‘Bassy enough to shatter your bones’

Roman Remains will be supporting Gary Numan at his 53 Degrees show, on Tuesday 01 July 2014.
Roman RemainsRoman Remains
Roman Remains

Roman Remains are a duo consisting of Liela Moss and Toby Butler from The Duke Spirit.

They’ll be promoting new single Gazebo, which is taken from their debut album Zeal.

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The north London natives, who also live in Los Angeles like Numan, embark on a tour with Numan and Big Black Delta.

Recorded during a break in The Duke Spirit’s touring schedule and mixed by Damian Taylor (Bjork/Austra/UNKLE) during an extraordinarily cold expedition to Montreal, Zeal sees Roman Remains feverishly cross the line between Electro, Industrial and Dance music.

Roman Remains’ quests are simple – “to make music bassy enough to shatter your own bones and trippy enough to read your own aura”.

As Butler says, “it’s a living, breathing, digital being.”

“I’d been wanting to experiment with different writing methods, specifically on electronic instruments, for some time but wasn’t sure where to begin.

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“Then I bumped into friend Simon Byrt (the album’s co-producer) and talked about what I wanted to do.

“Working on ideas together at his London studio pretty much gave me an immediate method and direction...and limitless freedom.

“I felt like I’d busted open a hundred doors that I’d been curious to see what was behind.”

On the lyrics, Moss says: “The words are born out of my favourite experiences of the last two years or so, many spent travelling and outside, with me in a pretty observant and aware frame of mind.

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“From Los Angeles where you see all that orange and purple bougainvillea caress the sharp edges of those crooked cement sidewalks, to steep glossy mountainsides in the Himalayas where I spent a month last monsoon.

“Those are places I’ve had headphones on, listening to Toby’s instrumentals.

“Banging electronic vignettes, heard in random places – that’s where you suck in harder at the vitality billowing around you and try to seed it back into the songs.

“You can’t miss out on the metaphors that all the terrain and colour provide, the cornucopia but the glorious untamedness of it, too!

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“I’ve fallen out of love with the city and just want to cut loose over some open spaces.

“I wanted to go feral and I can with this new record.”

“Lyrically I’m thinking about detachment, observing desires before acting upon them. But let’s face it, I will be reaching for a beer.”

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