- Anthems for a future Goa.
- Asked why, after years DJing and running Love On The Rocks, Paramida only recently started producing, she explained how she kept giving the artists who sent her demos similar notes. "Imagine it's 1992, you are at a rave in Goa on the beach. It's 8 AM, what's the track playing? Make that track," she would tell them. "After a while I realized that with the time I spend on guiding other artists to make that sound, I could spend [that time] trying myself."
Paramida's sophomore EP, Moonrise VII takes this mandate seriously. Last year's Dream Ritual EP had plenty of stargazing, heart-on-sleeve motifs, but here she goes full throttle. The Panorama Bar resident hits pitch-perfect trance revivalism on the 12-inch's two clubier tracks, before finishing with a trip away from the subcontinent with a slice of ambient house.
If you find yourself playing a sunrise set on the Arabian Sea, it'll be a toss-up between "Space Ride" or "Sailor Moon House." Both balance driving basslines with bubbling trance arpeggios, but Paramida isn't one to get too sappy in the smoking area. On "Sailor Moon House," there's down-to-brass-tacks 303 that sharpens the otherwise soft sampled beach sounds. On "Space Ride," built around SYT's sparkling 1995 classic "Drift" (a track that has certainly already soundtracked its fair share of sunrises), she adds metallic rave stabs to lend the track some edge, a toughness that keeps both tracks from lapsing into '90s pastiche. The EP's closer, "33," works with Italian dream house references, as swelling synths and lapping hand drums are coated with a vocal intoning "paradise."
While "33" is a killer track, it doesn't quite capture what I see as the ethos underlying the other two. Paramida has christened herself "Berlin's most hated." It's a provocative moniker, but one that feels counterintuitive given how beautiful the music she makes, releases and plays. But she's getting at something deeper within her DIY approach to dance music. Whether it is the anime referencing cover art or her use of the kitschiest parts of the '90s (cough, the bird call and ocean wave samples on "Sailor Moon House"), Paramida is unapologetically herself. Moonrise VII is the epitome of both her aesthetic and attitude, proving that even when she's working a sense of humour, she pulls it off with a punk bravado often missing from this corner of clubland.
Tracklist01. Sailor Moon House
02. Space Ride
03. 33