Somehow, Paul White freaks Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax (Don’t Do It)” into one of the funkiest pieces of music you’ll hear all year and the Internet overlooks it. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Dilla’s influence has long been a contagion in LA and Detroit, but it’s been fascinating and rewarding to watch his technique applied by blunted UK beatmakers. While many of James Yancey’s American imitators gravitated towards his love of the soul loop, Young Montana, Hudson Mohawke, and Paul White have mirrored his restless impulse to grab everything from Dionne Warwick, to weird electro, to Men Without Hats, chopping them into and reconstituting them into something raw and fresh.
A producer who uses the word “elevator” instead of “lift,” may have played the Frankie loop for laughs. Instead White shows that he can flip anything – though he’d already proven that on this year’s slow-growing Swedish sampledelic workout, Paul White and the Purple Brain, which was released on Stones Throw subsidiary Now-Again. Using his own drums and synths to enhance a young Jacob Moogberg’s keyboard work, on “Goes to Hollywood,” White creates something hypnotic enough to lull you into kidnapping a Malaysian head of state.
He’s making “And Nico/Goes to Hollywood” available in the pay what you want model at his Bandcamp site. The limited 350 press run is already sold-out, but according to the man himself, “the download money goes straight to Paul White (once he’s paid off his corporate overlords) and is quickly spent on new records, which are then sampled and given back to you. So it’s a form of recycling your money, rather than spending it exactly.” Obey my dog.
Download:
MP3: Paul White-“Goes to Hollywood”
MP3: Paul White-“Ancient Treasure”
