviews, so you should watch it.

Official site (generously called so): romadiluna.com