aaamusic | On 05, Dec 2011

Romay has been making dance music – in some capacity – for aaages (like, 16 years…), working and producing for many indie/undergrounded labels. ‘Playing With Sound’ is his debut album, and, perhaps because he has engineered quite a respectable reputation, it has picked up early support from the BBC, Kiss, UKF etc. That reputation was enhanced by the creation of his own label Acoustic Science – through which he has released his album (although Romay has been ‘Playing With Sound’ pretty easy to access for free online).

So, what kind of dance music does this producer produce? You know Chase & Status’ ‘Eastern Promises’ or ‘Music Club’? Well, Romay has made a whole album around their formats. That is, he has made a record of lairy dubstep meets drum’n’bass, laced with exotic, world music snippets. There are plenty of moments featuring Bollywood-esque vocals – all originally recorded, rather than sampled – such as on ‘Nothing Without You,’ and others where Asian instruments such as sitars are used, as on the OTT ‘Heritage’ (a step too far perhaps?).

It’s very well produced, and the music is very current – everybody is loving the heavy, accessible dubstep at the moment. The drum’n’bass drum patterns are pretty standard (but, to be honest, I’m not a DnB fan…), and the album would’ve been better off with out them. The world elements and the vocals make this music easy to like and dance to, but most of it is very Chase & Status – ‘Get My Chance’ could easily have been on ‘More Than Alot.’ But, with C & S having moved into poppier and rockier territory, there maybe space from Romay in both the charts and on the club scene.

‘Playing With Sound’ is a decent dubstep, DnB, and Asian/world mashup, and although there’s noting particularly unique about how he makes dance music, the Asian element does add enough to make Romay worth checking out.

 

Clive Rozario