Romanthony

Think whatever you like about Daft Punk, but one thing is certain: when it comes to knowledge of house music and its history, they have no equals. And if for the most iconic single of their duo's career, "One More Time", they chose Romanthony's voice, you can bet they knew exactly what they were doing. Sure, introducing one of dance music's greatest minds through a guest appearance on someone else's track (the closing section of "Discovery" and the full ten minutes of "Too Long" also feature his contribution) might almost feel like a career snub, but given the impact and stature of that particular single, there are far worse ways to be introduced to the world. Wherever he is now, Anthony Way Moore can surely take pride in the fact that his legacy in dance music worldwide wasn't confined to a lasting underground influence, but also reached such a commercial peak, earning the open admiration of his peers. Yet even without that global assault, the vision of house music he managed to originate, the structure and conceptual power with which he wrapped his art, still reverberate today across countless productions, with a cornerstone like "Romanworld" standing as the best example of the power of that reworking. Rewinding the tape is a necessary step...

Small New York mysteries

Don't expect some juicy biography, thrilling anecdotes tied to the figure of Romanthony: he was far too protective of his privacy, far too wary of intrusion to share much of himself with his audience. Even in the few interviews he gave during his lifetime, what comes through is someone passionate about his work, devoted to his muse, quick to brush aside any unwarranted curiosity. There's very little in the way of rock-star ambition, in short, despite a childhood spent in New Jersey taking guitar lessons and absorbing influences from great rock and soul classics (Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, Eagles among many others). And yet, although the early Nineties brought Moore into close contact with the career that awaited him, the guitarist's mindset and the songwriting process behind a rock song would remain fundamental pillars of his art. Already well into adulthood, free to roam the Big Apple, he found in club culture the ideal counterpart to his musical vision, a sense of freedom and technological progress that had found its perfect synthesis in New York's garage revolution.

The remnants of disco, by then dead and buried, the rise of keyboards and synthesizers, the feeling of gospel, the central role of the female voice, an increasingly proud and self-aware queerness, the syncretic, curious attitude that made Larry Levan and his legendary sets at the Paradise Garage the absolute prototype of the DJ as dancefloor ringmaster. In this recombinant climate, scythed by the nightmare of AIDS, tightly bound to marginalized communities and their stories, Romanthony moved with great fluidity, absorbing, learning, crossing paths with DJs and producers who had inherited Levan's legacy and carried his lesson into the dawning Nineties. Far more than with Chicago's sister scene, closer to electro and Italo disco developments, the context that opened up for Moore suited his creative instincts perfectly, a path that needed exactly this kind of hybridization to fully bloom, to give another twist to his inimitable soul grain.

Said and done: partly to keep the entire creative process under his own control from the very start, by 1991 it was already time to set up his own label. Black Male immediately became the primary outlet for releasing projects under the Romanthony name (as well as his many parallel monikers), and with "Now You Want Me" in '92 he was already launching a career of remarkable maturity. The garage spirit absorbed from nights spent in clubs across New York is immediately palpable here, the pulsing bass, the electric quirks looped as rhythmic backbone, and above all that voice. In sharp contrast to a scene that often divided labour, entrusting vocal duties on self-produced tracks to other singers, Moore's timbre stands out from the very start across all his productions, becoming the signature of an author who imposes his own interpretation, offering his vision directly to the audience.

Already at this stage, the vision is one that leaves a mark: emotional in just the right measure, fully in command of an exciting rock rawness yet as sensual as the finest R&B performer, Romanthony wields a lethal weapon and knows exactly how to handle it, adapting it to the most varied circumstances. At the pulsing heart of a beat that sounds almost like psychedelic hip-hop, on "Falling From Grace" Moore moves with total ease from devotional pleading to freestyle rap, even finding room for loose, confident guitar solos (not unlike his contemporary Lenny Kravitz) and a gospel-fuelled explosion of rare exultation. All of it is crafted without ever losing sight of the dancefloor, the movement, the communal spirit of a house music able to speak on multiple levels at once. "Da Change" the following year carries forward his love for Martin Luther King and his teachings with a fresh, thrilling use of his famous speeches, riding the winds of change in an euphoric build that never loses its tension.

It's with "The Wanderer" that the author's style cements its great capacity for reinvention, appropriating rave elements and jittery techno touches for a moment of emotional contemplation, looking towards a past and present steeped in remorse, abandonment, a desolation that even carries violent undertones. Across all four mixes on the EP, the soulful character of the narrating voice comes through clearly, the powerful narrative touch of a vocal delivery that only pain and rage can convey. This, along with the emergence of a sonic synthesis that begins looking to the deep house lesson of Mr. Fingers and softening the electric edge with jazz influences, shifted Moore's research into a new phase, a path dominated by unbridled syncretism. Only to hand himself over, in the end, to history...

A matter of ambition

It's certainly no secret that house, among all the genres belonging to the dance universe, is the one that has least bowed to the logic of the long player. Even and especially in times far more album-centric than today, house has always preferred to operate on the single format and the 12", well aware that its true value is best expressed not through an overarching vision or a unified concept, ill-suited to a club anyway, but through a well-crafted mix. Sure, times would come that would disprove this approach, but in the mid-Nineties the climate was hardly favourable to long-form releases. Romanthony himself could easily have continued along his exciting run of EPs, solidifying, track after track, his standing within New York's fertile club culture. Yet the fullness of his vision, the construction of an increasingly rich and sophisticated dance vocabulary, couldn't remain confined to scattered tracks, or worse, become mere fodder for eager collectors.

Release a compilation and give some semblance of order to an already sizeable catalogue? That was one option, and other peers were already considering it (Kerri Chandler chief among them), but Moore decided to push things much further. Almost as if to vindicate those who had begun calling him the Prince of house (and in many respects, the comparison wasn't far-fetched), Romanthony summoned his inner auteur and devised a project that pushed well beyond anything house music had imagined up to that point.

"Romanworld", as if to dot the i's right from the start, was released on Azuli (the independent UK label that had already distributed his material in Britain) and stands as a display of Romanthony's artistic vision delivered with startling force. The producer, the performer, the composer - every side of Moore comes together and coalesces to produce something that goes far beyond the aims of a standard compilation, reworking both released and unreleased material into a single conceptual flow heading toward the depths of the Earth, guided by a hand that does everything it can to keep the listener hooked through every change of direction. If this isn't ambition, little else could claim to be.

A leap of faith

This should be played at high volume. You might be missing some of the benefits that stereo can provide

It's with these two lines that "Romanworld" opens its listen, and with it, the more than one hundred minutes of adventures comfortably split across two CDs (or four sides of vinyl, if you prefer). The invitation contained here is meant to be taken literally: this is an album that needs to come blasting out of the speakers, loud, because it needs volume to properly convey its secrets. And above all, it needs to be listened to in full, without a single interruption.

Too much effort? Too bad for you: Romanthony never conceived of breaks between one track and the next, his journey is meant to be taken as a single whole, listened to like one long prog suite with no skip button in sight. Scared? In an age of endless playlists, a formula like this can look like a total gamble. Not that it wasn't one back in 1996 either, but this is Anthony Wayne Moore's world, and you're merely guests in it. Take it or leave it. Choosing the latter would be nothing short of reckless: it hardly matters that Romanthony tests the patience of the casual listener, or puts the trust of even his most devoted admirers to the test. Get comfortable and enjoy the show — you've entered Romanthony's world, and there's no button that will take you back up.

There isn't one, quite literally: in the title track that opens the album, the unwitting protagonist of the concept presses an elevator button destined to carry him into the depths of the Earth, the so-called Romanworld of the title. Is that all? Of course not, because along the way down there are long sermons to the Romans and disquisitions on human perception. Not bad, for a musician who spent years setting entire dancefloors alight. And it doesn't stop there: not content with this lengthy spoken preamble, Moore follows it up with a guitar dissertation, lines that verge almost into jazz, passages that in their own way even rock out, stretching on for minutes, as if we were dealing with a Jimi Hendrix record.

The house music? You have to wait more than ten minutes for it to arrive, and even then it kicks in only when Moore decides it's time. This isn't about torturing the listener, quite the opposite: when the intro of "Make This Love Right", all atmospheric shimmer and pulsing bass, gives way to the beat, the long-awaited bomb finally goes off. Tension and release, digression and precision: here Romanthony's world tears down every convention that had until then been associated with the genre, grafts his voice onto a track that's already well underway, loops saxophones as if they were Masters At Work on acid, drifts in and out of the main rhythmic backbone, with a sensuality that stays constant throughout the whole track.

The producer knows how to land his punches, but he doesn't deliver them before showing off the full range of his abilities. So before you get to appreciate the original mix of "Now You Want Me", the origin point of Moore's career, "Now You Want Blues" is, true to its title, pure blues emotion, Rhodes and guitar accompanying a vocal caught between pain and disdain. The moment its sister track kicks in, the pairing finds its perfect justification. And if the more soulful side was still missing, the deep opening of "Come My Way" (perhaps the album's most velvety moment) gives way to a slow r&b coda, the ideal setting for a vocal delivery that becomes invitation and seduction, the perfect crossing point between the aforementioned Prince and the most visceral En Vogue.

Where the first disc (the vinyl edition reverses the order) works with sharper contrasts and more overt emotion, the second is a genuine party, played out without any breaks in the flow but handled with a personality that fears no comparison. "Desire", all subterranean pulses and deep soul, builds with subtle persistence, riding on vocal loops that construct the obsession of desire, in a constant growth of density and intensity, as if the fixation knew no rest. "Testify" is an even more exuberant continuation of the closing moments of "Falling From Grace", a choral, piano-driven track that on its own seems almost to want to carry gospel into the arena, without denying itself guitar licks that heighten its funky edge.

And it's precisely that funky edge that takes centre stage on "Soul On Fire", a joyous link back to the mythical Seventies so beloved by Romanthony: in a certain sense it anticipates some of the most exhilarating moments Bangalter and Homem-Christo would later produce (did someone say "Crescendolls"?). The one-minute intro to "Ministry Of Love" does little to mask the jubilation straining to burst out: with such joy shaping its contours and King's speech summing up its black pride, the track could well stand as the true flagbearer of the whole project, the most convincing showcase of a universe that offers a dynamic snapshot of the entire house ecosystem. The final closer, "In The Mix", takes on almost the shape of a thank-you, laying bare the unstoppable passion of a musician who had finally become the architect of his own world, built entirely to the measure of his insatiable curiosity.

Futures revealed

Romanthony never conceived of his music with the mainstream in mind, to the point of consciously sabotaging the distribution of his albums to stores he felt hadn't supported him in the past, or sending out deliberately mangled mixes of his tracks at wildly wrong volumes just to test the competence of any would-be collaborators. Even amid such an obsessive pursuit of maximum elusiveness, an epic like "Romanworld" was never going to go unnoticed. Europe would be the first to embrace the album's insights and make them its own, the first to grasp its conceptual potential and the narrative pathos of a genre born with rather different aims.

Daft Punk would later turn their "Discovery" into something close to a love letter to the music of a man who had by then become a friend, someone they'd even go on to oversee reissues of old classics for: his presence on the lead single is simply the final confirmation of an admiration that let Anthony Moore's voice become one with the spirit of the times. In the era of blog-house, every kind of abstraction and outsider deviation, the musician's recombinant attitude would become a (more or less) unconscious guide to follow, the godfather who showed how seemingly irreconcilable worlds could complement each other without much friction.

However low-key his career may have been, his personal universe was simply too vast to go unnoticed. Don't hesitate to give in to its call — press the button and head down, straight into the bowels of the earth: your feet will move on their own.

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29/05/2022