Paul
Port
Portrait / paul-port
Paul Port is the one who never needed a gimmick. No origin myth, no reinvention, just a steady hand and a taste for grooves that were already out of fashion when he started making them.
The Recipe is exactly what the title promises: nu-disco built the patient way, warm bass, clean four-on-the-floor, and hooks that trust the listener to come to them. Nothing on it shouts. It does not have to.
Late-disco and modern funk with the lights down low, equally at home on a dinner playlist or a slow night drive. The kind of record that grows on you and then stays.
A Paul Port project by Lars Curfs.
Paul Port exists because of Call On Me. I was listening to the Eric Prydz track and it struck me that the vocal barely says anything at all; the same handful of words go round and round. The whole record rides on its melody, and it works completely. I thought: I could try that.
My first attempt turned into The Recipe, and the melody line that came out of it was better than anything I had expected. So I kept pulling on that thread, and four more tracks arrived in the same vein. By the time I looked up there was a whole project sitting there, with a point of view attached.
That point of view is simple. With Paul Port the melody is the song, and the words are there to carry it and repeat it. On paper it sounds like a shortcut. In practice, it works.