Artist Spotlight
Promising artist Paskman is quickly becoming recognized for his ability to fuse the traditional sounds of Latinx culture with grinding tech house. He’s racked up millions of streams and almost as many dance music industry supporters. His cheeky flip of Raffa Villalba’s “Chiquetere” was the sound of the summer in 2022, gaining support from Wax Motif, Hugel, Bingo Players, Sonny Fodera, and Solardo. With the explosion of Latin house in recent years, Paskman’s sound is perfectly in step with the zeitgeist. But he’s not interested in following a trend. Instead, he's developing his scintillating sound organically, a sound he effortlessly defines as intense, energetic, and exotic. “In all my songs, I try to put a little bit of those three words, in one way or another,” he says. “Maybe in one song, it’s the vocal that’s exotic, but maybe in another song, it’s the bass. The same with energy and intensity. Be that as it may, the fact that all of them are a mixture of those three concepts is the key.” The producer’s brand was born in the summer of 2018, but his career has grown more professionally since 2021. “Little by little, you achieve great things—it’s clear to me,” he says. That incremental growth has been in the works for over a decade. Taken by the explosion of EDM—his first introduction was Tiësto’s “Adagio for Strings”—he was inspired to jump into producing. He then started experimenting with different sounds before zeroing in on tech house. Paskman is deft at mixing great classics from countless genres within his music. It gives everything a subtle sense of nostalgia, with a sharp twist towards the dancefloor. To choose a vocal, he says the music must catch his attention from the first moment he hears it. “One day, I realized that people needed vocals at parties and that’s when I decided to mix the vocal of a very famous song like ‘Smoking I Wait’ with my style.” Paskman’s 2019 remix of “Smoking I Wait” was his first track to hit one million streams. It beautifully samples Spanish singer-actress Sara Montiel’s “Fumando Espero” from the 1957 film “El Último Cuplé.” Its minimal thump is only made more authentic with the wonderfully dusty quality of the original recording. He adds, “To my surprise, people liked it a lot and I wanted to keep trying more vocals. Without realizing it, I was creating my own style, which has given me a lot of joy.” Paskman understands that he hit studio gold with “Smoking I Wait” but explains that he has a soft spot for all the music he writes. “It seems that they are all my daughters,” he says tenderly about his relationship with his tracks. “And I am affectionate to all of them. On the other hand, I’m very demanding with myself, and I rarely like the results of my songs—it’s very contradictory.” If forced to choose a favorite, “Sexy Groove” would be his pick as he likes “both the vocal and the elements that make it up" and enjoys playing it. Looking back to the start of his career, if he could give himself one piece of advice, Paskman says he would say to keep doing things the way he's been doing them. “If it hadn’t been for my perseverance in production, in deciding from the first moment what my path was and what I didn’t want to do, I wouldn’t have achieved anything,” he says. While other DJs may have followed trends that didn’t reflect their tastes, Paskman explains, “I spent time producing what I liked. So, my advice would be to do what you like, even if nobody knows what you’re doing.” Looking forward, Paskman is both honest and humble about his direction. “I am an introverted person; in spite of dedicating myself to a world in which shame should not exist, in my case, it does,” he says. “On the other hand, I think I still have a long way to go in production—I feel I still have a lot to learn."
