Grammy-Award-winning audio engineer Michael Ilbert usually has his hands full with mixing the international Pop A-list, but ROME managed to squeeze into Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studios, yet again, for a one-day recording stunt after their 2019 ‘The West Knows Best’ tour.
Many of Jerome Reuter’s saints and idols have served the Church of Hansa and delivered ground-breaking work there: NICK CAVE, IGGY POP, DEPECHE MODE, THE PIXIES, EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN, ZARAH LEANDER... to name but a few. And so the pressure was on to do this tradition justice.
ROME plus entourage set up camp at Hansa for a mere 30 hours to record a handful of songs, including some of their more recent work like ‘Kali Yuga Über Alles’ and ‘Who Only Europe Know’ from the highly successful albums ‘The Lone Furrow’ and ‘Le Ceneri di Helidioro’ respectively. The selection of songs also includes ROME's earliest material, ‘Like Lovers’ being the very first song Reuter recorded as ‘ROME’ on December 1st, 2005.
The band on this live session is comprised of Laurent Fuchs (drums and percussion), Vlad Purice (bass), Eric Becker (guitar) and ROME’s leading man Jerome Reuter (guitar, percussion and vocals).
There were no overdubs made after the session -no actual enhancements of any sort, in fact- in order to capture the band's live sound in its raw form. The resulting ‘Hansa Studios Session II’ is a real peak into a well-oiled live machine -in all its fierce rawness- and an authentic and intimate glimpse at one of Europe's most prolific songwriters at work.
