Norrit Makes Music for Knife Fights-Listen to His Debut Album on #FEELINGS

Norrit, real name Iggy Romeu, has just emerged from his musical sabbatical. After a prolific introduction that saw him releasing deformed, deconstructed club bangers on labels like B.YRSLF DIVISION in Paris and Palms Out Sounds in New York, the 27-year-old producer and DJ suddenly went quiet, minus a few remixes here and there for friends like Star Slinger and SSION.

Now, he's returning to the limelight this week with his debut albumTuff Turf Rough Stuff  via cult label #FEELINGS—an imprint overseen by Texas producer, DJ and "post-Internet" artist Ben Aqua. "It took two years to write this record," Romeu says. "During those couple of years, a lot of shit changed in the dance music scene."

I'm speaking to Romeu via Skype from his home in Kansas City, Missouri. He has just gotten in the door from his nine-to-five, an online marketing gig that keeps the lights on while he's busy writing music and throwing warehouse parties in the dusty industrial district straddling the border between Kansas and Missouri.

Romeu reflects fondly on the weird and wonderful offerings of his hometown. "DIY stuff is definitely on the come-up in this city: loft parties, warehouse jams," he explains. "And it's small, so if you're gonna throw a party, you involve a lot of different scenes: skateboarders, artist, weirdos, druggies, randos, actual dance music heads, and weird hippie burner-types."

"In Kansas City there's not a ton of people, so we don't have those rooms full of music heads all the time," he continues, explaining that Kansas City's abundance of "cheap rent and dope spaces" give rise to pop-up art galleries, venues, and social experiments. "I've been working with this one loft space for a minute, booking a lot of the Kansas people who have gone to LA or New York, like Huerco S. and P. Morris," he says. "Everyone comes home for the holidays."

Romeu says that he started producing electronic music right around the blog house explosion, during the golden age of free MP3 blogs like Gorilla vs. Bear and The Hype Machine. He admits to blindly chasing trends in the beginning.

"I was a moron trying to dick-ride early on, trying to make songs that sounded like other songs that got on blogs, because that was the point." When he ducked out of the blogosphere, Romeu quietly watched the dance music scene from afar and decided to work on a piece of art that's built to last. "I honed it down," he says, "[and now that] I have a grasp of the tools, I can start thinking about concepts—and do something like what I did with Tuff Turf."

The title of the album is a cheeky reference to a movie of the same name, a 1985 high school drama about a disaffected transfer student who is forced to prove his honor by fighting the school's resident meathead alpha male—and stealing his babe of a girlfriend. "[The album] is supposed to be a narrative in some very abstract terms," Romeu chuckles, citing the movie's thick, campy plot points and over-the-top showdown scenes as inspirations that weave their way into the LP. Built around the angular rhythms and snappy braggadocio of vogue and ballroom house, Tuff Turf Rough Stuff is a battle record that conjures VHS images of cutthroat catwalks and late night knife fights, the play of shadows and static in a neon-lit alleyway. "I'm forever inspired by dancers," he says.

The 2012 Actress album, RIP, was another major influence on his own, Romeu says—in particular Actress' ability to walk a razor's edge between coherent grooves and total abstraction. "I love how RIP goes three or four tracks in without a danceable tune," he continues. "Tuff Turf is less abstract than RIP as far as danceability goes, but it has a similar abstraction in concept."

The LP—which might land in the "house and techno" bin if you're broad-minded, or the "bass music" bin if you're a traditionalist—sees Romeu reckoning with his own remove from dance music movements of the past. With its swinging, syncopated hi-hat rhythms, jazzy pads, and retro-raver piano stabs, the record touches on many of the most important tropes in house music history. Norrit often amplifies these iconic sounds to caricature status, grafting them to deconstructed future bass rhythms, fuzzy, damaged textures, and warped speech bubbles sampled from YouTube clips of Keith Haring or Paris Hilton.

"I think it's me being an asshole, and just throwing a random hat into the narrative of what house music is," he says when asked about these sonic deviations. "I was born in '87 so obviously I wasn't there for it, but I have a deep respect for it, so I'm very willing to take the piss out of it."

In the end, the strength Tuff Turf Rough Stuff is a reminder that—contrary to popular belief—you won't disappear forever if you take a couple years out of the game, or fade into irrelevance if you're not aping the latest dance trends. In fact, you might just end up beating the game without trying.

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Max Pearl is a former editor at THUMP. He likes history books and all-night dance parties - @maxpearl