No Rome is dropping a new mixtape on September 8 via Dirty Hit titled "Blueboy Must Die" and we have a new preview of what to expect from the project. This is his first full length release since 2021. On "Deep Diving," the Filipino artist symbolically experiments through different genres and sonics. He shared the following statement: “Deep Diving was one of the first songs I worked on “Blueboy Must Die” with Kurisu,” he explained. “For a song that meant going into a deep dive where you’re figuring everything out along the way, I wanted to do this whole adventurous/no-rules style production where every part of the song had a different element to it and have it all tie together.”
This is the second track we've heard so far from "Blueboy Must Die." You can check out the full tracklist for the upcoming mixtape and the official audio for "Deep Diving" below.
Photo Courtesy of No Rome's Instagram
No Rome is back with a follow-up track to his recent release, "When She Comes Around." His new track, "I Want U," is the second release from his highly anticipated debut album "It's All Smiles," set to drop on December 3rd via Dirty Hit. As previously mentioned, the album was recorded in a small apartment in Manila during the Pandemic, which prevented Rome from heading back to London. The album was co-produced by Rome with BJ Burton (Kanye West, Bon Iver, Charli XCX), and George Daniel (The 1975).
“this is the first song me and BJ worked on – that’s when we knew we were gonna make this album together. I wanted to do the lyrics more like talking, storytelling almost, painting the picture of what was happening that moment thru lyrics”
-No Rome
"I Want U" was originally written in the back of a tour bus in Las Vegas but never progressed beyond a demo, Rome picked the single back up last summer in Manila, and this time it clicked. The final version features some of Rome's most refined lyricism to date and includes a host of found sounds in the beat—a nod to the DJ Shadow's Endtroducing and other plunderphonics records that Rome obsessed over.
Cover Photo Courtesy of Aya Cabauatan
‘When She Comes Around’ is the first track to be revealed from No Rome’s highly anticipated debut album ‘It’s All Smiles’, debuting on December 3rd by Dirty Hit.
The visualizer for "When She Comes Around" filmed in Manila, brings a dark, atmospheric vibe that pairs perfectly with track. Rome described the process of creating the song and the video, “I made this song after watching the Bjork live version of her album Vespertine and I wanted to make a song that was heavy on the strings but after days on working on it I eventually brought it to a more guitar driven song. I sent this song to BJ and he came back with something much more than I expected, with more textures and stronger bass sounds and just better structure really and we just went crazy on it.”
The Manila born artist recorded his newest song in a small apartment after the pandemic prevented him returning to London. The album was co-produced by Rome with BJ Burton (Kanye West, Bon Iver, Charli XCX) and George Daniel (The 1975). The track finds No Rome returning to his roots, both in terms of location and influences.
"When She Comes Around" follows the vibe Rome coined as 'Shoegaze R&B.' Vocal lines are indebted to the intense emotions expressed in R&B and run beautifully across highly textured production and instrumentation. Like Kevin Shields, the architect of My Bloody Valentine, No Rome paints with his production, taking straight-forward guitar playing and complicating it with the tools at his disposal.
We can expect the album to have tons of more 'Shoegaze R&B' tracks. Rome wrote and recorded most of the album at night in Manila, and its sound evokes the smeared wonder of a city passing by through a rain-flecked car windshield after dark. It’s an album for quality headphones, to hear every detail and note.
ABOUT NO ROME
Guendoline Rome Viray Gomez childhood prepared him to embrace new ideas about what music could do. Both his parents dabbled in performance: his mother would sometimes sing in nightclubs and his dad would moonlight as a DJ when he wasn’t working his day job as a civil engineer. “Not everybody likes the music their parents play, but my dad had really good taste,” he says. “It’s funny, he wasn’t really into rock but he loved new wave and post-punk. He liked the fast tempo stuff, something you could cry and dance to.” New Order and Naked Eyes rang off in Rome’s childhood home, not too far from where he eventually rented the apartment where he’d record It’s All Smiles.
Rome hadn’t planned on moving back to Manila, where he’d been born and raised, but the pandemic changed things. A festival appearance evolved into an extended stay with his parents, and then Rome, 24, rented a two-bedroom apartment of his own when it became clear he wouldn’t be returning to London, where he’d been living for the last three years, anytime soon. In the extra room he put his drum machines, synthesizers, monitors, and laptop to create the improvised home studio where he recorded his debut album It’s All Smiles, under his moniker No Rome.
No Rome's latest track, Spinning has us dancing along and spinning around the room. The song with its pure, joyful escapist pop sound will have listeners wishing for summer. The house vibe to the track draws listeners in. No Rome produced Spinning along with George Daniel and Matty Healy of The 1975. Although he collaborates with Charli XCX and label mates The 1975 for this song, Rome has also worked with Jay Som, Bearface, Dijon and fellow Filipina-British singer Beabadoobee. He's set to release his debut album later this year, so we can expect to hear much more music.
To accompany the release of Spinning, he's collaborated with Japanese artist Hideyuki Tanaka and designer Samuel Burgess - Johnson. Together they created a visual world around the release, complete with animated characters for each artist and a psychedelic universe for them to inhabit.
No Rome, Charli XCX and The 1975 have teamed up with NFT platform Foundation to auction original artworks designed by Hideyuki Tanaka & Samuel Burgess-Johnson and raise money for 3 different charities of the artists choosing. Rome will donate a portion of profits to Right Start, Charli to Girls Make Beats and Matty to One Tree Planted.
Guendoline Rome Viray Gomez, better known as No Rome, is a London-based Filipino musician. Rome grew up in Manila before settling in London. In addition to working with The 1975, No Rome signed to the same label, Dirty Hit. In 2018, released his debut EP RIP Indo Hisashi that includes tracks: Seventeen, Saint Laurent, and Narcissist. The most recent studio album No Rome released was Crying in the Prettiest Places (2019).
Cover Photo Credit No Rome Official Facebook
