Romania has been one of those bands that I try to push on anyone who even remotely has similar music taste as myself. I discovered Romania in a used CD bin at some point in the mid to late 90s. At first glance I mistook it for an Associates, Tears for Fears or even Soft Cell type duo from the 80s. When I flipped the CD to the back I noticed that it was actually from 1995 and the familiar logo of Mark Robinson’s (of Unrest) TeenBeat Records. On that alone I decided to plunk down the $7.99 they were asking for the disc and couldn’t have been happier when I finally listened to it. Much like the cover suggested this was pure Synthpop/New Romantic goodness straight in the vein of O.M.D., Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Visage, Camouflage & Blancmange. While there were a handful of bands at the time that took their cues from Synthpop (The Magnetic Fields for example), none fully turned back the time a decade in doing so. Romania created an album that sounded exactly as if it was recorded in 1983 as the backdrop to some unseen John Hughes film. But not only did so in 1995, they made an album that could go toe to toe with so many those early 80s synthpop classics. Drop any track off of this album at an 80s dance party and I’m sure someone will ask “Which Tears for Fears album was this song on?” or something to that effect.

Info on Romania is pretty scarce, most of it centered to their small entry on the TeenBeat website. They were out of Washington D.C. via Hawaii but I have no clue how often they even played out or if they even did. Sadly Remodel was the only album they would ever record and release. They broke-up shortly there after (I only know this because I tried in vein to book a show with them way back when). I do know that James Noble hosts and DJs various parties in D.C. and I believe Jonathan Cook went on to write/help write the scores on a few films.

I normally wouldn’t do this but since this album is out of print and pretty difficult to track down even on file sharing programs, I thought I’d post a link to download it. Hopefully more people could unearth this little gem. Who knows, maybe this will spark some interest in re-releasing it along with maybe some B-sides and demos sitting around somewhere.

Romania - Remodel