In today’s age, technology has flooded our lives with content. Caught in the mire are modern musicians who champion an art form more widely distributed than any other throughout human history. And we, more often than not, overlook the music created by unfamiliar faces because it’s challenging. We’d rather have an easy listen, a known quantity to skim through while we think about something else.
Hearing is easy, but listening is difficult. Welcome to “Why We Like It,” where we rebuke the trends in favor of thoughtful analysis and underknown sounds.
“ALIENS!” — ROMderful
Listen On:
How We Found It
It was a pleasure to see producer, songwriter, singer and fellow Birmingham native ROMderful pop up in our SubmitHub inbox. Now operating from Seoul, ROMderful is gearing up for the release of his fourth album, arriving on October 29th. This follows his two 2020 efforts, Ice Cream Clones and Peace Is Not A Dream, as well as 2019’s Press L To Continue.
Why We Like It
How is Sci-Fi R&B not a genre yet? ROMderful’s representation of galactic infatuation is as pure and innocent as it is grand. Delicate synths sway between your ears, connecting with each of your memories associated with Sci-Fi movies and alien conspiracy videos on YouTube. Meanwhile, an earthly drum pattern and soft guitars distilled from the essence of every love song make this cosmic background feel homely.
Lyrically, the track comes off as a form of visceral guided meditation, as ROMderful guides you through the stars. The vocals are layered in a way that makes the experience communal, like you’re really one with whomever you’re living out this love story. ROMderful makes love, obsession and infatuation the vehicles through which he is able to explore the universe, the missing pieces that help the chaos of the cosmos to make sense. It’s a strange, poetic way of representing how fundamental love is to his existence. “Aliens” rhythmically affirms the idea that our connection to the universe is found in our connections to each other.
From ROMderful
Ryan: What do you do to boost your creativity that allows you to send listeners on an intergalactic trip like you do on “Aliens?”
ROMderful: Honestly, I just play a bunch of old-school video games especially from the PS1, PS2, GameCube and SNES collections since a lot of them are quite colourful and fun. I like to spend a lot of time outside with my headphones on in my own world and just walk around and stare at things. Buildings, trees, people having conversations and especially being in a new environment since moving to Seoul, there’s so much newness around me that I’m constantly just thinking about creating something new and exciting. Also, I’m a really big fan of colourful, cartoony and unique cinematography such as “2001 A Space Odyssey,” “Spy Kids” series, “Shrek” etc and it always gives me this really unique idea of creating my own universes, therefore, Aliens sounds like a new world.
More From ROMderful
If you loved “Aliens,” please do check out ROMderful’s full-length projects Press L To Continue, Peace Is Not A Dream and my personal favourite, Ice Cream Clones. Stay up to date and hype yourself up for his new album by following ROMderful on Twitter and Instagram.
More to Discover
Subscribe to the CentralSauce mailing list so you never miss out on the freshest sauce. Check out this continuously updated playlist of songs Ryan has added to our Discovery section! Each track or artist has been featured in our “Why We Like It” section, so be sure to check out the page here on the site.
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