Only Things To Do In Denver: A Conversation with Roman O

I had the chance to speak with front man for popular Denver club band Lexen and talk to him about his new solo project. Roman O and Co have been keeping the music pumping and the genres shifting since Lexen first hit the mile high city. With their release Penchant for the Dramatic in 2003, they’d carved out a sound that was parts metal and parts hip hop with a style as complex as it was progressive. His latest work is different, hip hop meets gothic industrial, cutting an edge that is very fine indeed.

Wes Unruh:
I know you’re a Nine Inch Nails fan, I know you like the metal scene, but I’m wondering where you draw your hip-hop elements from, especially with the direction you’re taking the solo project. Who do you look to in that, and where do you think you’ve developed your sound that reflects off that?

Roman Only:
You know, I’ve actually always wanted to do a hip hop project. When I was younger, when I was in like middle school and junior high I was actually into a lot of different hip hop, mostly just really dumb commercial stuff.. at that age there was no way in hell my mom was going to let me listen to N.W.A. album you know, so..

But I used to love hip hop a lot, and then I got into the rock scene, I started listening to a lot of rock right around when I started going to high school hanging out with all the stoners and the dirt heads and the rockers. So I really gopt into metal, and if you’ve ever been a part of a metal crowd you know that they don’t like rap. They’re usually really hateful toward it. So I kinda just didn’t really listen to rap for a long time.

Then I did check out the Snoop Dog album Doggystyle and I really liked it a lot, I really liked the flow of his words and they way that they created rhythm and I have always found that intriguing and I had actually written poetry with that style for a long time, So I always wanted to do something where I could get really creative with my words and just do weird little twists on things vocally.

You look at the music scene on the highest level and you what you get is a shitload of hip-hop and r&b and then a nice little amount of rock music, you know, and it’s just kind of a phenomenon since, basically, since gangster rap got really popular. It’s just saturated the mainstream, you know what I mean. And I just kind of wanted to find a way to break that barrier down, you know, and kind of let people see the other side of it. You know, some people listen to a gangster rap song and all they hear is ‘this bitch did that’ and ‘we did this drive by’ and basically shit-talking but somebody who’s into hip-hop isn’t hearing that message, they’re moreso listening to how the words are laid out, you know where each syllable is and what word is rhyming with what word and how creative the wording is… so I wanted to do something where I could just totally rip off that idea of creating that crazy word phenomenon and then attach it to subject mater that has absolutely nothing to do with the what most people rap about.

WU:
Right, take that into a whole new direction. I’ve got a few questions now about a completely different area, which is how do you feel about the state of music today as far as label/not-label, major studio, is it possible to make music that people will hear all over the world without being signed, how do you feel about music in the state of technology right now?

RO:
The climate of the music industry has changed a lot in the last few years, in the last ten or fifteen years. A lot more of the artists are making it, I think now. And they’re doing it on their own. It’s not really the greatest thing to get signed anymore. I mean, in one way it is, in another way it isn’t. Most musicians get trampled by their record labels the first year they’re on. And then there are other artists like, good example: Trent Reznor who’s still pissed off at his record label, still not happy with the way their records are shown, and I think that the mainstream right now is actually pretty sad, I mean its the same music over and over and over, the same bands that sound like other bands… It’s like the next big famous band is going to sound like the last big famous band cuz we’re trying to ride that trend, so it kind of eliminates that possibility of discovering new and different styles and different sounds. I think that either way you go, if you’re trying to get signed to a major label or you’re trying to go indy and do it on your own, I mean either way it can be pretty powerful if you know what you’re doing.

You can really be successful, you can make a lot of money, you can gain a lot of popularity, and a lot of the bands that get signed now to major labels, only got signed because they went indy and because they went out there and tried to do it on their own and ended up getting offered a major contract because they did such a good job of getting their name out there that the label was confidant that the label could sell their records.

The Internet’s completely changed the music industry. You have all these artists on myspace. It’s so easy to get out there and promote yourself and connect with people on the other side of the planet and have them listen to your music where, ten years ago, it’s like ‘how do I sell a CD to somebody in France? I’m never going to meet anyone from France. I’m never gonna go to France. So it’s like there’s a big gap in the marketing technique, but now every thing’s Internet. You can sell CD’s over the Internet, you can post your music, you can share it with the world and hardly even spend a dime.

WU:
That is a massive improvement. It’s decentralized the network. You can get your music out to your fans, even if they’re in Malaysia or China or something.

RO:
Exactly. It’s actually quite amazing. If you look at our web counter.. nobody can see it but us, but we have a web counter that lets us see country by country and city by city how many people are visiting and from where, and it’s funny actually get most of our traffic from south America. Lexen does at least. I don’t know exactly how that works, but it’s pretty amazing. It’s pretty interesting to see all these hits from like Argentina or Chile, and it’s like, how the hell did these guys hear about our music you know? But it’s cool because it’s so easy to reach out to countries far far away, and find people who normally never would have heard of you, and they’re jamming your CD everyday.

WU:
And what is the track you’re debuting on the Gspot?

RO:
It’s going to be a pretty interesting track, the lyrics are pretty cool,. it’s called Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead.

WU:
Like the movie…

RO:
Yeah. It’s the latest addition to my solo project, it’s got a really hardcore hip hop beat to it but it’s also got a lot of synthesizer work, got a really down to the nitty-gritty sounding type of beat.

Be sure to check out the Gspot on Sunday, April 15th, when I and Roman O talk more about the origin of Lexen. We’ll be spinning “Am”, an early Lexen track and “Things to Do In Denver When You’re Dead” Roman’s latest solo track. Until then, check these links:

The One and Roman Only
myspace.com/romanonly

Lexen
lex3n.com
myspace.com/lexen