Romare - Home (2LP) - Grey Vinyl

Romare’s third album, Home, finds Archie Fairhurst leaning into the warmth that has always lived in his work, then letting it fill the whole room. Released in 2020 on Ninja Tune, it sits in a sweet spot between heady listening session and slow-burn dance record. The palette is classic Romare, rooted in collage and groove, but there is more air around the drums, more live playing, and a patient sense of movement that feels, well, homely in the best way.

He took his name from Romare Bearden, the American collage artist, and the connection still makes sense here. Samples and textures snap together like cut paper, then blur at the edges with guitar, keys, and hand percussion. The record feels assembled by touch. You hear dusty gospel fragments, hints of folk melody, a little spiritual jazz lilt, and a lot of earth-toned house. It answers the title without getting cute about it, treating home as a rhythm more than a metaphor.

Compared to Projections and Love Songs: Part Two, the tilt is slightly softer and more reflective, but the engine is intact. The kick drums still land with that Ninja Tune weight, bass lines still barrel forward in simple, persuasive hooks. When “Gone” hits, the album’s pulse is obvious. It is a standout, a looping vocal and a rubbery low end working in tandem until the groove feels inevitable. Romare tracks often bloom in the details, and this one does too, little shakers mixing with claps, chord stabs nudging your ear just when the loop might go stale.

The deeper cuts lean into texture. He likes the sound of an instrument touching wood, the scrape of fingers on strings, the human breath in a sampled choir. That attention gives Home a tactile quality that works equally well at home on speakers or in a small club, lights low, bodies taking the tempo as suggestion rather than command. It is not a banger factory, and that is the point. The payoff is cumulative, the kind of record that turntables love because every element has space to speak. If you are into Romare vinyl, this is one you actually spin front to back, not just for a single DJ-friendly moment.

Romare has spoken in interviews about how ideas of place and identity shaped these tracks, and you can hear it in the way he threads voices. The gospel traces act like memory, guiding you through house patterns that feel familiar without sounding rote. There is a pastoral tug to some of the melodies, a sense of English folk color peeking through the drum programming. It never turns into pastiche. He is too careful for that, and the blend feels lived in, like a studio with cables underfoot and daylight leaking through the blinds.

What sells Home is restraint. Where many electronic records flex with maximal choruses, this one trusts repetition and micro-shifts. A hi-hat opens by a hair, a piano phrase arrives two bars after you expect it, a bass note slides into place with a little grit left on the slide. Romare is not chasing peak moments. He is building a habitat. That makes the highlights feel earned, the kind of slow reveal that keeps pulling you back. If you loved the heft of Projections but wanted more skin and wood in the mix, here you go.

On vinyl the low end breathes, the drums sit warm in the room, and those sampled voices feel close, which is exactly how this music should land. If you collect Romare albums on vinyl, Home belongs next to the first two, a clear arc from shadowy sample-science to something more open-hearted. It is also the one I recommend when people come into a Melbourne record store looking for a modern house record they can live with, not just play out. And if you tend to buy Romare records online, seek out a clean copy, because the quiet passages matter here. Home vinyl rewards a good pressing.

Ten years from now, I suspect this is the Romare LP that will get pulled when friends come over, dinner is half finished, and you want the room to settle into a shared rhythm. It is generous music, quietly confident, and it wears repeat listens like a favorite sweater.