Bleep

Home, Romare’s first LP for four years, begins with ‘Gone’, the slow house joint with which the London producer reintroduced himself last year. It’s a number which sets out the stall for the rest of this record perfectly, one that maintains the vibrant sampling of Romare’s previous records while also reaching more readily for the soaring, sunset dance style of contemporaries like Maribou State.

The widescreen nature of many of these productions is apparent in the fact that only two tracks on Home clock in at under five minutes. Following in the footsteps of ‘Gone’, cuts such as ‘High’, ‘Heaven’ and ‘You See’ are sprawling joints that anchor themselves with firm house beats - though ‘High’ runs slow enough to be comparable to the leftfield, lurching hip-hop tracks which peppered Romare’s breakout records Meditations On Afrocentrism and Love Songs: Part One, a vibe that he returns to on Home’s closing title-track.

Indeed, the great respect that Romare has for the American black musical lineage which we heard on those two EPs is still very much present on Home. ‘The River’, for instance, throws both rolling percussion and jazz-tinged loops into the mix, while ‘Deliverance’ returns to a vivid patchwork sampling style.

Romare sinks into a warm, welcoming house sound - one that still maintains some of his sonic signatures - on new LP Home.