Timbre Concerts and Bass Coast Present

ROMARE DJ SET

With Max Ulis

Late Show: Doors/Show 10:00pm

As Romare, Archie Fairhurst’s working practice is rooted in collage, building vividnew forms out of existing material. Playful and immediate, but also deeplyresearched and compelling, his albums and performances reaching back to 2012unfurl as a patchwork of inspirations and obsessive lines of enquiry made up of aglobal panoply of source material.

The clue is in the name – Fairhurst called himself Romare in tribute to RomareBearden, the lauded American multi-disciplinary artist most renowned for his incisivecollages. In Bearden’s process Fairhurst saw a way to approach the infinite pool ofelectronic music production, channelling his wealth of music knowledge into creatingmusic from existing sonic material and bedding themes into his juxtapositions for amore considered approach to sampling.

No music lover sticks on one sound their whole lives, and so naturally Fairhurst’sareas of focus have evolved over time from the breakout impact of his 2012 debut onBlack Acre, Meditations On Afrocentrism, through a run of albums on Ninja Tunereaching up to 2020’s reflection on place and belonging, Home. Projections is adirect homage to Bearden’s work, and the Love Songs releases draw on the richseam of romantic music as a jump-off point. Having lived a nomadic life himselfgrowing up, his source material has moved around over time, but increasingly thesampling becomes more opaque and enmeshed within other instrumentation whichrounds out the Romare sound. 2022’s Fantasy expands on that idea with a moreabstract approach, folding elements from 1970s fantasy cinema into his distinctivestrain of rhythmic, off-centre electronica and heralding the start of his own label, YouSee.

For all the considered concepts and unusual arrangements, Romare’s music isdance music at heart, and it remains a natural transplant into the live and clubenvironment. At times Fairhurst has pulled together a full line-up to render his musicon stage – something of a call back to his roots playing guitar and drums in bands –but elsewhere he’s at home sequencing and arranging his music solo, re-mouldingalbum material in the moment with the flexibility which dance music so oftenrequires. Equally, he has DJ’d prolifically around the world with an omnivorousapproach which serves as a logical extension of his studio craft, balancing hiddencorners of historical investigation with the kinetic impulse of modern club music.