The first time I came across Roméo Poirier was in Bristol. I was working behind the Strange Brew music venue bar, where he played that night. I was taken into his presence instantly – just as much as everyone else, I’m sure. I wouldn’t know because I was too busy being transported to a completely different space of awareness. Yeah, I definitely enjoyed the gig.
It felt like a gentle hug had been sent my way… heightening my surroundings as I slowly lost complete perception of reality around me. I quickly returned to planet Earth once I came to the realisation that the voice inside my head trying to order a herbal tea was, in actual fact, a real person. That is how powerful the music felt. I had forgotten to carry out my own job.
Roméo is a Brussels-based sound devotee who turns the juxtaposition of blending noises into a corralling musical experience. Turning our atmosphere into a synthesised harmony, he casually drifts over the current golden age of ambient music. As it happens, he admits to surfing over this genre’s domain whilst simultaneously looking for its quiet escape path.
The vision he has of his music triggers an aesthetic curiosity. It is an image he sees. Imagine someone walking on a slightly moving path under their feet. “That person having a leg slightly shorter than the other. Trying to rebalance constantly”. This vision moulds into what he searches within his music because he builds sound with an aim to zone you out of reality while, at the same time, making you increasingly aware of what sits in your surroundings. It is almost like discovering an alternative way of touching a perception with enhanced senses. “Like a trance of reality that gets us closer to the world, people.”
He lathers exposed parts of our world – parts we seem to have become blind to – onto a rhythmical concept. He began learning percussion and other classical instruments before he started drifting to electronic music using an electric guitar and a looper. These exposed tune-ins became the digitalisation of said loops. He began experimenting and searching beyond what meets the eye by zooming in and out of sounds and processing them more and more—resampling samples.
“I mostly get started with an accident in the repetition of a sound that creates a certain movement.” Taking the time to understand each sound can be a long or short process. I admire the nurturing he gives each repetition. Returning to them each time to possibly re-discover a micro event in these musical accidents. Through this process, he adds details, layers, and repetitions to find a different sense of time in his music.
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