Romare: Sampling the Past

Sampling has always been something of a musical hot potato. When it’s not in the news for lawsuits that leave lazy artists with a staggering fine and the scorn of the music press, it often serves as an uncomfortable reminder of the public’s weakness for artists who shamelessly appropriate other musical traditions (see Moby’s platinum-certified album Play, which took Alan Lomax’s field recordings and reduced them to coffee shop muzak). Yet there have been samplers whose craftsmanship and devotion to the technique has yielded incredible results that still sound fresh today. DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing remains a headtrip worth taking, and The Avalanches' Since I Left You continues to pack a hefty emotional punch.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Romare firmly belongs in the latter camp. His nom de plume is borrowed from the Afro-American artist and polymath Romare Bearden, whose 1964 exhibition, Projections, is also the title of the producer's forthcoming debut album on Ninja Tune. Bearden’s striking collages combined art-historical fragments with magazine clippings to reshape popular representations of black identity. Romare’s sampling is informed by a similarly academic approach, combining and juxtaposing long-standing and cutting-edge African-American musical forms from jazz to juke with his own entrancing compositions in a way which belies the dusty historical narrative in which they are often placed. Fortunately for the listener, the result is both highly danceable and likely to provoke extended Shadow-esque reveries. 

The Skinny: I’m gonna come out and say it. I’ve enjoyed this a lot more than any electronic album of the last couple of years. It really held my attention throughout. How was the experience of producing it?

It took longer to make and demanded more thought, because more songs meant more diversity. But it was an interesting challenge because it meant I had room to explore new styles.

Romare: Did you end up doing any of the live instrumentation yourself?

I made the whole album in my bedroom. I managed to get a big room in the flat I'm living in, so there was enough room to partition the space and set up a studio. This also meant I had enough room for all my instruments. I played all of the live instrumentation myself, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, synthesisers, drum machines, percussion, etc. This constitutes about half of the music in the songs, the other half are samples, but then you can turn these into instruments too.

The other thing I noticed is that there is this really admirable restraint to many of the songs; there are some really subtle decisions being made to avoid anything obvious in the way of drops or big dumb hooks. Yet it’s also really accessible. That feels like a really difficult balance to get right. Was that your intention?

Yes, generally I wanted to make the songs feel a little less regular structurally. I wanted them to feel a little more natural and tried to give each song its own structural personality where possible. I guess these were subconscious decisions which came under the bigger objective of wanting to vary the tracks as much as I could within the aesthetic I was working with, without compromising accessibility. I found myself getting more involved with things like key changes, tempo changes, and the use of pauses or gaps. But there are still a few blunt pieces in there.

You’ve spoken in the past about seeing your music academically, approaching samples like sources in an essay. I find that really refreshing. Do you wish there was more of this kind of attention to detail in electronic music as a whole?

I'm quite happy that there isn't much of this kind of attention to samples in music at the moment as it makes me a fairly unique artist. It was one of the additional incentives of using samples in the music-making process. 

There’s obviously a real thread throughout the album of African-American musical culture, as seen in your use of samples and track titles which nod to various movements, from disco to work songs. It reminds me of an infographic I saw a while ago, in which there are all these arrows crisscrossing across the globe, showing the birthplace of various forms of music and how they intersected. What struck me about that was the juxtaposition, where you have crunk and spirituals both coming from the same place in the South. It demonstrates that it’s not simply a process of evolution, not simply a straight line from one to the other. Is that what you’re getting at?

The album, like the exhibition Bearden put on in 1964 of the same name, largely explores facets of American musical culture. And like Bearden's work it tends to focus on African-American aspects. Other than Roots I wouldn't say there are many other direct nods to Africa.

Do you think we’ve lost anything now that so much of contemporary music is geographically and historically non-specific? It exists on the internet and therefore it could be from anywhere. Or are we only to gain?

I think it's fair to say that folk music is slowly dying out because of things like the internet. Old recordings are becoming more valuable. New music is becoming more available.

What’s next on your musical horizon?

I'd like to work on Love Songs: Part Two and make it a bigger body of work than the first volume. I think Asian or South American music would be great to work with.

Finally, is there a musician/artist working today in your field or any other who really inspires you?

Romare Bearden will always be a central inspiration to me because of the originality and beauty of his work.