Pariah – ‘Detroit Falls’

It might still be Summer in London, but some of the most affecting, interesting music being made in the city right now comes courtesy of Pariah, an artist emerging in the rain-swept space between classic house and 2step, the dusty grooves of J Dilla and Burial’s night bus jams. His Safehouses EP will be released on R&S this August.

R&S, for the uninitiated, is a Belgian label that’s been responsible for a more than healthy amount of electronic music history, including the release of Aphex Twin’s earliest, and for my money best, work. They’ve recently been reinventing themselves, signing up some of the brightest stars from the fringes of the UK’s ever-uncategorisable dance scene in James Blake, Space Dimension Controller, and of course Pariah.

Born Arthur Cayzer, Pariah owes a debt to Burial; in the Scot’s own words, the Untrue album made an emotional impact on him unlike any other. But unlike some artists, his music isn’t simply an adaptation of that twilight 2step template that Burial made his own; Safehouses stretches its wings way beyond that, with rattling 808 and woodblock rhythms, shuddering bass-hits and subtly treated soul vocals. And that’s only its opening track, the nebulous, incredibly arranged ‘Slump’, one of the slinkiest dancefloor cuts of the year.

Safehouses continues with the stunning ‘Prism’, before rolling through tracks that touch on classic techno and electro, live drum breaks that betray Pariah’s penchant for hardcore, and a mournful ambient closer. We got in touch to talk about nostalgia, “sad music” and the terrifying concept of safe houses that informs this brilliant release.

“Untrue was definitely the catalyst that got me off my arse: it made me get myself a Macbook Pro and a copy of Logic Express.”

Who is Pariah? Introduce yourself to the uninitiated.

“There’s not a whole bunch to tell really. I’m Arthur, I’m 22, originally from Scotland but I’ve been living in London for the past four years or so. By day I study English at uni and in my spare time I like making beats and hanging out with my friends.”

How did you get start making music, and what were your early inspirations?

“I started producing in the last few months of 2008 but I played in several bands, most of them appalling before then. I guess it was after getting really into Burial’s music that I decided to start producing. I mean, I’d wanted to produce ever since fucking about on Logic at school when I was about 15 or 16 but I didn’t ever have any equipment. Untrue was definitely the catalyst that got me off my arse: it made me get myself a Macbook Pro and a copy of Logic Express.”

Tell us about Safehouses - its genesis, the ideas behind it, etc.

“Well, originally, my second release was only supposed to be a single. This time last summer, the only tunes I had finished were ‘Orpheus’ and ‘Detroit Falls’. I wasn’t confident in myself as a producer and I was unsure which direction I wanted to go in. However as I wrote more and more, I began to hear a degree of continuity between the tunes no matter how much they varied stylistically in terms of tempo or genre, though I don’t really lumping things into genres. Therefore, for me, it just felt right to do something a little bit bigger than a single and I feel that this EP acts nicely as a showcase of a range of different styles that still, hopefully, sound like the work of one producer.”

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.