Live Review: No Rome - Peckham Audio, London 08/09/2023
It’s Friday night at Peckham Audio and Guendoline Rome Viray Gomez better known as No Rome is gearing up to step onto a London stage for the first time since before the pandemic.
The Dirty Hit artist describes himself as a sound designer who thinks about his music in terms of texture and layers. This comes across very clearly in a live audience, every distorted guitar feels considered and the glitching electronics are positioned with purpose. Overall his self-professed ‘shoegaze R&B’ is cool and the perfect refreshment on a hot sticky night in Peckham.
The venue is intimate and the staging clean, just two sets of decks illuminated by fluorescent purple. It feels like you’re in the studio with him and watching the creative process take off. Live he really comes into himself and there is an energy in his performance that you might not expect when listening to his chillwavey tracks with your headphones in. It’s easy to get swept up and he has the crammed venue moving from the get go with track All Up in My Head.
The audience is a laid back but clearly committed fan base, and Rome seems thrilled and genuinely surprised to have the audience recite lyrics to favourites like Seventeen and Pink. When the set is over we are begging for an encore and he delivers, bounding back onto the stage with an energetic rendition of his debut collaboration with the 1975 - Narcissist.
Words by Romey Kinsella
Photography by Romey Kinsella
