From his early roots as resident at Leeds long-running Back to Basics night, Paul Woolford has slowly but surely become one of the most in-demand and exciting DJ/producers in the world today.

His uncompromising aproach to both making music and DJing has seen him unleash quirky classics like Erotic Discourse on unsuspecting dancefloors, while consistently delivering on the decks.

His brand new LP, The Truth, is probably his most honest and personal music to date, so we grabbed a few moments of his time for a deeper insight…

You’ve returned to the Bobby Peru moniker for this LP - how do Paul and Bobby differ in the head?

“The Bobby Peru pseudonym came about from a time when I wasn’t quite 100% about what I was creating, so I kind of hid behind it, and nowadays I’m completely the other way, where I want it to be known that it’s me, so I guess it was a convenient foil for some time. People know it’s all me though, so it’s almost irrelevant in some ways. There’s certainly no outwardly obvious stylistic difference, although some would have you think that.”

Each of the tracks on the LP possesses a particularly vital energy which feels very personal. What sentiments of yours are we feeling here?

“A multitude. But they are for the audience to feel and interpret as they wish. I can explain away through all the emotions I have gone through when making certain tracks, but ultimately it’s going to sound and probably feel different to every single other person in the world in ways in which nobody else but that person can ever know. It always intrigues me, the idea of being able to listen to music the way another person hears it for a day, imagine that… and now imagine going back to your own way, but with that knowledge. How you would be able to mould the sound would be incredible. Fucking incredible.”

You’ve worked with your natural dad on some music now too - how has that process of discovering your heritage effected your work?

“It’s made me far more confident in my own voice, and here let me point out clearly I’m not meaning physically from my own voicebox, I mean figuratively. This links to my reasons for using pseudonyms earlier. Finding out the pieces of the jigsaw helped me feel complete enough to truly believe in my creativity, rather than blindly going in the dark through a basic instinct. This in turn means I’m now, by default, better equipped to harness it all, at the risk of sounding completely wanky. I’m less inclined to carry on with tribute-style tracks that are made from positions of reverence for other artists, although it should be made clear that I still hold, and will never depart from my sense of awe at others achievements with certain pieces of music. It’s just that I’m no longer interested in following and replicating their ideals, formulas and templates. I’m finding my own, which is more inspiring than ever. And this in turn in combination with a few other things has unlocked my creativity like never before. I’ve written 13 tracks since January this year which is quite staggering when you consider how long it took to get The Truth done.”

Interesting to hear more unusual sounds on the LP (like a harp on Shibboleth) Are you purposefully trying to stretch the musicality of ‘dance’ tracks or these are just the right sounds for the job?

“A bit of both. Something that made me laugh earlier this year was the fuss over that Samim track with the accordion. I actually read on some websites “accordions are just not house” time and time again. Like you know that for a fact? There’s no fucking rules! The cool kids like to play the taste arbiters, but it’s sometimes funny seeing how people can chase their tails and worry about if things are trendy or not, and, not even that, but HOW trendy things are. There is only opinion, stacked on opinion. And we all hear things differently. it’s all relative. I sound pretty reasonable here, don’t I?!”

What attitude to DJing did your early experience of Back to Basics provide?

“They informed it in the right context completely. I had so many records at home that I heard there, those first few times I went to the Music Factory, but I’d not heard them out. Murk High Up & Liberty City If You Really Love Someone, Red Planet Stardancer, Clementine Cosmopolitan For The Cosmos and tons more remind me of that time, and it all clicked into place and the lightbulbs went on. Key moments.”

Paul’s Top 5 Download Chart

1. Matt John - Olga Dancekowski (Audion’s Paradise Cafe mix) - Bar25

2. Zed Bias - Bareknuckle - Sick Trumpet

3. James Mowbray & D. Ramirez - Time Fades Away - FourTwenty Recordings

4. 51 Days - Tracktion - Touche

5. Paul Woolford - Black Orchid - Intamacy

(Interview: Tom Kihl)