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No Rome: "The album has always been on the way, it keeps changing"

There's a new act on the buzz train - Manila-born singer and producer No Rome is already making friends in all the right places.

No Rome is a busy lad. When he's finished chatting with Dork, he's off to Japan to shoot ‘a video' – no word on what it's for yet, it's all top secret. As are most things surrounding Rome Gomez. For an artist that has two tracks out in the world in total, there's definitely an air of mystery around the guy, and a colossal amount of hype.

Rome has been making music since MySpace was around (crikey), and started taking it seriously about five years ago. He was an OG SoundCloud artist too, putting out demos on the platform and working with other artists he'd met on the internet. "I'd just upload them for the sake of it really, nothing more nothing less – and apparently you got people who like the way it sounded."

Rome is an interesting character. Hearing his music, you'd hardly expect the influences he lists as his own. "I guess the irony of getting influences from bands and a lot of music from the past especially, and me having the capability to time travel with the internet to hear songs from when I wasn't even born yet, is I can get inspired from them.

"Growing up listening to like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and then having electronic artists like Bjork and Aphex Twin coming up as well so, they kind of like made that sound. Those are the kind of bands I genuinely listen to, and you could say I get my inspiration from.

Aside from an EP - ‘RIP Indo Hisashi’, coming 'soon' - there's not much else on the way from Rome. It's really a drop in the ocean that's made a bloody massive wave. "The album has always been on the way, it keeps changing and changing through time, and I just wanna get to the point where I think this is something worth listening to as a fifteen track that's gonna come from me – or at least that I'm saying right now.

He hasn't even toured yet – yep this is a properly millennial rise to fame. "Live shows? Not at the moment, not that I know of. I guess trying to build a sort of stage set up that I could bring along with me, then I'd be able to start doing shows. I just wanna be a bit intricate with it before I start playing small venues and have my visuals set up, just because it works both ways with the music and stuff."

So how does a 21-year-old from Manila, end up getting signed to the most exciting record label in the world, Dirty Hit and living with The 1975's Matty Healy?

Oh yeah, the internet. Rome and Samuel spent a while emailing each other (<3 cute) about music and art; then Matty heard his songs. "He wanted to fly me in, got me in touch with Dirty Hit, and we kicked it off really.

‘Pretty cool' is probably the most understated way to describe the whole situation. Remember when Sean Parker put ‘Royals' on his Spotify playlist and within a few months, Lorde was top of the charts worldwide? That's the level of hype anything associated with The 1975 can generate. Christ just look at our magazine if you need any evidence.

Taken from the August issue of Dork, out now. No Rome’s debut EP ‘RIP Indo Hisashi’ is out ‘soon’.

Words: Abigail Firth

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