Roméo Poirier, a Brussels-based musician, photographer, and life guard, began his career as a percussionist, playing military marches in Strasbourg, France, before becoming a drummer in local pop bands. Electronic music really grabbed him through a loop station, and he would go on to store those loops and his music today largely draws on resampling them over and over again. “The sound is evolving with me in parallel,” he says, “and the loops carry in their DNA all transformational stages, filled with previous tracks, sedimented.”

You’ll hear his music on labels such as Kit Records, where he shared Plage Arrière, an ode to eight Greek beaches, before moving to Manchester label Sferic for Hotel Nota. More recently, he’s signed to Jan Jelinek’s Faitiche label for Living Room, on which he explores the mysteries of music as a time-based art—not simply in the sense of duration, but the way time refracts through autobiographical experience, historical dimensions, and stages of evolution. It uses a collection of samples assembled by his father, an adventurous musician himself, and sees Poirier using his own voice in his work for the first time.

In celebration of the new album, Poirier has compiled an XLR8R podcast, filled with his favorite tracks from the past six months or so. As with his own productions, the result is an organic, fluid, free-flowing pulse that feels both nostalgic and enigmatic, with tracks that glide in and out of earshot, shifting between picturesque beauty and unsettling oddness. Press play for just over one hour of warped, free-flowing immersion.

01. What have you been up to recently?
I’ve just released an album called Living Room on Faitiche, and I’m currently presenting it live in Europe and the UK.

02. When and where did you record this mix?
I made this mix at home in Brussels, during a few evenings at the very end of summer, after coming back from a journey in the west coast of France.

03. What setup did you use?
A few digital items: a laptop, a granular module. And a few archaistic items: cigarettes and wine.

05. What can the listener expect?
Some rare French answering machine material, a crazy story in Dutch, short edits here and there, people counting, someone laughing, fishing emails being read by a non-human voice, etc.

06. How did you go about choosing the tracks you’ve included?
As I’m not a DJ, I don’t discover new music so frequently. I guess I only provide about two mixes a year. So I would say this mix gathers what I’ve been enjoying the last six months or so.

07. Where do you imagine it being listened to?
In someone else’s living room, maybe with the presence of an animal.

08. What’s next on your horizon?
I picture my horizon among cypresses, people wearing long velvet pointed shoes, eating mozzarella baked on lemon leaves, like in an Italian renaissance painting: going to play a few shows in Milan, Bologna and Florence next week, and looking forward to it!

XLR8R has now joined Mixcloud Select, meaning that to hear the podcast offline you will need to subscribe to our Select channel to listen offline, or subscribe to XLR8R+ to download the file. The move to Mixcloud Select will ensure that all the producers with music featured in our mixes get paid. You can read more about it here.

Full XLR8R+ Members can download the podcast below. If you’re not an XLR8R+ member, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Tracklisting

01. Lawrence Weiner “Une chose, deux choses, plus et vers les étoiles” (Nouvelles Scènes)
02. Heiner Goebbels “Waiting” (Nouvelles Scènes)
03. David Shea “Kuan-Yin Mirrors” (Sub Rosa)
04. Les Baxter “Fruit Of Dreams” (Capitol Records) (edit)
05. Mondrongo “Coração Pùrpura” (Brava Editions) (edit)
06. Sondre Lerche “Turns Out I’m Sentimental After All” (Roméo Poirier Rework) (PLZ)
07. Buddy Fo & His Group “People” (Lehua Records) (edit/processed)
08. Chris Dave and The Drumhedz “2n1” (Blue Note)
09. The Exposures “Collage Of Digital Passion” (Eastern Developments)
10. Sam Gendel “My <3 Sing” (Leaving Records)
11. Raymond Scott, Dorothy Collins “Stop at the Esso Sign” (Modern Harmonic) (edit)
12. Roméo Poirier “Unknown” (Unknown)
13. Andrew Pekler “Sleepless” (~scape)
14. Raymond Scott, Dorothy Collins “Look For That Hotpoint Difference” (Modern Harmonic) (edit)
15. Robert Maxwell “Strange Music” (Decca Records) (edit/processed)
16. Arve Henriksen “Blue Silk Live” (edit) (Unreleased)
17. Andrew Pekler “Live Ina Grm” (excerpt) (Unreleased)
18. Robert Ashley “Personal” (Lovely Music, Ltd.)
19. Madalyn Merkey “Archipelago” (New Images) (excerpt)
20. Sam Kidel “Disruptive Muzak” (The Death of Rave) (edit)
21. Paul DeMarinis “The Dream Advisor” (Nouvelles Scènes)
22. frere tuck “dofus” (Santé Loisirs) (edit)
23. Paul Lovens “Anselma” (Nouvelles Scènes) (edit)
24. Raymond Scott, Dorothy Collins “Miller Beer Theme Instrumental Rehearsal” (Modern Harmonic)
25. Curd Duca “Nelson” (Normal)
26. Curd Duca “Dark Swing” (Milles Plateaux)
27. Esquivel! “Latin-Esque” (RCA Victor) (edit)
28. Rodolphe Burger “Picture Music” (Dernière Bande) (edit)
29. Philippe Poirier, Stefan Schneider “Les Images” (Tal)
30. Yves Dormoy, Philippe Poirier “Analyse de la valeur” (Dernière Bande) (edit)
31. Jack Sheen “Sub Three” (SN Variations)
32. Robert Ashley & The Ensemble MAE “Hidden Similarities” (Unsounds)
33. Florian T M Zeisig “VIII” (Enmossed)
24. Jan Jelinek “Social Engineering” (Unreleased)
25. Nikolaienko “Well-degraded” (Faitiche)
26. Christian Marclay “Busy” (Nouvelles Scènes) (edit)
27. O. G. Jigg “Part II” (Earth Memory Recordings) (edit)
28. Buddy Fo & His Group “When It’s Time to Go” (Makaha)