Paul White

Mary Anne Hobbs - BBC Radio 1 - 'Sugar Free Airlines' 3 June 2009
Mary Anne Hobbs - BBC Radio 1 - 'Alien Nature' 12 May 2009
Huw Stephens - BBC Radio 1 - 'Alien Nature' 4 April 2009
Rob Da Bank - BBC Radio 1 - 'Time Wars' 1 June 2009
Rob Da Bank - BBC Radio 1 - 'City Bright Lights' 25 May 2009
Rob Da Bank - BBC Radio 1 - 'Alien Nature' 25 May 2009
Mary Anne Hobbs - BBC Radio 1 - 'We Want It All' 24 September 2008
Mary Anne Hobbs - BBC Radio 1 - 'We Want It All' 3 September 2008
Mary Anne Hobbs - BBC Radio 1 - 'For You and For Me' 27 August 2008
Gilles Peterson - BBC Radio 1 - 'The Dragon Fly' 8 November 2007
Benji B - BBC Radio 1 / BBC 1xtra - 'Trust'
Benji B - BBC Radio 1 / BBC 1xtra - 'Lolita' - 13 June 2013
Benji B - BBC Radio 1 / BBC 1xtra - 'Divining Rod' - 20 June 2013
Benji B - BBC Radio 1 / BBC 1xtra - 'Street Lights ft Danny Brown' 20 June 2013
Benji B - BBC Radio 1 / BBC 1xtra - 'Divining Rod' - 27 June 2013
Benji B - BBC Radio 1 - 'Lolita' - 11 July 2013
Benji B - BBC 1xtra- 'The Dragon Fly' 2 November 2007
Benji B - BBC 1xtra- 'For You And For Me' 29 September 2008
Benji B - BBC 1xtra- 'For You And For Me' 22 September 2008
Benji B - BBC 1xtra- 'My Guitar Whales' - 28 March 2010
Benji B - BBC 1xtra- 'The Bright Future' - 7 March 2010
Benji B - BBC 1xtra- 'Floating Free' - 22 June 2009
Benji B - BBC 1xtra- 'Time Wars' - 22 June 2009
Benji B - BBC 1xtra- 'Composers Comeback' - 17 April 2009
Benji B - BBC 1xtra- 'Composers Comeback' - 10 April 2009
Benji B - BBC 1xtra- 'Cheese Special and a Draw' - 14 March 2009
Nick Luscombe - BBC Radio 3 - 'Seagull Conscience' - 27 July 2013
Tom Ravenscroft - BBC 6Music - 'The Doldrums' x 2
Tom Ravenscroft - BBC 6Music - 'Trust'
Tom Ravenscroft - BBC 6Music - 'One of Life's Guilty Pleasures' x 2
Tom Ravenscroft - BBC 6Music - 'Rotten Apples'
Huey Morgan - BBC 6Music - The Doldrums
Tom Ravenscroft - BBC 6Music - 'Watch The Ants' - 14 June 2013
Tom Ravenscroft - BBC 6Music - 'Watch The Ants' - 5 July 2013
Alexander Nut - Rinse FM - 'Get Your Head Round This ft Trim' - 15 June 2013
Rinse FM 'Get Your Head Round This' ft. Trim added to daytime rotation July/August 2013
The Goods / Scott C - CKUT 90.3 Montreal - 'For You and For Me' 8 September 2008
Anthony Valdez - KCRW Playlist - 'African New Wave'
Innamissions - KUCI FM, California - 'Ancient Treasure' 29 March 2012
Innamissions - KUCI FM, California - 'Punch Drummer' 29 June 2009 - Significant radio airplay in the UK and overseas

Instrumental hip hop is in the ascendant again due to some serious additons to the canon from producers like Flying Lotus and Jneiro Jarel. Paul White is a south London library composer who spends his evenings cooking beats from a similar gumbo pot to Jarel; creating densely psychedelic workouts that rarely run over two minutes. Drawing on the heavy prog, Arabic and soundtrack obscurities that colour the average Gaslamp Killer set, White flips dextrously from simple snapping drums on 'Alien Nature' to Boards of Canada esoterica on 'Burnt By the Sun'. - Uncut Magazine

The art of sampling may have taken knocks from dunderheaded mashup merchants on the one hand and complex legal issues on the other, but from Kanye West through Demdike Stare to the deeper caverns of the underground, the culture of cut and paste is alive and well. Paul White, like labelmate Bullion, is a case in point, constantly innovating and elaborating even as he stays true to the principles of hip-hop. He might be a UK counterpoint to Gaslamp Killer, with their shared love of Prog and thick rhythmic layering, but where the latter's collages are wild, fuzzed out, rockist, Paul White's are poised and elegant as they groove onwards.

This album adds vocalists to White's pre-existing beats. They're mainly dexterous US rappers but there also Lancastrian folk singer Nancy Elizabeth's giggly reading of Lewis Carroll. What could have ended up sounding like sketches are now completed pieces, full of suspense, flashback, refrains and other temporal tricks. Snippets of YMO and Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band cut into Afro jazz,funk and psych pop shape the music's wry, even wistful character, but White's embrace of hi-res technology gives him the means to dissolve his retro sources into something intoxicatingly new. - The Wire Magazine

The untimely death in 2006 of legendary producer J Dilla left a void in the global hip hop community. Since then, his influence has continued to spread, and now underpins a growing beat-tape scene in the UK. Central to that scene is 26-year old London-based beatmaker, Paul White, who embodies all that is good about a new generation of producers who cite jazz, funk, rock and electronica - alongside hip-hop - as their influences. "To be honest, watching skate vidseos formed a massive part of my education," Paul explains. "They exposed me to everything from punk to funk, and that's how I eventually got into hip-hop."

Having cut his teeth making animation soundtracks for Channel 4, it's perhaps unsurprising that Paul's first release on the new label One-Handed Music, 'Dragonfly', takes you on a dizzying cinematic journey. "I'd describe my style as visual," he muses. "I've always learned music side by side wiht art. Whatever I do, I try to paint a picture in my head."

A chance meeting with label boss (and manager of Stones Throw's European operations) Alex Robinson proved to be a turning point. "I'm a massive Madlib nut so for my beats to land in Alex's hands was so lucky. He was able to get my stuff out there and introduce me to the right people."

With airplay from the likes of Gilles Peterson and invitations to remix the likes of Democustico and Dilla's old Detroit pals Frank 'n' Dank, Paul Whtie could be forgiven for letting it all go to his head. But the south Londoner prefers to focus on working in his attic studio in Lewisham. "I'm at my happiest making music. I'm just grateful," he says, grinning. With beats like these, so are we." - Dazed & Confused

Strange dreams and weird days. Paul White has had both in the two years since "The Strange Dreams of Paul White" anointed him at the top of the churning pile of producers distilling the essence of J Dilla. You'd have feverish nightmares too if every review you read of your work lashed you with favorable but unfair comparisons to the deified "Donuts" maker.

Indeed, White's formal debut was certainly indebted to the late Detroit producer, but it also displayed a deep groove of its own, slanting to eerie psychedelic guitars, flying-saucer synthesizers, "The Warriors" samples, and riffs on "21st Century Schizoid Man" so stellar that they could make Kanye turn Crimson.

Hailed in his native England and in the States, White earned a one-off deal with locally based Now Again. Flipping samples from little-known Eastern-inspired Swedish psych-rock guru S.T. Mikael to demented means, White displayed a versatility that allowed him to ditch the Dilla contrasts.

His third album, "Rapping with Paul White" finds White appealing to his hip-hop roots, enlisting a litany of underground stars ranging from Stones Throw's Guilty Simpson to Fools Gold hybrid Danny Brown, to lesser known English MC's. It firmly establishes him as one of the finest producers in any genre. The music is inscrutable -- the raw manifestation of hip-hop's post modern mission, atomizing the past and repackaging it into newly birthed nuclear components. A mixture of guest spots and his own wild style instrumental suites, one of the album's highlights arrives on the Homeboy Sandman-aided "A Weird Day."

Download: Paul White ft. Homeboy Sandman-"A Weird Day" [MP3]

The latest signee to Stones Throw, the Queens-bred Sandman spins a surreal and whimsical tale of a trip to London, where he arrives at Heathrow in a pea coat bumping Paul White on repeat, visits the currency exchange to be burned on the poor conversion rate, and ends up being baffled by the metric system and the cramped conditions of the London underground. As always, Sandman raps with his predatory mongoose flow and uses the word "lift" instead of "elevator." Bonus points for cultural understanding.
- LA Times

Paul White is a very common name. The most prominent Paul Whites make up a small club: one was a twentieth-century cardiologist, another the news director of CBS during World War II, a third worked as a missionary and was known as the “Jungle Doctor,” a few more are sports stars, among others. Paul White, the south London-based producer of often lilting and manic beats, is an outlier among other noteworthy Paul Whites, mostly because of his profession but also because he seems to choose obscurity over recognition.

White selected a cast of MCs to populate the vocal portion of his latest full-length project Rapping With Paul White, laying the lyrical musings of Detroit natives like Marv Won and Guilty Simpson and fellow Londoners Tranqill and Jehst. Their voices don’t sit atop the beats White crafted so much as alongside them, because White’s music is undeniably attention-grabbing. Crowded with goofy samples, a jangle of nearly ambient noises and layers of sound that come and go, White’s music never lets guest artists take over a song; during “Rotten Apples,” Tranqill’s high and throaty voice is overpowered by a sound like a saw cutting through the track, its powerchord-ish whine building and dying away.

White’s beats open macho, paranoid ghetto-blasting raps to a new audience drawn in by White’s forward-thinking sound-clashing. His is the hip-hop of the future, a not entirely graceful effort to marry tribal music with hints of electronic video game melodies, haunting Middle Eastern chants and moments of jazz in sometimes manic, sometimes thoughtful rhythms. White isn’t one to smooth together different influences; rather, he lets them coexist in merry cacophony, resulting in tracks like “One Of Life’s Pleasures.” Between samples from Rick Wakeman’s epic ballad The Myths And Legends Of King Arthur And The Knights Of The Round Table the collapsing trill of a synth, and a stop-and-go beat, Danny Brown delivers off-color lines about sloppily seducing immigrants, skinny jeans, and OD-ing that would never reach too far from Detroit without the goofy, far-reaching manic flavor of White’s influence.

Sampling a verse from a ridiculous 1970s ballad like Myths And Legends is a staple of the humor with which White splices his songs. One sample at the beginning of “A Weird Day” sounds suspiciously like Chuckie from the 1990s kiddie TV show Rugrats, and another in “The Doldrums” could only be lifted from a passage of Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth read aloud. Rapping With Paul White is part Afrobeat and/or ambient instrumental hip-hop, part energetic and demented rap, and part scavenger hunt of all the painfully obscure samples that sprinkle through White’s beats.

Folk singer Nancy Elizabeth provides the bulk of the feminine touch on Rapping With Paul White in the closing track “Wiley Walruses.” A little twee, a little woozy, and entirely enchanting, her poem rises and falls above White’s ebbing ambient backdrop, making certain words stand out more than others: “cold,” crawl,” “cucumbers,” “tedious bloomers,” “simple,” “porcupine,” “much remains,” “lingering.” Like other songs on White’s album, the lyrics never control or determine the song, but become a part of the environment White created. - CMJ

London-based hip-hop producer Paul White teams up with Stones Throw emcee Homeboy Sandman for his spacey new track, Find A Way. The track is off White’s upcoming EP Watch The Ants, due out July 29 via One-Handed Music.

In Find A Way, the Queens-bred rapper glides over thumping percussion and free-falling synths as he delivers some thoughtful yet playful lyrics about everyday angst while vouching for self-discovery: “Perfect takes practice/Practice takes passion/I get a lot emails about wack shit/I don’t get too many emails about action,” he raps apathetically with an irresistible flow. Matched with clever wordplay, the song is as wistful as its bittersweet hook. Listen to Find A Way below. - CMJ

Another stand-out remix from the just-released Ghostly compilation, The Horizon Line/Ghostly By Night, Paul White's version of Mux Mool's "Wolf Tone Symphony" ups the original's hip-hop vibe quite a bit. In fact, you'd almost expect the track title to come with an "(Instrumental)" tag; the shuffling rhythm of White's reworked beat sounds is dying to be rhymed over. Only vocal samples are present, however, but White properly fills in the available space with enough melodic synth work to make up for "Symphony"'s lack of fiery cadence. - XLR8R

A collection of tunes from a decently long list of innovative and unique labels, the Label Love compilation is certainly one of the more worthwhile free downloads to hit the world wide web in recent days. Each of the release's 14 tracks were hand-picked by their respective label heads, including those of labels Bastard Jazz, ESL, Plug Research, Fania, Now Again, Tru Thoughts, and Ubiquity. On the sounds and intent of the compilation, the press release states, "Label Love consists of nostalgic classics, fresh unreleased gems, and other dope selections with the goal of expanding minds to new styles, vibrations, and colors." Download the whole thing here, and check out the tracklist below.

1. Quantic Presenta Flowering Inferno - Dog With A Rope [Tru Thoughts]
2. Kako & Orchestra, Vocals by Azuquita - Shingaling Shingaling [Fania]
3. Shawn Lee and Bing Ji Ling - Who Are You [Ubiquity]
4. Paul White - Ancient Treasure [Now Again]
5. Shafiq Husayn feat. Bilal - Cheeba (Nottz Remix) [Plug Research]
6. Ancient Astronauts - Put Em Up [ESL]
7. Mophono's Halftone Society - Bumps [Bastard Jazz]
8. Belleruche - 56% Proof [Tru Thoughts]
9. Nickodemus - 2 Sips and Magic (Second Sky / Thomas Blondet Remix) [ESL]
10. Markolino Dimond con Frankie Dante - Sabroson [Fania]
11. DJ Center - Center's Groove (Captain Planet Remix) [Bastard Jazz]
12. Dimlite - Can't Get Close To Those (Afterlude) [Now Again]
13. Twilight - Dance With Me [Ubiquity]
14. Quadron - Average Fruit [Plug Research] - XLR8R

A collection of tunes from a decently long list of innovative and unique labels, the Label Love compilation is certainly one of the more worthwhile free downloads to hit the world wide web in recent days. Each of the release's 14 tracks were hand-picked by their respective label heads, including those of labels Bastard Jazz, ESL, Plug Research, Fania, Now Again, Tru Thoughts, and Ubiquity. On the sounds and intent of the compilation, the press release states, "Label Love consists of nostalgic classics, fresh unreleased gems, and other dope selections with the goal of expanding minds to new styles, vibrations, and colors." Download the whole thing here, and check out the tracklist below.

1. Quantic Presenta Flowering Inferno - Dog With A Rope [Tru Thoughts]
2. Kako & Orchestra, Vocals by Azuquita - Shingaling Shingaling [Fania]
3. Shawn Lee and Bing Ji Ling - Who Are You [Ubiquity]
4. Paul White - Ancient Treasure [Now Again]
5. Shafiq Husayn feat. Bilal - Cheeba (Nottz Remix) [Plug Research]
6. Ancient Astronauts - Put Em Up [ESL]
7. Mophono's Halftone Society - Bumps [Bastard Jazz]
8. Belleruche - 56% Proof [Tru Thoughts]
9. Nickodemus - 2 Sips and Magic (Second Sky / Thomas Blondet Remix) [ESL]
10. Markolino Dimond con Frankie Dante - Sabroson [Fania]
11. DJ Center - Center's Groove (Captain Planet Remix) [Bastard Jazz]
12. Dimlite - Can't Get Close To Those (Afterlude) [Now Again]
13. Twilight - Dance With Me [Ubiquity]
14. Quadron - Average Fruit [Plug Research] - XLR8R

The first thing you need to know about this mix is that it is 34 tracks long. The second thing you need to know is that it is done by Paul White, who seems to be a master at creating fuzzed out weirdness that rappers like Danny Brown are totally comfortable jumping on. This mix, while featuring a whole lot of originals from White, also gives a good window into what he’s stoked on. It’s no surprise that a lot of it has a similar layered and baked (in a stony way) vibe. Tame Impala’s “Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind” pops up here as well, proving that it’s a lasting staple for everyone from rappers in Huntsville to bedroom psych blazers like White. Paul White’s Rapping with Paul White is out right now.

Download: Paul White’s FADER Mix
http://soundcloud.com/fadermedia/paul-white-fader-mix-mp3

1. Paul White – No Love To Go Round
2. Paul White – Hurry
3. Paul White – Watch The Ants
4. Hi There Interlude
5. Clifford Coulter – Mr. Peabody
5. The United States Of America – The American Metaphysical Circus
6. Keith Hudson – Hunting
7. Urszula Dudziak – Cuckoo’s Nest
8. Paul White – I Saw A World Interlude
9. Tame Impala – Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind?
10. Leon Ware – What’s Your World
11. The Violet Flame – The Violet Flame
12. Toure Kunda – Salya/Sambala
13. Greek Unknown
14. Second Passport – Get Yourself A Second Passport
15. Paul White – Way Past Midnight
16. Eurythmics – I Did It Just The Same
17. Paul White – Intimate Loving
18. Paul White – What Does It Mean To Love Interlude
19. Paul White ft. Tranqill – Rotten Apples (Remix)
20. Paul White ft. Marv Won – Run Shit (Remix)
21. Roots Radics – Cool In Dub
22. Keith Hudson – My Nocturne
23. Bruce Gilbert – Hommage
24. Billy Cobham – Heather
25. Paul White – Thirty Days
26. Paul White – Midnight Tappin’
27. Todd Rundgren – Zen Archer
28. Art Blakey And “Philly” Joe Jones – “Philly” Joe Jones Solo/Art Blakey’s Solo
29. Pies Between My Elbows Interlude
30. Honey Bane – Guilty Dub
31. What’s That Funny Smell?
32. Paul White – Out Of My Mind Tonight
33. The United States Of America – Coming Down
34. Frank Zappa Outro
- FADER

Another day, another excellent set of verses served up by SPIN Hottest MC Danny Brown. On Tuesday, we heard the Detroit star reprise his "Blunt After Blunt" persona for the darkly tinted trunk-rattler, "Kush Coma," and before that it was "#HottestMC," a menacing dismissal of those who'd make a grab for his crooked crown. Now we've got a forthcoming single from psych-rock-obsessed London producer Paul White, "Street Lights."

The dystopian track is the perfect landscape for Brown's bleak but chest-puffing rhymes. It's with a certain amount of pride and aplomb that he declares himself an "old toothless-ass nigga" — after all, "the bitches fucking with him 'cause they know he got charisma" — before detailing an urban environment cast in long shadows and peopled by dangerous characters.

The vinyl and digital single is out April 15 via One-Handed (backed by a Dabrye remix), but you can pre-order now via Bandcamp. - Spin

It’s clear that Paul White loves rap, but he doesn’t always make beats that are easy to rhyme over. The English producer’s beats resemble instrumental obstacle courses, which explains why his 2011 compilation Rapping With Paul White only featured MC’s on eight of its 17 tracks. That said, Danny Brown never seems to have a problem when working with White; his harsh screech tore through the beat on Rapping standout “One of Life’s Pleasures”, and White produced three songs on Brown’s XXX.
Brown has gone screechless of late, dialing his register down on his recent releases, but he still has White’s number. The rapper makes short work of “Street Lights”, sketching a picture of a dystopic world filled with cop-killers and runaways over White’s manic psychedelia. “Street Lights” is being released as a single on April 15 via One-Handed; it comes backed with a remix from Dabrye. - Pitchfork

In case the album title's got you thinking otherwise: Paul White is not a rapper. He's a producer from London, a designation that, these days, might bring to mind dubstep and UK bass-- but despite some enthusiastic co-signs from publications that orbit around that scene, White ain't part of it. He works in sticky, abstracted hip-hop rhythms coated in THC resin; 2009's The Strange Dreams of Paul White, one of his earlier full-lengths (all of which can be heard on his Bandcamp page) found Captain Beefheart bumping up against weirded-out boom-bap.
Those previous releases felt homemade and somewhat amateurish, a distinction which makes Rapping With Paul White a bit of a coming-out party: there's equal parts mutant funk and dusty beats here, but it sounds like White's first true statement of purpose, his own preferred introduction to new listeners. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's also his first LP that largely features guest vocals (this is where the Rapping comes in); White's gathered names both recognizable (Danny Brown, Homeboy Sandman, frequent past collaborator Guilty Simpson) and not-so-recognizable (Marv Won, Moe Pope, Tranqill).
So this is a record that depends as much on what the spitters bring to the table as what White cooks up in the lab-- and, unfortunately, the rappers don't exactly come correct. Considering how he and White have a past history of collaborating, you'd think that Guilty Simpson and White would be firing on all cylinders by now; instead, the Detroit hardhead unfurls cliché after cliché and drops vague, autobiographical teases that don't reveal much in particular. (Though he gets points for the "murdering mic's like Conrad Murray" line in "Dirty Slang".) His performances are uninspiring enough to think that of last year's full-length collab with Madlib, the cleverly titled OJ Simpson, relied solely on 'Lib's beatcraft.
Fellow Motor City spitter Marv Won rides the chant-knock of "Run Shit" ably, but spoils the broth by getting corny about Heath Ledger; Queens native Homeboy Sandman, on the other hand, basically recounts a trip to England on "A Weird Day", which is about as thrilling as it sounds. Even Danny Brown, another Detroit rapper that is having a very good year with his excellent, audacious XXX mixtape, is smothered by the spiraling carnival melodies and game-show filth of "One of Life's Pleasures", his trademark excitability barely registering. The only rapper that comes out of this unscathed is White's labelmate Tranqill, whose cadences on "Rotten Apples" match well with White's searing, void-creating beat.
There are instrumental versions of Rapping With Paul White out there and I strongly suggest seeking out those versions, if only to feel the blunt impact of White's strongest moves (the spooky claps of "Trust" and "Indigo Glow", in particular). You could take a rap-less version of this LP and convince your friends that it's a beat tape from Madlib or Oh No, a quality that speaks as much to White's influences as it does his lack of a specific identity. Thing is, copping to Stones Throw influences almost seems quaint these days, as anyone with an ear to the ground has noticed that much of the underground hip-hop that's in vogue relies on quiet introspection, stronger drugs, and ambient, eerie beats made by people who inexplicably refer to themselves as Friendzone. The fact that Rapping With Paul White sounds so old-head suggests that the "Stones Throw sound," made most popular by the late J. Dilla's inimitable Donuts, is on the verge of transitioning from old school to just plain old - Pitchfork

Homeboy Sandman has never lacked for confidence when stepping to the mic, but on “Find A Way,” the second single off producer Paul White’s Watch the Ants EP, he shows a vulnerability that doesn’t always surface. Sand breaks down loneliness, doubt, and the new anxiety that comes with reaching that third decade in the same matter-of-fact way that he's previously painted pictures of political paranoia or the problems of fast food.
- Pitchfork