The electronic music community was shocked and saddened to learn of Romanthony’s passing last weekend. Here, Defected’s Ben Lovett looks back at the life and works of one of the most prolific, talented and unique artists of his generation.
“We met him at the 1996 Winter Music Conference and became friends,” Daft Punk’s Guy de Homem-Christo told Billboard in 2001; he was explaining the duo’s close ties to cult New Jersey house producer Romanthony. “What’s odd is that Romanthony and Todd Edwards are not big in the United States at all. Their music had a big effect on us. The sound of their productions – the compression, the sound of the kick drum and Romanthony’s voice, the emotional soul – is part of how we sound today. Because they mean something to us, it was much more important for us to work with them than with other big stars.”
de Homem-Christo’s words have taken on stellar significance this week what with the release of Daft Punk’s already globally triumphant new album Random Access Memories – and, more poignantly, the sad news of Romanthony’s death. That Romanthony has, in Daft Punk’s own words, helped shape the way they sound puts the instant, gargantuan success of their latest work into sharp perspective - known or unknown, this underground house vet has left a staggering legacy.
Romanthony, real name Anthony Moore, passed away on May 7 at his home in Austin, Texas, according to a Facebook post by older sister Mellony; he was 46. Cause of death is believed to have been liver disease but this has not been officially confirmed. News has been slow to travel, only picking up pace via social media last weekend after an earlier, missed Facebook post by Romanthony collaborator Eve Angel was rediscovered and circulated. The development of the story is much in keeping with the air of mystery that continually surrounded Romanthony when he was alive. Many didn’t even realise he’d moved to Texas until Mellony’s message.
Anthony Moore’s journey began from a very young age, his parents providing weekend piano and guitar lessons after they clocked his fervent interest in making music. “When I was younger my parents supported me 100%, once they saw that I had some kind of innate ability to make musical sounds out of things” he told Slices DVD Magazine for an ultra-rare interview in 2009. “So I think that’s part of my longevity. And also my DJing and selecting things, I took music lessons...and from there I don’t just hear music, y’know like beats and everything; I hear melodies and the structure of where it’s going.”
By his mid-Twenties (and the early Nineties), Moore had launched New Jersey record label Black Male. The imprint paved the way for Romanthony’s earliest work, ear-catching EPs including Now You Want Me, Testify #1, Survival and, most famously, The Wanderer. Those freshman forays displayed impressive breadth and depth, flirting with tech, garage, gospel and even pop whilst working in intense personality and emotion, and the kind of lo-fi basement production sound that would act as a seriously refreshing countermeasure to dance music’s steady mainstream rise throughout that decade.
In 1994, Moore switched things up again by releasing Let Me Show You Love through Azuli, perhaps his most impactful Romanthony production with its utterly mesmeric splice of hyper garage groove and deliciously skewed vocal (Romanthony’s own). And there were further deep gems to follow on Black Male and Azuli as well as similarly influential house imprints 83 West, Distance, Glasgow Underground, Roulé and Tiefschwarz’s Caus-N’-ff-ct (think Ministry Of Love, Hold On and album Romanworld). More and more of clubland - especially in Europe - was standing (and dancing) to attention and, owing to Romanthony’s studio versatility, not just within the house camp. Intriguingly, however, he remained tight-lipped, avoiding interviews, major label deals and the chance to re-work Prince. The mystery was deepening.
“I’m not trying to bring people to know me,” Moore told Slices. “I’m just telling a story, songs that are real to me and if you relate to them we’ll get to know each other.” He also elaborated on his painstakingly committed creative process: “My music in production is usually physical pain... When you get a certain rhythm going at the studio, a certain sequence of melodies, sometimes it’s like...it’s not funny at all; it’s like the opposite of it... It does something to you and I find the more I go into trying to get this certain rhythm, the more difficult it is physically to make it go this way...because it’s on the edge.... It’s not a happy thing but I like that it’s not a happy thing. Because, like, the more pain and the more contortion that I have to do, and it hurts me, I think the more they’re [the crowd] going to feel it... I’ve learnt now that the more I feel that, like a kind of uneasiness, I’m getting closer to a unique groove.”
Romanthony’s unique groove was evident both in the studio and the club. A renowned DJ as well as producer and vocalist, his carefully selected bookings around the world would usually prompt him to re-edit and format track selections especially; the tailoring depending on the city and venue - all to ensure the best possible dancefloor experience: “That groove people say I can’t forget it and I like it...I pay attention to that.”
The Nineties, Romanthony’s most productive career period, would, of course, set him on a welcome collision course with then formative French dance duo Daft Punk – de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. Having met in Miami in 1996, the three would in turn collaborate on Daft Punk’s 2001 album Discovery. Romanthony co-wrote monster album hit One More Time (as well as closing track Too Long) and by providing it with those iconic, insanely catchy auto-tune vocals - machine never outwitting soul - would ensure overground credibility in remarkable harmony with his existing underground status.
That said Moore disagreed with the notion of over and underground. “It’s almost to say that the underground is overground. There’s no underground in our music; it’s popular, happy, whatever... so it’s popular music now.” As Romanthony, he demonstrated exhilarating self-confidence in his own ideas, beliefs and gut feelings. Clubland’s ever-present obsession with genre and scene boundaries, and the ‘mob rule’ views of the crowds within each distinctive sub-scene meant little to him, unable to influence or compromise his path. “Whatever I release I want everybody to hear it, I don’t care” he confessed to Slices. “I’m feeling good about it....”
One More Time, aggressively promoted by the major label (Virgin Records) machine, allowed Moore to sit back for once and studiously observe how technology, and the new electronic acts championing it, were changing the industry landscape. He was savvy enough to work out his limitations and how he might best evolve them. “I think some of the new producers were, and are, ahead of me and I enjoy listening to the new things coming out... Justice, Digitalism, Boyz Noize” he said in 2009. “It was a good energy that came in; my energy isn’t the same, so I don’t want to go in there and fight it. Let it rock...and then I’ll start to blend with it and then keep moving along.... So a lot of the energies that came in, they’re worth sitting back [for]... and seeing where these guys are going...that’s the reason I was quiet. Let One More Time still go, pump out; at the same time a lot of the new technology, I was hearing new things and some of these [new] guys...it was inspirational.”
Moore dropped two further Romanthony albums around the turn of the century. 1999’s Instinctual (with DJ Predator) and 2000’s R.Hide In Plain Site, both released via Glasgow Underground, swerved convention and expectation; the former, a boldly experimental future-garage jam, and its follow-up, swaggering R&B. Beyond that, his workload decreased – a handful of EPs via DigiTalent, last year’s Kraak & Smaak collabo Hold Back Love/Let’s Go Back and this year’s Kris Menace pair-up 2Nite4U – and, in turn, his day-to-day profile. And yet he was still working on exciting new material, as various tribute tweets last weekend attest, and commanding utmost respect among his peers. Upon his death, Boyz Noize posted: “Romanthony and me were working on such an amzing song together. he said it was the best song he had ever written.[sic]”
Whilst fully embracing the 21st century’s rampant tech revolution, Moore remained keen to employ traditional music knowhow. It was, in fact, the warm and seamless fusion of technology and organic over the entire length of his career that gave Romanthony such a high level of artistic standout and, today, ensures his legend will not falter. “[I’m] not just like designing sounds on a software [or] it’s always going to sound this way. I can just pick up an instrument...and begin to move it to an electronic sound and mix it back and forth... So it sort of makes it timeless” he once commented. “It’s not easy to do that but I have the education so...I feel confident about my songs. They make sense, they’re warm. I’m not really influenced by techno producers. I’m in that form of music but my influences are from the timeless acts...Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Led Zeppelin...Elvis, The Beatles, Hendrix... That’s in my heart and soul but I like the technology....blending those two together...the combination where a lot of those things should sound timeless.”
Despite the weighty discography Romanthony has left us, the performances, the quotes and robo Punk-y cameos, it’s still difficult to define exactly what made this New Jersey music maker so special. Romanthony’s openness to change and new ideas at a time when the club scene was fiercely segmented and marginalised was impressive; as was his relentless, pioneering fusion of traditional and futuristic sound. He was a passionate artist, deeply committed to finding pure power and emotion in the groove wherever it may be; something truly enduring. Many would say spiritual, such was, and still is, his euphoric influence on peers and fans.
“I don’t know if possession is a word” he told Slices. “Whatever, it’s a talent if you learn how to accept it...letting things come in like your brain is a radio station and it just hears things....I think you’re chosen for these particular things...and some people can get in time with it and live. And I think I’m one of those people....”
Whether or not Daft Punk’s epic return finally propels Romanthony into the hearts and minds of America’s dance mainstream, and reinvigorates the periphery of his wider global fan base, is perhaps irrelevant. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, his influence, his innovation and passion will live on in all forms of the best electronic today and tomorrow.
Words: Ben Lovett
