Interview: Marc Romboy introduces his first club album in 15 years
Marc Romboy
Image credit: Natascha Romboy
Marc Romboy is an artist renowned within the electronic scene for his eclectic, boundary-pushing approach and decades worth of experience working both behind the scenes and behind the decks.
In recent years he has embraced performing live as another creative outlet and, indeed, creative challenge. As an artist and performer, Marc has always pushed the boundaries of his creativity and this, Marc’s first club album in 15 years is a true masterwork of techno from one of the masters of the genre. We sat down with him to discuss his new album, his experiences as a live artist, and more….
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Hi Marc, wishing you a warm welcome to the Awesome Soundwave family, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on board. We LOVE your “Belgium” single, which is accompanied by a remix from Josh Wink, and we can not wait to show the world your first album in 15 years - “Music Made For Aliens”. How does it feel to be putting these bodies of work out into the wild? Any stories behind the album you could share?
First of all, thanx for your warm and welcoming words. I’m very happy that I can be part of this success story called Awesome Soundwave and it was really exciting to produce a album for the clubs again. As my fans and followers know, I’m a huge fan of everything which has to do with space, planets, black holes, and of course, aliens. When I started to explore techno and acid music in the middle of the 80s I was like “Wow, has this music been made by aliens?” Because I had never heard something galactic like this before. With my new album, I kind of want to say thank you to all aliens who made this kind of music which fulfils my life to date.
Growing up in Germany as a youngster, where were you drawing influence from? And what urged your initial steps in your bright career?
Well, I come from an industrial state, in the middle between Cologne, Düsseldorf and the Ruhr area. So it wasn’t only the music which influenced me. It was also the everyday life with all its noises which apparently gave me inspiration. Besides this, I have been constantly fascinated by music made with machines, so that records from the likes of Kraftwerk, Neu!, Yello and Jean Michel Jarre addressed me a lot.
The early 00’s saw you launch Systematic Recordings, do you have fond memories of the beginning of that journey? You have released some stand out and timeless music on the label over the years: Do you have any personal highlights and moments?
Yes, I established Systematic Recordings in 2004 as a reaction to my displeasure about how the electronic music scene was evolving. Techno music was very hard and fast at this point of time and trance music had nothing to with its roots, most of the producers were only thinking about which popular song they could cover. At this point of time, I re-explored my love to the roots of electronic music, such as ghetto house, Detroit techno, Italo disco and Electronic Body Music. I digged through my record boards and listened to all this stuff again and felt like coming home, I knew what my mission is, producing music from the heart instead of jumping on bandwagons, just to make money with this kind of music. This “aha moment” was the beginning of Systematic almost 20 years ago.
Can you please tell our audience a bit about your live set-up? What does a night with Marc Romboy look like in terms of machines and processes? What made you transition from DJing to live performances?
The reason why I started to create my very own live setup is the matter of fact that I wanted to have more what we call “Spielfreude” in German, meaning that I felt the urge to have more joy to play when I´m on stage. Don’t misunderstand me, I love to deejay a lot but the possibilities to interact with the music and audience is limited because you mostly are playing an already a finalized track of a producer, which is not you. Another intention was that I had and have collected a huge number of own tracks and I like the idea to perform only own stuff on stage and nothing from other people. It’s a bit like when you are visiting a concert of let’s say Jack White, you wanna hear his songs like “Seven Nations Army” and nothing else.
To come back to the “Spielfreude”, my focus is less on bringing loads of analogue machines on stage. My focus is to find several controller options to play new drum and synth lines on the fly. I thought about this a lot and eventually found several really nice tools which give me the chance to play different music in every show although I play my tracks people know from me. It’s a never ending process to find new ways to control elements of my music, and besides this I want to find elements which folks can comprehend while using them.
Did you produce your “Music Made For Aliens” in a similar fashion, and machines, or how did the tracks come about for this one?
The album is the result of a process which happened during a couple of years. All tracks are actually based on recording sessions in Reykjavik and my studio in Germany where I simply made jam sessions with just one analogue synthesizer and a drum loop. In Iceland, my friends from Gus Gus and another friend called Bjarki found me a great studio in the harbour area which had all rare synths I have never used before. I made just fun sessions without thinking about what could happen with the recordings and afterwards the files were sleeping on my hard disc for some years. During the pandemic, Chris Coe asked me whether I wanna do an album for ASW and I recalled all the sessions I recorded back in the days. I listened to them and was like “Wow, there are nice ideas here” and finished the album with my friend André Winter from Hamburg who added some great ideas to mine.
It was the first time I made an album like this and I’m sure, this music comes 100% straight from my heart because everything was recorded with the magical touch of the momentums.
From a live perspective we find it particularly interesting that you have worked with orchestras over the years, showcasing classical sounds with elements of live electronic music. Tell us a bit about how this came about? And how did it all work?
Do you have five hours time (laughs)? Well, I’m someone who is not able to produce just one style or direction over and over again. I’m always looking for new challenges inside the bubble called electronic music and in 2015 the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra management asked me whether I can imagine a collaboration with them. I instantly agreed without knowing what was expecting me. We worked on the project for more than one year and the Boiler Room video is looking very impressive but the effort behind the scene was extended and massive and I underestimated this a lot. At the end, I’m very happy that I made this project because I learnt a lot about playing live with an orchestra and also the different perspective of the musicians was very interesting.
Do you see yourself exploring other genres in the years to come? Or maybe working on some other projects our ASW family might not know about…
I wanna produce as many as possible tracks and remixes to fulfil my live shows with even more nice repertoire, that’s all I want this year.
Let’s close with a closing track. A track you love to play/hear at the end of the night.
I would chose the closing track of the album called “Aurora”, the perfect one for the end of a night.
▶ MUSIC MADE FOR ALIENS - MARC ROMBOY, out March 17th.
Grab your copy here >>
Interview conducted by Zac Bidwell, Eureka Artists.