Paradox. Seba. Manos. It doesn’t get much better than THAT.
We chatted with Paradox just before he jetted off to SAB… no doubt to captivate crowds there in part with this stunning outing of ‘Because’ and ‘Lie To Me’. (And check the new PM Radio Show at end! Blazing!)
Hi Paradox tell us what you’ve been up to of late, travelling?
Hey, yes we’ve all been pretty busy in the studio and on the road. Seba’s just been in the States and Kosovo and Nucleus and I just returned from Dimensions Festival in Croatia for Metalheadz which was great fun.
I’m off to the Island of Sardinia to perform at SunandBass Festival tomorrow so things are productive.
Soooo you’re off to Sardinia… what are you looking forward to?
I’m looking forward to everything that is SunandBass. It’s a great chance to hear all my peers work under one roof and to throw a frisbee to Randall in the sea for example.
It really is unlike any other festival.
I don’t think you can compare it to the 15k+ attendance festivals. The organisers are music lovers and that’s the main thing that impressed me since I was first booked and the ethos is still the same since its inception.
What sort of things are you playing live that are hitting the spot both for you and the crowd?
A lot of the current b-boy culture titles and a bunch of earlier Nucleus & Paradox releases go down well and I love doing them live. I like solo Alaska numbers also and all the b-boy break episodes around the 120 bpm mark.
When do you find time to get in the studio??
The studio is Monday to Friday for me as it’s my full time job for the last 20 years or so. Just like any other day job though it can be really stressful and there are days I don’t want to be in the studio at all.
How did it work that you, Seba and Robert Manos came together, when did it all come about?
Robert was already working with Sebastian before we joined forces. Robert does a lot of other stuff outside D&B so I heard a few house things and liked what I heard.
It was Seba who suggested we all work together and after that I suggested Seba team up with Kirsty Hawkshaw. Keep it in the family and all that jazz. We have a lot more unfinished material that needs work so hopefully 2016 will see more titles emerge.
I know you and Seba have worked together in the past, what do you do that’s different to what you do alone?
Working with someone else is a lot faster, I can’t stress how much quicker it is having two brains and engineers.
I seem to take forever on my own compositions. It’s the same in the studio with Nucleus, when he flies over to work It’s a chance for me to actually get out of any current groundhog day scenario I’m currently wallowing in.
The vocals on ‘Because’ sound to me to be completely instinctive, that they came from nowhere almost. This is a glorious tune. I mean people may take it for granted in a desensitised age but I don’t… the fact is that the percussion is part of the melody, the hook is amazing.
‘Because’ is full of vocal hooks and groove locks within the beats. I can do drum grooves all day long blindfolded but songwriting is difficult and to see Robert sit down with a pad and pen and conjure verses with ease is pretty cool.
When Sebastian and I wrote ‘Because’ we had Robert in mind and in the early stage crooned out-of-tune over it imagining Robert taking over. We knew it would fit him like a glove.
‘Because’ has the retro-sound of our earlier Seba & Paradox compositions. It’s a sweet track and we all love it.
And the vibe of ‘Lie to Me’, it takes me away, it gets me completely distracted. It’s ‘less is more’, this tune.
Robert’s a heartbreaker.
I think it’s easy for him to write about his own adventures in our music.
With ‘Because’ and ‘Lie To Me’ you can hear the Seba and Paradox identities gel. It’s the amalgamation of sound and I like that. Robert just takes it away and that’s what a great vocalist will do: own the track.
The release was supposed to come out earlier but our distributor suddenly folded and the black hole that is Record Store Day just made everything crawl along like a snail. We changed the tracks a lot during the delays so it worked out better in the end.
Got to ask would you consider visuals for these, as in a video? Or is the music enough. To create images.
We would had liked to do a video for ‘Because’ as it’s the perfect track for one in my opinion, but as we all live in separate countries it’s something we didn’t finalise.
We’ve done videos in the past and hopefully we’ll do it again next year.
How is the music being done, you doing a nice pressing? How can people get it?
We are all vinyl junkies at the end of the day so a physical product is paramount. I couldn’t just do invisible digital releases. If I had no choice I’d probably fold my labels. No offence to the invisible labels out there but I guess I’m old skool and I still love getting the present in the hand.
‘Because’/’Lie To Me’ is my 162nd 12” and I still look forward to test presses like an Xmas present.
At the moment the vinyl turnaround is four months from start to finish so it’s purely a waiting game, it’s infuriating but it’s standard analogue life now.
You can get the products from the official label store at Paradox store along from stores like Juno and Redeye and so forth.
What tune has occurred to you lately where you think ‘that tune’s amazing, where did it come from?’
Well I’m going to go by today’s playlist and this morning I listened to Skanna’s ‘Find Me’ and wished I’d written that so that’s quite fitting I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIeBiGvAPDI
OK, any last things you want people to know about?
Next month’s movements consists of a brand new Nucleus & Paradox 12” on Esoteric mid October, another Paradox Music release late October, a Seba 12” on Secret Operations late October plus Nucleus / Paradox shows on the 24th and 30th of October in Austria and Belgium.
PM030 Paradox Music Vol.19 Radio Show
