Romare

Romare at Belgrave Music Hall

As Romare, Archie Fairhurst’s working practice is rooted in building vivid new forms out of existing material. Playful but also deeply researched, his albums and performances are patchworks of inspirations and obsessive lines of enquiry made from a global panoply of source material.

The clue is in the name – Fairhurst called himself Romare in tribute to Romare Bearden, the lauded American multi-disciplinary artist renowned for his incisive collages. In Bearden’s process Fairhurst saw a way to approach the infinite pool of electronic music production with a more considered approach to sampling, creating music from existing sonic material and bedding themes into his juxtapositions.

No music lover sticks on one sound their whole lives — Fairhurst’s areas of focus have evolved over time from the breakout impact of his 2012 debut on Black Acre, Meditations On Afrocentrism, through a run of albums on Ninja Tune reaching up to 2020’s reflection on place and belonging, Home. Projections is a direct homage to Bearden’s work, and the Love Songs releases draw on the rich seam of romantic music. Having lived a nomadic life growing up, Fairhurst's source material has moved around over time, but increasingly the sampling becomes more subtly enmeshed with other instrumentation.