*Photo by Sergio Gonzales
We touch base with Paula Tape on a rare day off and talk about post-Pinochet Chile, her musical history and why she couldn’t take a break from touring.
Paula Tape, like the rest of Europe, is sweating when I call her up at home in Milan. Temperatures touching the 40 degree celsius mark has brought most of the continent to its knees. “You’re sweating all the time and your clothes are completely wet, but I like summer, I like it“…
Born and raised in Chile, Paula is “from a hot country” and used to a bit of heat, but this is a different type of heat. “It’s dry” in Chile, she explains. It’s particularly bad in Paula’s adopted home town of Milan, where it feels like the city is “burning,” but she still seems content, her voice lilting through smiles as she enjoys a rare day off.
“Today’s my Friday at home and it’s always so nice,” she explains. “Tonight I will have dinner at home with some friends, which is something new for me.” She’s never had much time for quotidian indulgences like these in the past with a busy touring schedule and musical commitments dominating her time since moving to Europe.
Often playing three to four times a week, not including residencies and her radio shows like that for the BBC, Paula Tape has been an abominable force on the DJ circuit. Combined with her reserved, yet poignant releases like Acid Latino and Astroturismo, she has become a sought after selector for a sound that bridges a gap between that 90’s balearic aesthetic and contemporary House and Techno.
In recent years however, she’s had to cut back for personal health reasons and it’s given her more time to settle into the Italian city. She’s recently moved into a new studio and has started making her “own friends”. It’s not something she’s been able to do much of since moving to Europe, but it’s something that’s been necessary on her road to recovery.
She considers Milan her “home base” today, a place where she doesn’t have to live out of her suitcase. It’s a place where she can “re-organise (her) ideas,” and with more days free she can finally start making a life for herself away from the DJing and constant touring.
If you’re staying in Milan, do you have residency anywhere?
I haven’t had a residency since 2019. It’s a small city so there aren’t that many clubs left after the pandemic, but I have the feeling something is happening again. There is a new club called Duro which looks really nice, though. I would like to do something there in the future, maybe my Hola Mundo parties.
Since I got my documents to travel without worry, I play mostly outside of Italy.
Since moving to Milan, have you felt the influence of Italo Disco?
Not so much. The influence comes from living in Italy. Here are record shops with records you can’t find in other places. I can find music that is made and produced here, more easily than in other countries.
Italy has such a big history because of the cosmic scene. Digging in record shops when I arrived, I found so many good records because of that influence, because Milan is so close to where that cosmic sound came from in Lombardi.
Your sound as a DJ has some sympathy with that Italo sound. While not directly referencing it, there are touchstones to the kind of balearic 90’s sound of your sets.
Yes, exactly. I remember a couple of years ago people would tell me I play Italo Disco. I had to explain that I’m not playing Italo Disco. Just because it’s a heavy synthesiser with an arpeggitator, it doesn’t have to be Italo Disco. It can be a progressive House track from ‘94. I don’t want people to think I’m playing a genre. The music I play the most is from the 90’s and has a lot of influences from many other genres.
What usually draws to a record today?
I really like when you can hear the analogue stuff. It has a different sound.
There is something raw about that sound.
Yes, but also warm at the same time. I’m always looking for that warmness. I like the originality, because I feel that producers were trying new stuff, different formulas and sounds. I also find that I like the use of percussion in those tracks. It could be something like Techno and raw, but there’s this percussion in the background that works beautifully.
I’m about that balance between the sound that can be very heavy and dramatic, but at the same time find a rhythm with the percussion and the drums. I’m also a fan of the use of samples in the 90’s; they didn’t care about copyright, they just used it. It made so many records sound so fresh. It was about freedom and a very playful moment for producers.
Were those kinds of records easy to find in Chile when you were starting out?
It was very hard. Only if you have a connection with a record shop, but I was too scared to go into those when growing up. There was maybe one record shop and for digging, there was a market, but it was mainly Cumbia. If it was electronic, it would be a terrible Euro House.
Now it’s different, even at that market.
Back when Paula was building her own musical identity in her youth, Chile was still coming out of a dictatorship. Pinochet’s government had crushed any alternative culture, as any recorded music outside of “folk music and political statements” was outlawed. And with a “curfew” that existed “for many years” it stifled any semblance of a club culture.
Paula had been shaping her own musical identity in lieu of any cultural movement on her own terms. As a young girl, she had been “obsessed with instruments” and after trying “every instrument” in the pop music canon, with “no success” Paula found an innate rhythm behind a drum-kit.
As she started moving into her teenage years electronic music naturally had started to make an impression too, shaped by the overall sound of the time. She had been trying to “do so many things with bands that didn’t work,” in the past and turned to electronic music in an attempt to produce music on her own.
DJing was an obvious progression from there, but due to a universal economic strain in Chile, records and turntables were mostly unobtainable for a newcomer. She found work at an “after-hours” club and it’s there where she first touched a set of turntables. With her inherent nature for rhythm, she took the decks.
Between learning her craft and being exposed to DJs like Riccardo Villaloboss through her work, DJing became a serious musical outlet for her. “Little by little, I built my thing,” though practise at the after-hours and some help from friends. With a “few records that were very precious,” and aided by digital explosion in the early 2000’s Paula set in motion a career.
When and how did electronic music start informing your musical tastes?
It was just organic. It started in Chile when I was teenager, and I would attend clubs with my older friends. It was the 90’s, so all the music I listened to had something related to electronic music. I never stopped playing drums, even during the time I worked at the after-hours.
Do you still play drums today?
I still do, but I’m out of practice because I don’t have a band.
Drummers make excellent producers. Paula puts that down to a “different timing” that drummers possess. She had found a natural capacity for drums in her “coordination” from the first moment she sat behind a drum kit.
It’s an aptitude she only started applying to her own productions since 2018. After three EPs and singles like Panamericana and remixes for the likes of TEED, she has established herself as an artist through labels like Rhythm Section International, Tigersushi and Future Classic.
Since her first release, Agua Congas, Paula’s has crafted a sound that thrives in the Latin persuasive rhythms and analogue synths from the 80’s and early 90’s. Arpeggiated keys bounce between synthetic congas and claps refusing to find the strict measure of a metre. Often, you’ll find Paula’s voice if not singing a line, adding to the percussion of the track.
There’s a musicality that surpasses functionality, playing in the background like a sunset on an Ibizan beach.
You said you’ve moved into a new studio in Milan. Are you working on anything now?
I just got this studio in late December. It’s a shared studio and it’s my first studio in Italy. Before that I had my studio in my room, which wasn’t always the most comfortable. I’m a bit of a maniac, so I needed to get everything in order to start working. Now everything is set in the studio. I have a few projects I’m working on and I have a new EP that should be coming out this year.
With my touring schedule it has been difficult to get into the studio.
I was going to ask about your reserved output. Was that because touring took up so much of your time?
That is one of the reasons and the other is that I got sick. I had a burnout. It was the end of the pandemic and only in the last year have I gotten better. It took me two years to recover. I did the last EP, Acid Latino during this period.
Did the thought ever cross your mind to just stop completely during this time?
The thing is I would love to stop for one or two months, but I can’t afford that. I’m not Italian, I don’t have residency yet, so everything is different for me. I just have to keep going while at the same time trying to get better with a lot of therapy.
To adapt to this situation Paula has had to cut down on her touring schedule. She tries to have at least one Friday every other week like this one, but even with that break her schedule is still very demanding. Through therapy, exercise (“like an old grandma”) and cutting down on some of her commitments, she’s getting better, but she admits that she’ll never completely be on top of it.
In the context of the clubbing environment where the sheer energy from the sound system and the throng of public is tangible, it’s still not without its challenges. “For other people that haven’t experienced this stuff it could be dangerous, but in my case I’ve been dealing with depression my whole life.” Paula knows now what to expect and to combat during her “upside-down” periods and seems to be able to manage this “very tricky” condition better than most.
Paula feels “it’s important to talk about this” and hasn’t been shy about sharing some of her experiences. Between her reduced schedule and making time for new friends, Paula has also found time to work on new music and it seems the creative outlet has also been therapeutic.
She is keen to release this new EP, the first work that has been made during a time of better health. It’s more of a “clubby” work in which she is “trying to find her shape in electronic music for the club.”
Am I right in thinking that the Acid Latino record was that first step to that more clubby sound?
Yes, it’s me trying to find another dimension to my sound that is not related to stuff I would do in bands, which was more songs than tracks.
When I wrote Acid Latino though I was one hundred percent with my health so it’s not exactly where I want to be. I’m happy because I finished something when I was ill. Now that I feel better, I’m really pushing. I’m very happy!
Is it about bringing your sound as a DJ and a producer closer together?
Yes, I’m playing these new tracks a lot already, which is something new. I’m a DJ and I want to play my own stuff. I asked myself ; why don’t I play my own stuff? There had to be something wrong with what I was doing. With time and studying production, it’s just going to be a matter of time.
That’s why I’m happy with this new studio. I have a different flow and it’s pushing me to try different things.
Paula sounds very excited about this new chapter. She goes into some detail about some of her other projects too, projects that are still in their infancy and not quite ready to share with the public. They seem to tap into yet another side of her vast musical inclinations and these seem like very exciting future prospects for her as an artist, perhaps even opening her up to entirely new audiences.
For now, the production is only something she can pick up during her spare time really as touring and getting better takes precedence. After a trip to the Netherlands she returns to Jaeger for her next visit.
She’s surprised when I say this her fourth time at Jaeger, but by now she feels “comfortable” at Jaeger she admits and she is happy to let the night dictate where her set might go. “I like to keep it a surprise for myself.”
You want to keep it in a moment.
Yes. I feel at home. I will try one of the new tracks from the upcoming EP, because the sound system is so good. I want to improvise, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be prepared.
words: Mischa Mathys