Romie Singh’s Masters is more than just one killer 12” dub plate surrounded by lord knows what. Masters is a wonderful reminder of the bit of delightful weirdness that Romie was able to capture in a bottle, some months in Hamburg, in 1986. Masters was an early collection of proto-future Pop from someone who managed to take the mind of elite session musician, Klaus Voormann, and the studios of CAN to create something swinging wildly between next wave New Wave, and sophisticated, richly detailed dance music.
Editor’s note: Romie contacted me recently (10/9/2020) to kindly correct some of the record. All mistakes below her info are humbly all mine.
Fascinated to discover your article on me and the band, with a surprisingly positive critique. I appreciate that. Just to give some more perspective- I didn’t leave a musical career to go back to teaching! The reason I couldn’t continue with the band was CBS didn’t want to bring out our second LP as agreed in the contract. We had all the songs recorded in our Cologne studio. Our CBS handler loved them. But then he moved on before we could clinch the go ahead for the second album. We sued and lost. CBS was then bought by Sony Music and that was it.
I went on performing some of the new songs live but gradually we faded apart. Klaus was the name that gave us cuedos but nearly all the songs were the demos from the HH studio just enhanced in CAN. Hence the name Masters. Also: I got to know Holger while recording. He was a lovely friend and I sang on his tracks but he was in no way instrumental in us getting to where we got…which in fact wasn’t very far…an LP at the birth of the CD era…launched when Tracy Chapman and Paul Simon and U2 all had mega successes.
We were lost! No record company, no support. Donna Regina was born. I moved to South Africa to work and Peter went to his home in the Dortmund area (not Holland!) But a lot of your detail was accurate, insightful and well written. Thanks!
- Romie Singh, via e-mail correspondence
Romie Singh had a very short-lived musical career. A German of Indian descent, Romie appeared early on as a backup singer to songwriters like Paul Brett and wayward CAN members like Michael Karoli. Somehow, she parlayed a friendship with Holger Czukay into an actual solo career with what looked like a major label banking on a big splash. Working partly at the CAN studio and partly at home, together with fellow German musician Günther Janssen (future husband/collaborator of brilliant dream pop songstress Donna Regina) and Peter Hantke from Netherlands, together they wrote everything on this 10-song album. While they’d go on to do more music as producer, Romie would leave her music career for one in the public sector, as a teacher and a radio producer.
Everything from the cavernous electro-dub workout “Dancing to Forget” the unshakeable highlight of Masters to the brilliant proto-house of “Map of a Heart” and massively underrated/unknown downtempo tunes like “Train Trax” (some poignant lyricism in that one), all feature Pop with one foot already out of that decade. Klaus Voormann, yes that Klaus Voormann, would beef up their songs with arrangements more befitting something you’d find — like some astute Discogs reviewer mentioned — in produced works by the likes of Mr. Fingers (aka Larry Heard) and other Deep House music icons.
Not quite electro-pop, Masters holds a pretty intriguing position in between then, contemporary R&B and the taste of the “what” that was coming. Understandably, as with most things a bit too ahead of their times, the album didn’t make much of a splash and the label pulled any future album commitments. For now, it’s been quite heartening to see leftfield DJs pick and choose tracks from the album.
Truly varied, there’s something perfect about putting on this record on a warm, sunny day and letting all sorts of wayward breezes stream in. I can only imagine the chuckle Klaus must have chortled out, trying to reimagine McCartney’s “You Won’t See Me” as an electro swooner — “Lennon eat your heart out”… only to stay a while to put some gorgeous, ultra-minimal electronic touches to torch ballads like “Everything But Me”. Too brilliant to be forgotten, here’s one more for your archives.