As PAAX (Tulum), German Wagener and Nicolas Damonte transpose lived experience and the spirit of a place into music, starting off their careers with the freneticism of their native Buenos Aires and shifting downtempo with their relocation to Mexico’s Caribbean coast. House Music with Love caught up with the Argentine producer-DJs in the midst of a particularly creative spell, with their upcoming E.P. Hypnos set to drop on April 1 on Scorpios Music.
What can we expect to hear on your new E.P. Hypnos?
German Wagener: You’ll hear very different sounds on each track, with a variety of synthesized rhythms, a lot of organic percussion from Nelson Williams Herrera, Spanish guitar courtesy of Daniel Herranz Gómez, and some groovy references to Latin culture. This E.P. is a journey from start to finish, starting softly with a low-BPM track, then upping the tempo with something that sits between organic house and progressive, and then ending on something energetic to accompany or facilitate some kind of euphoric state. It’s really a reflection of the varying textures of life and the fluctuating energies of the everyday.
Do you two ever have creative differences?
Nicolas Damonte: Thousands. That’s what makes the process more interesting. Being open to each other’s proposals takes the music to beautiful places.
Do you have a preconception of what your music will sound like before you set out to create it?
Nicolas Damonte: Well, we are always drawing from lots of different cultures, trying different things, introducing new sounds to each other, trying to somehow incorporate a philosophy of life that’s formed organically through travelling the world and immersing ourselves in different places. Our music tends to organically blossom and morph into something that’s a product of both our creative efforts. Perhaps as individuals, we both have our private preconceptions, and the creative process is simply trying to merge those preconceptions and ending up with a new and unexpected synthesis.
What’s magic about live music?
German Wagener: For us, jamming live is fascinating because it allows us to create in the moment, and it can take us to unexpected places musically. We really like to take parts of our own tracks and change them live — in fact, most of the tracks we do live are reversions of our own tracks.
Hypnos is your second release with Scorpios Music in the last seven months, following up from Wallas that was released in August 2021. It seems like you’re in a very creative period…
Nicolas Damonte: For sure. Music is one of the great engines of life. Music makes you change moods, heals you, motivates you, unites you, complements you, accompanies you, and takes you places you didn’t think you could go. That’s also the beautiful thing about releasing under Scorpios Music, because it’s a label rooted in a club, and there’s already a solid community around it. Although we haven’t been able to play live as much as we would have liked to, we’ve been able to channel this in the studio.
German Wagener: And we’re not done yet!
Scorpios music
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www.sc-music.co
@scorpiosmykonos
PAAX (Tulum)
www.instagram.com/paaxtulum/
@paaxtulum
