Q+A / Story (1): ROME: “… probably the blackest text…”

2 facts:

– Jérôme Reuter founded ROME almost exactly 17 years ago, the first album “Nera” was released in 2006.
– In the course of the following interview, Jérôme talks about a name dispute. It is about the American Ska-Punk band Sublime with Rome, which has been using this name since 2010 and wants to clarify naming rights claim. The figures alone show that this calculation doesn’t quite add up. Jérôme has already achieved a partial success.

Orkus: Can you estimate how long it took you to finish “Hegemonikon”?

Jérôme Reuter: No, I can’t really say that directly now. As some of you might have noticed, I had to deal with quite a few legal problems because of naming rights between this and the last album, and that of course delayed everything considerably. Then the pandemic certainly didn’t help either and now we have war. – All of these things have impacted mightily on the production process – simply because of the lack of resources, in terms of the physical production of the vinyl for example. The album has been finished for quite some time and I’ve packed it all away for a long time … So at least I’m still working on various projects and in the meantime the “Defiance” EP came out, which was actually finished after “Hegemonikon”, but came out before – had to come out – because of course this war in Europe is burning under my fingers. “Defiance” is four tracks on the theme that I made available exclusively digitally in July, as support for Ukraine.

Editor’s note: We talked about “Defiance” and what that actually means, touring Ukraine in the middle of a war, in the fall issue.

O: What was the biggest challenge in creating “Hegemonikon”?

JR: I don’t remember much difficulty now. Together with my colleague, Tom Gatti, who has been assisting me in the studio for years, I have become a perfectly coordinated team. Of course, such a process has certain phases in which not everything progresses as well as you might have thought, but towards the end it always goes quickly and suddenly the child is out and wants to be weaned.

O: In our last conversation, you announced that it would become more electronic. This can cause raised eyebrows at first. Until you hear it. I could not have imagined that “more electronics” would harmonize so perfectly with “the ROME sound”. How did this desire or need to shape the sound in this direction come about?

JR: The whole thing with the electronic elements, the analog synthesizers, was probably the biggest challenge in putting together “Hegemonikon”. I am very glad that this seems to harmonize in your eyes as well. It certainly took some work to integrate that – with all due care and caution – into the ROME sound. The desire for this certainly stemmed from the need for a certain facelift for the ROME sound as a whole. After all, you don’t want to keep repeating yourself, and then you gradually get fed up with some of it. As is so often the case in art, much of it is also the result of coincidence, or of new equipment appearing somewhere and people having a bit of fun with it. First of all purely for fun. But the sound of these old machines just interested me now. And this results in a completely different aesthetic.

O: The album cover shows an icebreaker, which in combination with the album title leads to the most diverse interpretations. What do you see?

JR: Eisbrecher are quite successful, I think. That might rub off at some point. But seriously: You shouldn’t philosophize too cleverly about the obvious. Anyway, as a metaphor, it works quite well with the ship.

O: I found the dark “Icarus Rex” particularly impressive. Falling from heaven and then becoming a king?

JR: Anyway, the song fell from the sky, yes. It came about quite spontaneously while tinkering with an old Moog synth.

O: Musically, “Surely Ash” feels almost hopeful in contrast to the lyrics. Was this done deliberately?

JR: Well, it’s exactly this clash of quasi-contrasting moods that makes the song so interesting for me. I think – purely personally – this is probably the blackest text from my pen in a long time.

In the next part we continue our conversation with Jérôme

(Interview: Claudia Zinn-Zinnenburg, Photo: Joe Tremmel (www.joefotografie.com)

The album “Hegemonikon”, is available in different high quality editions at Fantotal:

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