ROME – CIVITAS SOLIS LP

Opis

A Man Against Time…

The shadows of war darken Europe. The 1920s of the new millennium evoke oppressive memories of the interwar period a hundred years earlier, from which the Second World War inevitably emerged. Now Ukraine is in flames, beset daily by Russian attacks. And Europe is torn apart by this conflict, which often seems like only the harbinger of a much greater catastrophe.

Jerome Reuter and his band ROME have chosen music as a means of commenting on and processing Europe’s fate. Since 2005, he has been writing songs and concept albums dedicated to key moments in history, reflecting on and commenting on their myths and narratives. In doing so, he approaches historical themes from an artistic distance, deconstructing events and ideologemes, examining them from a variety of perspectives and presenting them back to us as a question. He transforms from a contemporary witness, sometimes melancholic, sometimes angry, into a participating observer, from whose individual, subjective perspective, things appear immediately charged with pathos. With ROME, we are meant to recognize, observe, shudder, and be frightened, but also to shine anew: “We walk in brightest black towards the sun.

” Reuter’s songwriting often resembles a journey, where visual impressions mingle with personal conversations. It’s as if one were reading his diary after a turbulent day, which is personally reflected upon and ultimately cast into iconic metaphors. “Civitas Solis” is expressly not intended to be understood as a concept album, as we have so often experienced from ROME. Reuter always seemed to devote himself entirely to those themes, absorbed in emotional devotion and identification, only to then distance himself again to view events from a new perspective and in a different light.

Jerome Reuter is a seeker on the winding paths of history, driven by a longing for Europe, myth, utopia – between enlightened manifesto and irrational fortress. This time, his central metaphor is Civitas solis, the “Sun City” from the utopian work of the Dominican Tommaso Campanella (1623). It imagines the economic and political construction of an ideal state – one of the first social utopias. In the world of ROME, this model can be read highly ambivalently, as Reuter has always moved associatively between anarchism and traditionalism.

Stylistically, ROME draws on an unusual range on “Civitas Solis” – spanning the songwriting of Jacques Brel, Leonard Cohen, and Townes van Zandt, cold dark wave chords, and accentuated acoustic guitars. The mix of martial anthems and introspective ballads returns to numerous key moments from the band’s twenty-year history, and like all ROME albums, it primarily raises questions. Provocative questions. What will our future hold? And what does that mean for Europe? All we can do is gaze into the distance, “standing on the Western Wall.” Jerome Reuter is a “man against time,” and with him we bear witness to the storm.