Interview No Rome on debut album ‘It’s All Smiles’: “I’m obsessed with sound designing, crazy textures & details”

Sharing new track ‘When She Comes Around’, Rome gives us the goss on his eagerly-awaited debut…

22nd October 2021

Set for release on 3rd December via Dirty Hit, No Rome has announced his eagerly awaited debut album ‘It’s All Smiles’, sharing first single ‘When She Comes Around’ too.

“I made this song after watching the Bjork live version of her album Vespertine and I wanted to make a song that was heavy on the strings but after days on working on it I eventually brought it to a more guitar driven song,” he says of the track. “I sent this song to BJ and he came back with something much more than I expected, with more textures and stronger bass sounds and just better structure really and we just went crazy on it.”

His eagerly-awaited debut has been co-produced by Rome with BJ Burton (Kanye West, Bon Iver, Charli XCX) and George Daniel (The 1975), showing off his self-coined style of “shoe gaze R&B”.

We sent Rome some qs to find out more!

Hey Rome, how are you?
I’m doing fine, thank you, just drinking some orange juice.

Your debut album, ‘It’s All Smiles’ is finally nearly here! How are you feeling?
A bit gassy but I’m excited. finally nice to get it out now that we’ve worked on it for some time.

When did you start work on the record? Did you have an idea of what you wanted to explore on your debut ahead of then or was it quite an open process?
I’ve been making my album for a long time now but I guess 2020 was where it just made sense to sit down and finish it up. Some songs were from 2019 and one melody and lyrics from a song was from like 2016 or something. I wanted to capture whatever inspired me currently and just the natural inspiration from music I grew up listening to.

There’s some really interesting production elements throughout all of the songs. Can you tell us about that?
I’m obsessed with sound designing, crazy textures & details but I also don’t know what I’m doing most of the time. Meeting BJ & Sachi and having help from George really helped me get the sound to where I wanted it to be and for it to sound what it is now. We spent a whole year working remotely. I was stuck in the Philippines and just FaceTiming for hours talking about ideas and sending each other stems and what not.

Did time away from performing live give you extra time to develop any methods?
Oh yeah, for sure. [It] just gives you full time to live life and just write music and learn from yourself and others really.

What were some of the standout moments writing it?
There’s a lot of personal moments that inspired the album so yeah the shit I went through that time and just being in a pandemic and writing this shit was crazy enough.

You’ve always loved a collab (‘Spinning’ with Charli XCX and Matty Healy, ‘1:45am’ with Brockhampton’s Bearface), can we expect any features on the record?
Yeah, I just really love working with artists who I have huge respect for and just enjoy their craft really, but no features on the record - just me.

How does ‘It’s All Smiles’ compare to your previous projects?
It’s a distorted record!

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