Paul Loraine

Paul Loraine is not an easy man to pin down.  Having followed his musical mission through South London, Guernsey, Bristol and now Barcelona, his preferred style as well as his place of residence are in constant flux.  As he drops a selection of his latest favourite tracks via the Pulse podcast, we catch up with him on where he's headed next.

Paul, thanks for joining us. How are things? Where are you currently? 

Hola Pulse many thanks for having me, I’m good, I have a full belly as I just had some great food (Homemade Chicken & Mushroom Pasta bake) and now I’m watching a re-run of the new Breaking Bad series

For those of us that have yet to cross paths with your work, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?  

I’m an experimental electronic dance music producer is my answer to that, I mainly produce House and Techno but you will find released material from across all the genres of Electronic dance from me.

You grew up in London but now live in Barcelona.  Why the move to the Costa Brava? 

The honest answer to that is simply the climate- in winter 2009 I was living in Cardiff and the weather was so bleak, for example in mid November it was -14º and there was two week old snow which turned into black ice (personally, I think death is a better name).  I said to myself, 'Nope never again, this is my last winter in the UK'.

What does the scene in Barcelona offer that London does not?  

I have been really impressed with the scene here in Barca so far, you have a wide variety of genres and nights to choose from almost on a daily basis,  help!   No but seriously, you have so many types of venues here because of the fact that the sun shines 320 days of the year so the city's approach to throwing a party can be a lot more varied to that of a sweaty underground concrete room.  I mean, don’t get me wrong here, there’s nothing I like more than sweat dripping off the walls in a seedy little club where it’s going off, and for me personally I think London is one of the best cities world wide for underground clubbing like that and always will be, but here in Barcelona you have clubs based around swimming pools, clubs on the beaches, clubs on the mountain side over looking the city and of course the infamous terrace parties on hotel rooftops.  It's a lot like Ibiza in some sense and for some reason for me music sounds a little bit more interesting when it’s played outdoors.

You spent a part of your childhood in South East London. What do you make of the recent riots in those areas?  

Painful, really sore subject with me.  I’m extremely patriotic and very proud of who I am and where I was brought up, Charlton was stomping ground for me as a kid and they had it bad. I think the idiots ruined what started out to be what I believe was the right thing to do; peaceful protests.  End of the subject, honestly I could speak about this forever.

Could you tell us about your collaborative project with Nadja Lind? How do you share responsibilities?  

Well, we met via the internet, (not on a dating website) and it was more a case of a mistaken identity.  Nadja sent me a message on the book of faces [Facebook] to say thank you as I had recently done an interview with an online dance magazine and name dropped Nadja as one to watch for the future.  So I was like, hey no problem, so we got chatting and swapped some new releases we both had forthcoming and we were like, let's make some beats together!  As the conversation went on I then started to realize that what she was thanking me for wasn’t matching up with my simple name drop and then put 2 and 2 together- she had mistaken me for Mr. Phil Loraine! 
Anyway back to the music, Nadja is such a great producer, she has a unique style which I have never seen before and it still amazes me to this very day.  We do all of our work via the World Wide Web swapping live .apl packs.  It’s a really great way to work and I find it so inspiring, we have lots of tracks under our belts at this minute so the future for us is hot!  Also in case you missed it, we have written an exclusive track called Flip A Coin for this year's We Love...compilation hosted by Vitalik, which has been getting some strong press around the globe.  It's out now, so check it out!

You've put together a podcast for us – Could you tell us a little bit about the mix? What was going through your head at the time?  

I wanted to grab the people’s attention on this mix but in a very deep and dubby way.  I put a lot of thought into this podcast, well in fact it was my second attempt as I just wasn’t happy enough with the original mix.  This has I would say a nice chugging vibe to it, from start to finish it builds up and down and then again up and down, there’s are a few tracks in the mix that I think may have passed a lot of people by over the past couple of years or so as well as very upfront material, as with all my DJ sets and podcasts I have thrown a few surprises in there for good measure.

The tracklist is quite contemporary; you're clearly feeling that darker, dubby house sound that is around at the minute. Would you agree?  

It’s Paul Loraine I guess. Without wanting this to happen my music style has been labelled by the British Press as ‘A Unique Style Of Tripped Out Dub’.  Am I bothered by that? No, not at all, it makes complete sense.  Gangsta House, Hip Hop, & Trip Hop was a huge influence in my life and a lot of my samples come from those genres and with that in mind when I started producing three and a half years ago my main influences were the likes of DJ Vibe, Deadbeat, Matthew Dear, Bodycode aka Portable, Peace Division and so on, so I guess it’s just what I do and what I like the best.

You seem to relish a challenge. What's next for Paul Loraine? I feel next year is going to be a big year! 

I’m going to start working on a new project under the banner of Re:form.  It’ll be based around a lot more of a techno main room vibe and will be a live act only, no podcast, no live recorded sets.  If you want to see Re:form you have one option.  With this in mind, I’ll also be kicking off my label Rhythm Cultwhich I'm really excited about.  Rhythm Cult releases will be cuts from my live Re:form sets with each release being side A “The Cut” and with a big named remixer on the flip for side B.  Let's not over complicate things now, keep it SIMPLES!