At 1051 Magazine we have a special predilection for outsiders, those artists who are always delivering work that is difficult to classify, original and with their own unmistakable stamp.
Michael Greene, aka Fort Romeau, falls into this category with full honours.
Musician, producer and DJ born in Chester, UK, growing up in Oxfordshire before moving to Brighton where he studied music and visual arts. After graduating, he moved to London and joined electro-pop duo La Roux as part of their live band, where he stayed until 2012. It was in that year when he surprised critics and the public with Kingdom, his debut full-length, a more than remarkable work for being the first of his career.
From then on, his career has been on a geometric ascent, but this does not mean that his style has changed. He has polished himself, he has been mutating, and he has released his work mainly on the New York label Ghostly International, although the rest of the list in that respect is impressive; he has released on Live At Robert Johnson, DGTL Records, Permanent Vacation or Phantasy Sound. Add to that the founding of his own label, Cin CIn, which specialises in shared 12 “s… even for that, Michael Greene is an original.
On February 11th 2022, Fort Romeau will release his third full-length album, Beings Of Light, of which two advance singles, Ramona and Spotlights, have already been released, and now comes the third, Untitled IV, the track that will open the new album.
As with previous Fort Romeau albums, Greene’s main inspiration for Beings of Light is imagery. Specifically, a work by Steven Arnold, a protégé of Dalí’s known for constructing otherworldly tableau vivant-like set designs from found objects until his death in 1994 in the midst of the AIDS crisis. Arnold’s 1984 photograph Power of Grace (which appears as album art and gives its title to one of his songs) immediately appealed to Greene: “It is transcendent in the most powerful and direct way, imagination without material ties, elegance without riches. Imagination always trumps resources.
It’s always a pleasure to be able to listen to work like Michael Greene’s, which enriches the spirit while making us dance.
Release date, February 11th, pre order available here
