FROM THE UNDERGROUND OF THE 1980s

For Paul J Lane, that pulse reaches back much further.

His musical instincts were shaped in the depths of the early 1980s, at a moment when dance music was mutating rapidly.

Disco was giving way to something harder, stranger and more electronic.

Drum machines began replacing traditional grooves. Synthesizers became central to the sound. Electro-funk, post-disco, boogie and synth-driven soul started colliding with the emerging language of hip-hop.

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Artists such as Shalamar, The Whispers and Patrice Rushen helped define that sophisticated electronic groove, while the arrival of pioneering rap artists including The SOS Band, Grandmaster Flash and the Sugarhill Gang opened another door entirely.

It was a period when rhythm, technology, street culture and experimentation began feeding one another.

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That atmosphere left its mark on Paul.

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Not simply as nostalgia, but as a musical philosophy.

The idea that a bassline could carry a song.

That repetition could become hypnotic.

That electronic sounds could be soulful.

And that music could move between the underground, the club, the street and popular culture without asking permission.

Those influences now resurface through Psycho Rhythms B-Sides.

Not as an attempt to recreate the 1980s, but to take some of that same restless spirit and push it into a contemporary world. The definition of originality is something old and something new. Lets find out shall we?