As a Panorama Bar resident and internationally touring DJ with a knack for serious fun on the dancefloor, a label owner with a fine nose for unusual yet dancefloor-optimised house, and a hardware nerd with a high output as a producer, Massimiliano Pagliara has become a highly productive everybody’s darling. It is thus hardly surprising that he was able to invite a whole range of very different feature guests for »See You in Paradise«, his fourth album and first in four years: the duo INIT, Curses, Fort Romeau & Coloray, Snax, and the singer Vanessa all make an appearance on this record. This also makes sense because the ten pieces were primarily written in the spring of 2020, when everyone had a little more time than usual to devote themselves to music. Pagliara uses familiar formulas, whereby his adaptations of trip-hop (»Half-Time Dreams« with INIT), vocal house (»Reset« with Fort Romeau & Coloray) or Happy-Monday-esque Madchester tunage (»Snap Out« with Snax) stick to the form and feel of the all-too-familiar originals especially in the collaborative works in the first half of the album. Which, of course, happens on a very high level nonetheless. The second half, heralded by the saxophone ambient piece (!) »Mitate,« proves to be more creative. Pagliara’s piece with Curses is a house-pop tune with eerie undertones, »Nocturnal Prowler« is a bleepy electro-techno hybrid and the title track with Vanessa at first seems to quote »Plastic Dreams« by Jaydee, but develops into a beatless, atmospheric trance derivative. Stylistically versatile, excellently produced and at least partly quite unconventional: »See You in Paradise« offers a lot in just under an hour.
Om Unit
Acid Dub Studies III
Om Unit