Morricone Youth and Hexa
Although they’re usually considered a quintessential NYC art-rock band specializing in re-imagining cinema soundtracks, Morricone Youth actually has roots in mostly long-gone San Diego groups such as Rust, Creedle, aMiniature, Crash Worship, and one of the city’s best known exports, the Rugburns. Founder Devon E. Levins (Creedle, Rust) moved from San Diego to New York in 1998, and the following year started Morricone Youth, named after legendary spaghetti western composer Ennio Morricone. Before long, he talked three more San Diegans into defecting their Finest City for the Big Apple; John Castro (the Rugburns), Dreiky Caprice (Crash Worship), and Greg O’Keefe (aMiniature).
Their first album of original music dreamed up for an imaginary film, Silenzio Violento, dropped in 2005, earning wide acclaim but failing to result in a followup for a number of years. That was mainly due to the band carving itself a lucrative niche playing new soundtrack arrangements live to vintage films, something that sells a lot of theater tickets but fails to translate on record, especially when you factor in the music licensing fees. Over a dozen members have come and gone since then, but Levins and Castro remain at the forefront of the band playing a homecoming show of sorts at the Casbah on August 5. Expect the setlist to be heavy on the 2016 EP that brought their live soundtracking back on record for the first time in years, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (updating a 1926 Lotte Reiniger film, part of an ambitious planned re-working of 15 silent film soundtracks), and last year’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (from a 1927 film).
