Romare ‎– Projections (2015)

Style: House, Hip Hop
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Ninja Tune

Tracklist:
01.   Nina’s Charm
02.   Work Song
03.   Motherless Child
04.   Ray’s Foot
05.   Roots
06.   Jimmy’s Lament
07.   Lover Man
08.   Rainbow
09.   Prison Blues
10.   The Drifter
11.   La Petite Mort

Romare Bearden was an artist and musician who chronicled African-American life and culture during the jazz age. Romare is an artist and musician who has adopted Bearden’s collagist approach and uses it to fuse decades of African-American musical styles into a format familiar to modern dancefloors. It’s an album full of warmth: Rainbow pairs a snatch of smoky, soulful vocal with the groove of old garage house; Roots mixes an ecstatic piano hook with African drum loops and a sample of Malcolm X. Romare’s skill and his affection for his sources mean Projections’ component parts all hang together beautifully, but this is more than just an act of curation: it works for the dancefloor, often hitting on grooves that are as timeless as they are difficult to resist. Reminiscent of the early-00s output of Saint Germain, Caribou’s side project Daphni, or even early Basement Jaxx, Perceptions might not feel entirely original, but it is thoroughly winning. 

Paul MacInnes / The Guardian

Romare ‎– Meditations On Afrocentrism (2012)

Style: House, Bass Music
Format: Vinyl
Label: Black Acre

Tracklist:
1.   Freedom (Aspirations Of A Prisoner)
2.   The Blues (It Began In Africa)
3.   Down The Line (It Takes A Number)
4.   I Wanna Go (Turn Back)
5.   Footnotes (Meditations On Afrocentrism)

Credits:
Mastered By – Beau
Written-By, Producer – Romare

Meditations on Afrocentrism. Sounds like some heavy stuff, doesn't it? Somehow it isn't. Londoner-via-Paris Romare succeeds on his Black Acre debut by avoiding both the scratchy collagist aesthetic of crate-diggers like Onra and the submerged, quashed quality of most footwork, for high-intensity percussive music that doesn't sound a whole lot like anything else out there. Opener "Freedom Aspirations of a Prisoner" opens with cinematic strings and hollow rimshots—no bass to be found anywhere—before Romare brings in tiny little clips of orchestral mayhem that serve as an ominously throbbing bassline. "I Wanna Go (Turn Back)" features more traditionally frenetic footwork rhythms, a flurry of cascading hollow drums and decaying synths, but even this incorporation of familiar structures sounds totally unique.  

The other two tracks are much slower, abandoning the footwork mission for their own skewed takes on bass music. The 88 BPM "Down The Line (It Takes a Number)" is a sticky-slow hip-hop jam with a funk guitar more languid than lashing, but the EP peaks with the 122 BPM "The Blues (It Began In Africa)." Splaying a house-friendly flute panned to the extreme peripheries of the stereo spectrum, the undulating bass riff at its centre totally eclipses everything, the kind of eminently physical frequencies that feel like they're enclosing around your entire head rather than just your ears. Though the track might not technically be footwork, it plays around with footwork's dread-inducing dislocated bass clouds, inflating them to a grotesque level. It's an uncanny tune that remains breathtaking from the first play to the tenth, and a little stroke of genius that raises Romare above the level of just another producer jumping on the footwork bandwagon. 

Andrew Ryce / RA

Romare ‎– Love Songs: Part Two (2016)

Style: Future Jazz, House, Downtempo, Breakbeat
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Ninja Tune

Tracklist:
01.   Who To Love?
02.   All Night
03.   Je T'Aime
04.   Honey
05.   Come Close To Me
06.   Don't Stop
07.   Who Loves You?
08.   L.U.V
09.   New Love
10.   My Last Affair

In 2014, Romare – AKA producer Archie Fairhurst – released Love Songs: Part One, pasting Peggy Lee into stuttering, bass-heavy R&B and aping retro funk, jazz and blues. Although the result was timeless in the sense that it borrowed from multiple decades, the sense of curation made it feel fresh. And yet Romare’s presence didn’t feel entirely definite; Fairhurst even cribbed his stage name from an African American artist who died in the 80s. This sense of his being a conduit for larger concepts of race and identity – or maybe just a well-meaning cultural appropriator – carried on into 2015’s sample-heavy debut LP, Projections. But here the Londoner’s mission is less about recycling than creating his own psych-ish oddities: on Je T’aime, a slither of Truffaut or Godardish dialogue gives way to irregular ambience and 8-bit sounds, while Honey is bound together by gelatinous alien synths and a low-key jazz melody, with Fairhurst playing much of the instrumentation himself. Although Who Loves You sounds as if it could be a lost 70s underground disco cut, overall this collection provides more of a window on to Fairhurst’s own motivations, as he experiments around themes of love – from innocence to filth. 

Hannah J Davies / The Guardian

Romare ‎– Love Songs: Part One (2013)

Style: Ghetto, Bass Music, Hip Hop
Format: Vinyl
Label: Black Acre

Tracklist:
1.   Your Love (You Give Me Fever)
2.   Jimi & Faye (Part 1)
3.   Taste Of Honey (From The City)
4.   Hey Now (When I Give You All My Lovin')

Credits:
Mastered By – Beau
Written-By, Producer – A. Fairhurst, Romare

A year on from his Mediations On Afrocentrism EP, Romare returns to Black Acre with four frenetic and sample-heavy soul cuts. Paced by a stuttering footwork skip, samples of Peggy Lee's "Fever" loop throughout "Your Love (Give Me Fever)," before breaking out with a tearing sub-line. "Jimi & Faye (Part One)" sticks closer to his roots-orientated output by layering field recordings over tribal rattles, while "Taste Of Honey (From The City)" is a more floor-driven number comprising equal measures of '80s hip-hop and '70s afro-funk. Completing a decent package, "Hey Now (When I Give You All My Lovin’)" is a more blues-influenced inclusion that percussively trudges alongside a lamenting piano and flaring trumpet. 

James Lawrence / Resident Advisor