Luxembourgish Troubadour ROME Celebrates Anniversary With Trio Of Releases!
Jerome Reuter, the Luxembourgish troubadour behind ROME, is set to release a trio of releases on April 25th to mark the latest decade in the project’s continuous evolution. The records, “Civitas Solis”, “The Dublin Session II”, and “Anthology 2016-2025”, will all be released via Trisol Music Group GmbH.
For his musical project ROME, Jerome Reuter chose the fate of Europe as his main subject matter. Since 2005, Reuter has written many songs and concept albums focusing on key moments in European history which reflect and comment on its myths and narratives. With the artist's desinvolture, ROME deconstructs historical events and ideologemes in order to analyse them from various perspectives, only to return them as questions to the listener. Reuter oscillates between a half-angry, half-melancholic witness and participant, from whose individual-objective viewpoint all things are inevitably charged with pathos. ROME invites us to observe, discern and shudder, but also to be reborn and shine anew, to “walk in brightest black”.
“Civitas Solis” is expressly not to be taken as one of ROME's many concept album that we have come to appreciate: recordings on which Reuter fully immersed himself into the respective period and its complex conflicts, whilst coming out the other end.
Jerome Reuter is a searcher on the less-trodden and winding paths of history, driven by a longing for Europe - the myth and the utopia - between enlightened manifesto and irrational fortress. As the central metaphor on this present release, Reuter uses “Civitas Solis”, the city of the sun as taken from the Dominican philosopher Tommaso Campanella's utopian novel from 1602, which imagines the economic and political structure of an ideal state - one of the first social utopias. In ROME's universe, where both traditionalist and anarchist leitmotifs and connotations abound, this model can be read in a rather ambivalent way.
Stylistically, ROME uses an impressively broad musical variety on “Civitas Solis”; from chansons in the singer-songwriter vein of Jacques Brel, Leonard Cohen and Townes van Zandt, to cold Dark Wave-type accentuated acoustic guitar elements: An alternating bath of martial hymns and introspective ballads evoking key moments in the band's 20-year history, and which – as all ROME releases – raises questions. Provocative questions: What does the future hold? And what will it mean for Europe? All we can do is brace for what lies ahead, while we are “standing on the Western Wall”, as “men against time” witnessing the storm.
The track listing for “Civitas Solis” is:
1. La France Nouvelle
2. In Brightest Black
3. Tomorrow We Live
4. Food for Powder
5. Ad Vindicta
6. By Tradition
7. Dannazione
8. Bring Me the Head of Romanez
9. The Western Wall
10. White Flags
11. Jupiter
12. Mar’yana
13. Men Against Time
14. Herculaneum
Elsewhere, on “The Dublin Session II”, the listener finds themselves alongside Reuter in the autumn of 2022, when he made another trip to the Emerald Isle to spend a few weeks among friends. As was to be expected, porters and laughs were had, songs were written and at the end of the journey, another stout-fuelled “Dublin Session” comprised of all-new and gripping folk compositions had seen the light of day.
In order to give the tracks the trademark Irish spit and grit, co-producer, long-time friend, and musical collaborator Brian Brody (Rack & Ruin) recruited renowned fellow travellers and local talents such as Ronan O Snodaigh (Dead Can Dance & Kíla) on bodhran, Eoin O Cionnaith on uilleann pipes (Van Morrison & Christy Moore), Matthew Hanaphy on banjo and tin whistles, Goshia Gasior on violin, and Andy Slowey on bass.
Whereas the tracks of the first session were cut in Dublin’s legendary Sonic Studio, the second was held in rural Ireland, at Brian Brody’s Ballycale Studio in County Wexford. The songs on “The Dublin Session II” are all new and unreleased songs that combine traditional Irish folk music with ROME’s contemporary proto folk. Among the compositions are songs like the catchy, almost danceable, ‘Hold the Line’ and the tongue-in-cheek ‘The Tsarist Army’, which act as a counterpoint to more melancholic compositions like ‘My White Rose’ and ‘Muse of Fire’. Much like the first “Dublin Session”, this second one boasts a multitude of European tongues: French on ‘La Peau Dernière’, German on ‘An der Landwehr’, but most notably Brian Brody’s and Ronan O Snodaigh’s Gaelic spoken words on tracks like ‘Deoch an Dorais’ and ‘Eirigh Anois!’.
The track listing for “The Dublin Session II” is:
1. Upon The Emerald Isle
2. Give Your Heart to the Hawks
3. Muse Of Fire
4. An der Landwehr (Lament of an Icarus)
5. Eirigh Anois!
6. Hold The Line
7. My White Rose
8. The Tsarist Army
9. Caoineadh Na Solas (Lament for the Sun)
10. La Peau Dernière
11. Deoch An Dorais (The Final Salute)
Finally, “Anthology 2016-2025” acts as a tidy summation of Reuter’s sonic endeavours over the past decade. Melancholic guitar chords and introspective vocals juxtaposed with menacing outbursts of martial drums and percussion – for 20 years ROME has oscillated between intimate songwriting and the grand gesture of soundtrack-inspired pathos, singing the European tragedy. While the releases of the first ten years featured mostly historical themes, the second and no-less prolific decade, documented on this anthology saw contemporary and fundamental philosophical questions gradually come into focus.
Reuter’s songwriting is clearly inspired by French chanson, or troubadours like the late Johnny Cash, or Nick Cave, yet he has always incorporated literary themes and sources into his work. Sometimes the source of inspiration or literary point of reference is mentioned by name (as with Paul Celan on “The Secret Germany”), but mostly a wide range of 19th and 20th century thinkers resonate between the lines half-anonymously.
Reuter does not shy away from reflecting philosophical and even occult aspects on his albums either (“The Hyperion Machine”, “Hall of Thatch”, “The Lone Furrow”, and “Le Ceneri di Heliodoro”). However, more often, ROME dares to incorporate direct references to current events, as was the case with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (“Gates of Europe” and “World in Flames”). Most often though, the main themes of ROME’s releases are based around a mythological reading of fundamental conflicts (“Coriolan”, “Hegemonikon”, and “The Lone Furrow”). ROME’s catalogue is laced with mythical leitmotifs, such as the solar theme of the sun, most notably on the most recent work “Civitas Solis”.
Over the years, ROME has seen different incarnations: sometimes as a full band, sometimes a lone singer-songwriter, and sometimes in collaborative exchange with other musicians (such as Nergal from Behemoth or the Swedish punk legend Thåström). Jerome Reuter is constantly reinventing himself and continually working on creating a most singular voice within the European underground. Like a Janus head looking back into the future.
The track listing for “Anthology 2016-2025” is:
1. The Secret Germany (For Paul Celan)
2. Solar Caesar
3. Ächtung, Baby! (feat. Alan Averill)
4. How Came Beauty against this Blackness
5. Who Only Europe Know
6. Kali Yuga über alles
7. Going Back to Kyiv (Live)
8. Parlez-Vous Hate?
9. Walking the Atlal
10. Evropa Irredenta (feat. Thåström)
11. Todo Es Nada
12. Submission
13. Celine in Jerusalem
14. La France Nouvelle
15. Skirmishes for Diotima (Live)
16. Hunter
17. Coriolan
18. The Angry Cup (feat. Nergal)
19. One Lion's Roar
20. Alesia
All three records will be released in two formats, as a digipak CD and a limited (500 copies) black 180g 12” vinyl in a sturdy cardboard sleeve, with printed inner sleeve, fold out poster, and lyrics.
