Rome Will Burn – Burning Sensation
Pop music has long been a synonym for dance music, and each of the modern decades since tunes traveled through the airwaves and into our ears have had representatives bound and determined to make sure those impulses reach our feet and coerce movement (hopefully aided by the maximum amount of rhythm available). New to the scene, but not to the genre, Rome Will Burn has the sound down, and the new wave, visual attitude to match.
Like the founders of their namesake city RWB’s two founders (though not twins as were Romulus and Remus) have set things in motion for a potential empire, with Los Angeles being the first territory on their list
of places to conquer. And they posses the skill sets to accomplish this task. Alyssa Suede the spunky, toe headed front woman of the band, taking the reins as singer/songwriter right down to channeling the Sugarcubes and Kylie Minogue (going so far as to even cover the still catchy “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”). She bounces from one electrically charged number to the next with sugar coated ease. The other side of the coin is Carlton Moody (known in this capacity as Manifesto), a DJ and dedicated violinist who baits his hooks with both the classic influences he has spent years studying as well as a very techno heavy backbone similar to that of contemporaries Daft Punk or Orbital.
Their sound mixes tones of extreme lows and highs, no room for mid-range eq’s here. At their core, they deliver orchestrated electro pop; an ethereal blend of organic instrumentation and an authentic ambient trip. Almost like an evening walk through an LED illuminated forest. They are about as Millennial as it gets and there will be little to no surprise when their first single “Chameleon” ends up shaking it through the background of the latest digital device commercial or MTV bump.
The lyrics for the most part, are innocuous enough, and about as non-threatening as one can get, but repetitive vanilla phrases dedicated to feelings of love (“These Three Words”) and lust are very much a part of this musical diet. This is not music to plan a revolution to, and there is nothing wrong with that. This is music to go out to. To blare through the stereo on the way to the Viper Room. It is the sound of a warm night on Hollywood Blvd, when being young and shelving worldly cares until the next morning is all that really matters. RWB is poised to provide the soundtrack that if they hadn’t missed their decade, would have made them the opening and closing tracks on every single mix tape, bookending the likes of Roxette and the Eurythmics with the aesthetics of Adam Ant or even a cuter, neon version of The Jesus and Mary Chain. A genre of sound that has a distinguished pedigree without a doubt, but if the course stays true, this duo will be burning up the charts (and inevitable club re-mixes) for ages.
by Ian Murphy
