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Music

Romare Shows Off His Romantic Side on a New Song Called "Je T'aime"

It's the first single off his forthcoming album Love Songs: Part Two.
Photo courtesy of the artist.

Romare—also known as Archie Fairhurst—is a British producer and DJ who is gearing up for the release of his second full-length, Love Songs: Part Two, November 11 on Ninja Tune.

This album continues in the vein of his breakout debut Projections and the follow-up EP Love Songs: Part One—Romare is a master at seasoning his psychedelic house grooves with just the right amount of romantic disco flair. See for yourself—we've got the premiere of a tasty cut called "Je T'aime" right here—it's a mammoth slow-burner that methodically adds in chunky bongos, plucked electric bass, whispered vocals, and even a touch of ragtime piano. By the end it's built itself into a gale-force dancefloor make-out weapon, the kind of track that reels you in and doesn't let you go. Take a listen below and read on for a quick interview with the producer, who we reached out to over email. Pre-order the album here.

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THUMP: How does Love Songs: Part Two pick up from where Love Songs: Part One left off?
Romare: It's a bigger piece of work exploring the same theme: love songs, with a similar variety of sounds, styles and tempos.

Love is obviously a central theme to the album—in a press release, you said you tried to cover "different areas, sexual urges to tender first encounters, from affairs to the questioning of one's love." What draws you to this idea?
It's fascinating because, in terms of sampling, there is a lot of material to work with. A lot of lyrics out there that disclose different feelings or emotions. I like giving my releases a theme, and choosing love songs gives me a lot of scope to play with. The different areas of inspiration come largely from listening to love songs in general, and especially from listening to that particular passage of music that is sampled. The titles of my songs usually come directly from the lyric sampled or from the content of the sample. It's a way of crediting the sample, similar to the art work.

This album features less of the sampling heard on Love Songs: Part One, and more of yourself playing various instruments. What was the motivation behind this, and how did it impact the overall creative process?
I felt that with my debut album Projections, certain samples had to be modified or removed because they were too risky. It would sometimes mean taking a favorite song off the album. I didn't want to go through that again so I've sampled a little more sparingly and less obviously, and have also explored soloing and writing with instruments more to compensate. It meant playing a larger variety of instruments on this album and dedicating longer passages to solos.

What can you tell us about the album artwork?
The artwork is made in the same way as the artwork for Projections, and with the same intention as all my releases so far. All the samples in the music are represented by the figures on the front cover in one way or another. Usually it's their voice that's sampled but it can also be because they're playing a particular instrument in the sample or because they wrote or arranged the piece of music that the sample is from.